Here to Stay

A secret leaked last week from the Sikorsky Aircraft division of United Aircraft Corp. at Bridgeport. Conn. The secret : the company is now operating the first helicopter production line in the U.S., and probably in the world.

In the last eight months, Sikorsky has produced 30 helicopters for the Materiel Command of the Army Air Forces. The ships have been tested in Burma, evacuating wounded from the jungles; in patrol work along the Atlantic coast; in Alaska.

Now coming off the production line is the company's XR-4. By fall this will be replaced by a later, heavier-load-carrying model, the XR5 Powered by a 450-h.p. Pratt & Whitney motor, the XR5 carries a pilot and passenger in tandem, flies faster than 110 miles an hour, has a range of some 400 miles.

But helicopter fans, who see themselves hedgehopping home in the postwar sky, have still to hedgehop one major obstacle: the cost. The price per helicopter may not fall below $5,000 for some time after war's end. Actually Sikorsky men see their first postwar market as "feeders" to airlines, and for short-flight air "bus lines." Bus lines see this too. Already 70 of them have filed applications with the Civil Aeronautics Board to operate helicopter bus lines.

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