WI Sikorsky produced a helicopter before WW2?

What about anti-submarine operations? Non-carrier warships could carry helicopters instead of floatplanes - and helicopters should be a lot easier to launch and especially recover than floatplanes.

They´ll probably lack the range and speed to perform naval search missions, but for ASW, and perhaps artillery spotting, they should be useful enough.

Looking at the R-4 and H-6 it looks like the options are:
Pilot + 1 small depth charge
OR
Pilot + passenger with binoculars
Assuming there is already a small radio fitted then (extremely basic) ASW and spotting are certainly feasible but OTL they arrived when the allies had decent numbers of MACs carrying g real ASW aircraft and plenty of conventional Austers, L-5s and whatnot for spotting.

Move them forward a few years and a I could see convoys defended by a few CAMs each with a hurricane on the bow and an R-4 spotted on the stern.
 
This is the relevant part. British Carrier Aviation, by Norman Friedman, Page 181.

One intermediate idea deserves mention: in July 1942 the Admiralty considered building helicopter platforms on merchant ships. It appeared that the new US R-4 helicopter could carry small shaped-charge anti-submarine bombs. The R-4 turned out not to be able to carry a sufficient load, and the project had to be abandoned the following year, though not before the Royal Navy had tentatively ordered 500 of an improved model, the R-5.

Then there is this footnote

The R-5 (Sikorsky S-51) was actually built in Britain postwar. Britain received small numbers of R-4 and R-6 helicopters, but they did not have sufficient lifting capacity for the combination of two men, electronics (at least MAD and a radio), weapons (at least one and preferably two 110lb AS bombs), and fuel (for endurance).
 
b0ned0me said:
Looking at the R-4 and H-6 it looks like the options are:
Pilot + 1 small depth charge
OR
Pilot + passenger with binoculars
Assuming there is already a small radio fitted then (extremely basic) ASW and spotting are certainly feasible
It seems obvious now (tho perhaps hindsight is telling;)), but why not operate in pairs?

Every tanker (& most merchantmen) could find space for a launch flat.
 
WI Igor Sikorsky manufactured a helicopter before WW2?
Granted, it would be small and short-ranged and maintenance intensive, barely able to lift two men and their lunch for two or three hours. IOW not much more than a spotter aircraft for artillery forward observation officers.
How would helicopter spotters have affected U-boats?
How would helicopter med-evac change casualty rates on WW2 battlefields?
How would spotters improve naval gunnery accuracy when re-taking Pacific Islands?

I imagine they might see use in the New Guinea campaign, and possibly also in the Balkan Front early in the European War. Burma is also a possibility. The rough terrain would be a great proving ground for the principles of medical evacuation. Sikorsky could then get a contract to build bigger and better helicopters--perhaps something like the H-34 by 1944.
 
It seems obvious now (tho perhaps hindsight is telling;)), but why not operate in pairs?

Every tanker (& most merchantmen) could find space for a launch flat.
When homing torpedoes first came in in OTL (1944 or so), they were heavy enough that the carrier aircraft carrying them did operate in pairs - one to locate the submarine and the other to drop the torpedo. Payload limitations again, so I think it would be considered obvious IOTL as well.
 
When homing torpedoes first came in in OTL (1944 or so), they were heavy enough that the carrier aircraft carrying them did operate in pairs - one to locate the submarine and the other to drop the torpedo. Payload limitations again, so I think it would be considered obvious IOTL as well.

That's what the RN did in the 1950s with their Sikorsky and Westland Whirlwinds. Except one carried the dipping sonar and the other the homing torpedo.
 
pdf27 said:
When homing torpedoes first came in in OTL (1944 or so), they were heavy enough that the carrier aircraft carrying them did operate in pairs - one to locate the submarine and the other to drop the torpedo. Payload limitations again, so I think it would be considered obvious IOTL as well.
I recall a late war or postwar duo, so I wasn't clear if it was in-war or postwar gear limitations. In any case, it seems like a reasonable thing to presume the operators would figure out a pair works.
 
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