(Book)
Book
https://www.amazon.com/America-Seversky-Major-Alexander-P/dp/B000O6QG12?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B000O6QG12
(Air Power: Key to Survival, with a prologue on the lesson...)
Air Power: Key to Survival, with a prologue on the lesson of Korea. 1950.
https://www.amazon.com/Air-Power-Survival-Alexander-Seversky/dp/B0007DLCI4?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B0007DLCI4
Alexander Procofieff De Seversky was born on June 7, 1894 in Tiflis, Russia (now Tbilisi, Georgia). He was the son of Nicholas Seversky, a pioneer Russian pilot, and Vera Vasilieff Procofieff. As a boy he displayed an interest in aviation, building model aircraft.
At the age of 14 De Seversky enrolled in the Imperial Naval Academy of Russia, from which he graduated in 1914. He then undertook post-graduate work at the Russian Military School of Aeronautics.
De Seversky began to work on a combination ski and pontoon system to enable Russian naval aircraft to operate during the winter. During World War I, de Seversky was a Russian naval aviator. In July 1915, his plane was shot down, and he suffered the loss of his right leg when his own bombs exploded. De Seversky spent the next year recovering, and he eventually returned to active duty with a special decree from Tsar Nicholas II. After several attempts, he finally received permission to fly combat missions again. Despite the loss of his leg, he downed thirteen German aircraft and became one of the most decorated men in Tsar Nicholas II's armed forces.
When the Russian Revolution erupted in 1917, de Seversky was in the United States as a member of the Russian Naval Aviation Mission. His Russian passport had been issued in French, the "de" appearing in front of "Seversky" for the first time. De Seversky liked the change - and kept it.
Deciding to stay in the United States in 1918, he found work as a test pilot, and soon afterward as a consulting engineer to the United States Air Service.
In 1921, Brigadier General William Mitchell named de Seversky his special assistant. For the next three years, de Seversky worked to develop the first fully automatic synchronous bomb sight. The new device worked well, and General Mitchell arranged a government purchase of de Seversky's 364 patent claims for $50, 000 in 1922.
De Seversky used this money to start the Seversky Aero Corporation. De Seversky began work intensively on a variety of engineering problems. He labored on retractable landing gears to be used on ice, water, or land. He concentrated on modifying and inventing a variety of structural designs. Wing flaps were the focus of yet other projects.
In 1927 he became a naturalized citizen. By this time he had also joined the United States Army Air Corps Specialists Reserve, and was commissioned a major.
In 1931, de Seversky founded the Seversky Aircraft Corporation and focused on the production of long-range pursuit planes, with himself as test pilot and chief designer. His experimentation through 1934 yielded a government contract for thirty-five amphibious airplanes. The company soon sold eighty-five "P35" pursuit planes, incorporating a number of efficiency mechanisms that had by then been perfected. Unfortunately, these developments were accompanied by his company's growing financial distress.
By 1938, the Seversky Aircraft Corporation averaged annual losses amounting to approximately $1 million. In 1938, de Seversky urged that a director of the corporation, W. Wallace Kellett, be named vice-president. Within five months, because of disagreements between board directors and de Seversky over company policy, the directors of the company named Kellett president and demoted de Seversky to director. By the following October, the name of the company was changed to the Republic Aviation Corporation and by May 1940, de Seversky was removed from the company's board entirely.
The resulting litigation by de Seversky was eventually settled out of court. When World War II began in Europe, de Seversky committed himself to enlightening the general public to the crucial factor of air power in modern war.
In the 1942 publication of Victory Through Air Power, de Seversky argued for the absolute importance of a strategic air force with a wide radius of operational capability. He rejected the idea of advance bases and extensive ground organization. In de Seversky's construct, air power was clearly the critical factor in modern war. Made into a film produced by Walt Disney in 1943, the book played a pivotal role in persuading the Pentagon to give air power the necessary priorities to secure control of the air before launching a European invasion.
In March 1945, Secretary of War Robert Patterson named de Seversky his special consultant. De Seversky traveled to Japan and in 1946 to the Bikini atomic test site in order to analyze the effects of nuclear bombing.
Through the late 1940s he lectured at a variety of military war colleges, such as Air University in Montgomery, Alabama; the Royal Canadian Air Staff College; the National Defence College in Canada; and the Strategic Intelligence School in Washington. In 1950, he published "Air Power: Key to Survival, " and in 1961, "America: Too Young to Die. " In both of these works, and indeed, throughout his lectures in the 1950s, de Seversky focused on a myriad of strategic nuclear concerns.
He continued his advocacy of air power's crucial role - especially in the nuclear age. In 1955, he argued that the "whole military philosophy must be changed, " which meant, as expressed in "America: Too Young to Die, " that the "organization plan of our Department of Defense is fallacious to the point of absurdity. "
De Seversky lived his final years at Asharoken Beach in Northport, Long Island, New York. He died in 1974 at New York's Memorial Hospital, and was buried in the Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.
Alexander Procofieff De Seversky is remembered as a noted aviator and inventor who created several fighters that played an important role in many of World War II battles. He is also remembered as an air power advocate who helped to shape the course of US military aviation during World War II. He received the Harmon Trophy in 1939 for advances in aviation. For his work on air power, Seversky received the Medal for Merit in 1945 from President Harry Truman and the Exceptional Service Medal in 1969 in recognition of his service as a special consultant to the Chiefs of Staff of the USAF. In 1970, Seversky was enshrined in the National Aviation Hall of Fame.
(Air Power: Key to Survival, with a prologue on the lesson...)
(Book)
On June 23, 1925, De Seversky married an American woman, Evelyn Olliphant, in New Orleans.
