However, even under such fair terms as those granted us by American Export Airlines, we did not succeed in avoiding serious losses at Sikorsky. Meanwhile, Pan American had turned to Martin and then Boeing, and each of these able builders had suffered similarly. By that time, too, the aircraft industry had suffered from the political debacle in Washington. We had reached the end of our rope and could no longer afford to contribute either our management or engineering talents, let alone our slender capital, to the subsidization of airline operations. We decided to drop out of the big-boat business. And when I broke this sad news to Mr. Sikorsky—by then I had become president of United Aircraft—he received it like the great gentleman he is. He understood our problem; he was grateful for all the consideration the company had given him. He wondered if perchance we would grant him one more favor; he would like to go back to his first love—experimenting with helicopters. He thought he might succeed now where he had failed before. A modest sum of money would meet his requirements and he hoped this was not asking too much. Quite certain that no one could possibly build a successful helicopter but that Mr. Sikorsky at least deserved a try, I magnanimously agreed to back him. Igor Sikorsky did invent the helicopter, just as the Wrights before him had invented the airplane, by diligent study, by painstaking experiment, by teaching himself to fly and then teaching others. In so doing, the man who had given the world the means of vaulting the last barrier to air commerce went to the other extreme to create the only vehicle that can operate in three dimensions without a prepared surface from which to take off or land. Aviation owes much to his creative mind, one that not only finds no difficulty in reconciling science and religious faith, but on the contrary, exercises that intuitive quality that marks real genius. The moral of this brief review of the history of a representative airplane company is that profit has a counterpart in loss, and both are essential to progress. Again, financial results are not the sole measure of excellence; there is also the intangible factor of stewardship. When the final account is cast up, Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky will rank among the immortals of American aviation. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE The Courage of Conviction