The thirteenth essay in the “Creators” series is dedicated to Mikhail Mikhailovich Strukov , an engineer, architect, and aircraft designer who built both the famous Washington building and one of the most famous aircraft of the Vietnam War. Together with RASA (Russian-American Science Association), T-invariant continues publishing a series of biographical essays “Creators“.
Michael Strukoff lived three lives. Until 40, he was a Russian nobleman and officer. After that, he was an emigrant, engineer, designer, and entrepreneur. And only at 60, he proved himself as an aircraft designer and created one of the most successful military transport aircraft of his time.
If you’ve seen the movie “Con Air ” or other movies about the Vietnam War, then the silhouette of the C-123 Provider is familiar to you. But you’re unlikely to be familiar with its creator, Michael Stroukoff. Bold and enterprising, quarrelsome and an original thinker, a White Guard cavalryman and pilot.
At the Mercer Airfield in New Jersey on December 19, 1947, an unprecedented machine stood on the runway – an elegant all-metal glider with a wingspan of 26 meters. A cheerful, middle-aged man in a hat walked out onto the airfield, talked with the officers and journalists present at the tests, and sat in the co-pilot’s seat.
It was Mikhael Stroukoff, a Russian nobleman and Knight of the Order of St. George, an American engineer, entrepreneur and aircraft designer. In just a month he would turn 65, and this was his aircraft. The biography of this amazing man has not yet been written. He did not like to talk about his past. Especially about what happened before emigration.
Life One: A Nobleman and a Cavalryman
Michael Stroukoff, formerly known as Mikhail Mikhailovich Strukov was born in Yekaterinoslav, now Dnipro, on January 29, 1883. The Strukovs were one of the two richest and most influential noble families in the province. But it is not known for certain which branch the future aircraft designer belonged to.
Dnipro historians Viktor Zaruba and Mykola Chaban, whom T-Invariant consulted, believe that the future engineer is the grandson of Pyotr Ananyevich Strukov, a major general and provincial Marshal of the nobility. He had 14 children, and Mikhail Petrovich was born in the 12th, in 1859. He probably became the father of the aircraft designer.
Historians do not know when he got married and how many children he fathered. “That’s why, due to the lack of documents, I did not include the designer in the Strukov genealogy,” Zaruba admits. “By the way, Mikhail Mikhailovich is very similar to his grandfather, Pyotr Ananyevich Strukov, and his great-grandfather, General Alexei Arbuzov. And he named his daughter Anna in honor of his grandmother, Anna Arbuzova.”
Almost nothing is known about Mikhail Sr. He was listed as a page of the court, lived with his parents. It was a low court position, although other members of the family made quite serious careers at court.
One of Mikhail Sr.’s brothers, the designer’s uncle, Alexander Petrovich, was adjutant general to Nicholas II, the permanent manager of court balls in St. Petersburg.
Another uncle, Ananiy Petrovich, rose to the ranks yard to the chamberlain (Hofmeister). In 1886, when the future aircraft builder was 3 years old, Ananiy also became the Marshal of the nobility.
The Strukovs’ mansion in Dnipro has survived to this day. Now it is a kindergarten at 33 Vernadsky Street. Before the 1917 revolution, the street was called Novodvoryanskaya. And it was the Strukovs who settled there first, and then other nobles of the province followed the example of the influential family.
The mansion was built in the 1840s, simultaneously with the restoration of the Potemkin Palace, which housed the provincial House of Noble Assemblies. And the Strukovs wanted their family nest to become a smaller copy of the palace.
But despite its rich history, Yekaterinoslav was never a noble city. Trade flourished there, representatives of the merchant class became city mayors for many years, and the noble class preferred to live on estates. Merchants could join even the Yekaterinoslav English Club (unlike the situation in the capitals).
The city was a major Jewish center. In the childhood of the future aircraft designer, Jews accounted for a third of the city’s population. His grandfather, the Marshal of the nobility, once donated an expensive chandelier to the local synagogue. An unusual act for a nobleman.
At the end of the 19th century, rapid industrial growth began. At that time, Yekaterinoslav was nicknamed “New America.” Factories were built, the population grew rapidly, the first power plant began operating. Educational institutions were opened.
But, of course, only one of them was suitable for the offspring of an influential family – the City Classical Gymnasium. Mikhail entered there, as many of his uncles and cousins did. The institution was elite, with its own museum, which had a real Egyptian mummy in its collection. Only about 15 people graduated from it per year.
But Mikhail Strukov is no longer on the list of graduates. The young man have almost completed his education in the cadet corps. This was a common path for the son of a famous noble family, Viktor Zaruba clarifies. The cadet corps was considered a prestigious educational institution. But we do not know which corps the future aircraft designer studied in. In Kiev or Odessa? Or perhaps in St. Petersburg.
He received his higher education at the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute (KPI). Now the institute is named after Igor Sikorsky (We wrote about him in the series “Creators“). Sikorsky entered the KPI in 1907, and Strukov graduated in 1908, and it is unknown whether they even knew each other.
Surely, while studying to be an engineer, Mikhail attended classes on the strength of materials and another hero of the “Creators” project – Stepan Timoshenko. In any case, Strukov was not yet interested in aviation. He became a civil engineer.
But when the war of 1914 began, the future aircraft designer found himself not in engineering units, but in the most combat ones. He served in the cavalry, received the Order of St. George IV degree and ended the war with the rank of captain.
Then there was the Civil War and the White movement, battles in Siberia and the Far East. The future aircraft designer did not like to talk about it so much that we do not even know which army he fought in at that time: Kolchak’s or Ataman Semyonov’s.
In 1920, under pressure from the Reds, a mass exodus of White Guards to China began. Some retreated to Xinjiang, others to Harbin, which for a time became almost a Russian city. It is unclear which of the retreating people Mikhail Strukov joined. But he crossed the Chinese border in 1921 and lived in China until 1922, when he sailed to America. He was already 39 years old, and his life had to start from scratch.
Second Life: All Over Again
And Mikhail Strukov – Michael Stroukoff – really did start all over again. At Columbia University, he re-defended his diploma as a civil engineer and began to design and build theaters, churches, and commercial real estate. For example, he participated in the creation of the Elizabeth Arden Building, a recognized monument of Washington architecture, built in 1929.
According to the recollections of Stroukoff’s daughter, Ann McGady (née Anna Strukova), her father was also involved in more subtle work. Mikhail Strukov used to design art display cases for the famous Wanamaker’s department store in Philadelphia and make custom Art Deco furniture.
In America, he married a Russian émigré, art historian Larisa Mikhailovna Pasvolskaya. She was 10 years younger and gave the engineer three children: Oleg, Mikhail and Anna.
The family lived in the Bronx, then a suburb of New York, recently included in the city limits. A rapidly growing population, migrants from all over the world, bootleggers. But the grandson of the provincial marshal of the nobility had no choice: he had to get on his feet. Things were going well, and Strukov received American citizenship just before World War II.
The engineer and architect had one great passion – gliding. Some biographers write that he became interested in it back in 1920. It is difficult to say how Stroukoff combined this sport with participation in the Civil War. But in America, he began to actively fly and continued to renew his pilot’s license until he was 74.
When his beloved wife Larisa died in 1946, the engineer decided to immortalize her memory. He designed a half-meter trophy, inlaid with silver and ivory, which has been awarded to American glider pilots since 1955.
The award passes from hand to hand. And is awarded to this day. In addition, the winners receive a check for 5 thousand dollars from the fund established by Stroukoff.
The Larissa Stroukoff Memorial Trophy
It was his passion for gliders that turned engineer Michael Stroukoff into an aircraft designer. And also — the war.
The Third Life: The Benefits of Gliding
During World War II, gliders were used by all warring parties for landing operations. America entered the race a little later than others, in 1941, but managed to establish mass production of these cheap, disposable landing vehicles.
Aviation made great progress during the war years, and the requirements for gliders changed with it. Powerful and high-speed tug planes appeared, capable of flying at high altitudes. And they needed high-altitude and reliable gliders. This is where former cavalry captain Michael Stroukoff comes into play.
In 1943, he registered the Chase Aircraft Company. According to one version, it got its name from the old factory in lower Manhattan, where Stroukoff built his first military glider called the XCG-14. The aircraft was then disassembled and transported in parts to a garage in the Bronx, not far from where the inventor lived with his family.
Second XCG-14 prototype (serial number 44-90990)
“A builder of railroads, bridges, and theaters, he designed the XCG-14 by applying his knowledge of hydrodynamics to maximize the aerodynamic properties of the wing,” writes James Mrazek in his book “Fighting Gliders of World War II.” “The result was a surprisingly good glider. A high-wing monoplane with no consoles, with a wing aspect ratio that had never been seen before.”
This glider could reach speeds of up to 320 km/h. But aviation progressed faster than competitions and approvals. Therefore, the XCG-14 project, despite all its recognized advantages, was scrapped. It ended with the Chief of Staff of the US Air Force declaring that “all existing types of gliders are considered obsolete because they wear out quickly and are inflexible in the sense that they can only be used as gliders.”
This was the beginning of the post-war glider program, which postulated that the glider should be such that it would be possible to install an engine and turn it into an airplane. All this corresponded to Stroukoff’s ideas. He was convinced that a good airplane should be, first and foremost, a good glider.
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This will be the secret of the success of the military transport aircraft he developed. But this will happen years later. In the meantime, the former cavalryman and civil engineer moves to Trenton, New Jersey, and throws himself headlong into developing a new glider.
One of his associates was Mikhail Grigorashvili, who also emigrated after the revolution, but had much more experience in aircraft construction than Stroukoff. Back in the years of the First World War, he developed propellers for combat airplanes. In 1921, he moved to the United States and immediately became an aircraft designer. He made his own commercial biplane and worked in Canada. Grigorashvili worked for the company of Alexander Seversky (we wrote about him in the series “Creators”). And in 1944, he moved to New Jersey, took the position of chief designer at Chase Aircraft and worked there almost until his death.
In the spring of 1945, the company presented the American military with the designs of two new gliders, no longer wooden, but metal. One was smaller, the XCG-18A, capable of taking 8 thousand pounds (3,629 kg) of cargo. The other, the XCG-20, had twice the load capacity – 16 thousand pounds (7,257 kg). Both were developments of the XCG-14 design, but not only it.
Air Force Glider Division engineer Lew Stow was very impressed by one of the competing Laister-Kauffman XCG-10A designs. What he liked most was the wide rear ramp for quick unloading and transportation of large equipment. And it was on his initiative that Stroukoff used this design element in his new models. As a result, a hydraulic ramp appeared, which later became a distinctive feature of military transports.
In January 1946, Chase Aircraft received a contract for the production of the XCG-18A. It was similar to the XCG-14A. It had an all-metal fuselage with a steel frame covered with lightweight sheet aluminum. Other features were a tricycle landing gear and a retractable nose wheel.
And then came December 19, 1947 – the first test flight from the Mercer airfield. Now it is Trenton-Mercer – one of the main airports in the state of New Jersey. On the runway stood a never-before-seen CG-18A, the first metal creation of aircraft designer Michael Stroukoff. He called it Avitruc, – e.g. air truck.
“This is the first all-metal glider built in our country, and probably the largest glider in the world,” the New York Times journalist marveled. The craft could hold 32 fully equipped soldiers, or 4 tons of cargo, or a 1.5-ton truck. The fuselage was 17 meters long, with a wingspan of 26 meters. And the wing was also extremely thin.
Stroukoff himself explained to those gathered that this allowed for greater speed than most gliders could achieve. At the same time, the craft had a low stall speed, meaning it could land on a relatively short runway.
Michael Stroukoff walked into the co-pilot’s seat. His subordinate, project engineer William F. Sauers, who had served as a test pilot during the war, sat in the commander’s seat. The glider took off into the sky, towed by a twin-engine Curtiss C-46 Commando military transport.
“Army and Air Force officers who witnessed the flight said they were ‘astonished’ by the glider’s stability and maneuverability. Col. Fred R. Dent, chief of the Army Materiel Command’s Equipment Laboratory, said he was pleased with the demonstration,” the New York Times wrote.
The impressed military ordered several XCG-18A test units and the yet-to-be-built XCG-20. But the concept changed again, and the Air Force decided it didn’t need gliders.
“The designer, Mr. Stroukoff, demonstrated his axiom that for a flying machine to be successful, an airplane must first be a good glider, and added two Wright R-1850 engines,” James Mrazek wrote.
So the glider became an airplane — the Chase YC-122 Avitruc. Only 18 were built, all for the needs of the American army. But soon the military decided that such a transport aircraft was too small for them.
Then it was the turn of the XCG-20. The glider was built, although it was never tested due to lack of need. This remarkable engineering structure even had an auxiliary power unit, which provided the ramp opening and flap control. The metal cabin was reinforced to protect the pilots in case of an emergency landing. The glider turned out to be super-modern, but at the same time morally obsolete.
At the end of 1949, Stroukoff equipped it with two R-2800 Double Wasp piston engines from Pratt & Whitney, each with a capacity of 2,500 horsepower. This is how the XC-123 appeared, the first modification of the future famous C-123 Provider.
XC-123.
And only in 1950, the second copy of the XCG-20 was finally tested. Thus, it became the largest glider in history. And this was not the last record of this device. In 1951, it was equipped with a pair of twin J-47 jet engines, the same ones that powered the Boeing B-47 Stratojet bomber.
The plane, called the XC-123A, turned out to be interesting and performed well in tests. It took off from short and poorly prepared runways. But its main drawback immediately became apparent: the turbojet engines sucked in debris. So the aircraft did not go into production, but it became the first turbojet transport aircraft in American history.
The “Mad Russian” and American Business
“The field is too flat to show what my planes are really capable of,” Michael Stroukoff immodestly declared, if we are to believe an admiring article in Popular Science magazine in 1952.
The correspondent attended joint maneuvers of the Air Force and the Army, where several C-123As also demonstrated their capabilities. And he came back deeply impressed by what he saw. The place where the experimental aircraft landed could only be called a “runway” with a stretch. Just a piece of flat land cleared of trees.
The plane landed, the soldiers poured out, the medics carried stretchers with the simulated wounded inside, secured them, and the C-123A took off. The entire operation took 8 minutes. The new transport could hold a howitzer with a tractor, or 5 jeeps, or 60 soldiers, or 56 wounded. Three doors allowed for complete unloading in 3 minutes.
And this machine could land in a corn field or rice plot. Adjustable flaps and reverse were provided for quick braking. Auxiliary turbojet engines helped to increase thrust – this idea would later be developed and allow Strukov’s plane to become the main workhorse of the Vietnam War. In general, the result was an aircraft that occupied a niche never seen before.
“This is a new type of machine that can fill the gap between fast air transport miles from the front lines and a front-line truck,” Popular Science wrote. And he tried to find a new name: “assault transport” or “motorized glider.”
Indeed, the new aircraft was supposed to play part of the same role as the assault gliders of World War II. Only with the ability to take off and be used multiple times. The new approach had its supporters in the US Air Force. For example, General Elwood Richard Quesada.
In 1951, the general was preparing to retire, and Michael Stroukoff offered him the position of president of Chase Aircraft, not hiding his lobbying plans at all. The former Russian nobleman planned to make another Air Force general, George Churchill Kenney, the chairman of the board. For America at that time, negotiations with military leaders who had not yet retired looked quite scandalous. But Stroukoff did not really understand the local rules of doing business.
His main problem was that, despite having an excellent aircraft, he had no experience in fulfilling military orders. In fact, Chase Aircraft could boast of almost no production experience. Five pre-production machines were made. And there was talk of receiving an order for another 300. But the army leadership doubted whether it was possible to entrust this important mission to the small firm of a strange and hot-tempered immigrant.
At that time, Michael Stroukoff was nicknamed “Mad Russian”. This does not mean that he had a completely crazy character. It’s just that in the post-war years, the eponymous character of the comedian Bert Gordon was popular in American culture, who boiled, scandalized and spoke with a grotesque Russian accent. Nevertheless, the immigrant businessman behaved in a very unconventional way.
“Another reason for hesitating may have been indications of poor relationships among Chase’s top managers, especially between Mike “The Mad Russian” Stroukoff, the company’s colorful founder, chairman of the board, and president, and its vice president John F. Ryan” wrote Elliott W. Converse in Rearming for the Cold War.
Thus, one of the American generals left memories of how Ryan complained about his boss in the spring of 1951. “Stroukoff constantly refused to take advice from his people,” lamented the vice president of Chase. And he even said that the head of the company had not spoken to him, his deputy, for several months.
Mikhail Strukov proposed the following plan to General Kenneth Bonner Wolfe, who was responsible for logistics at the Air Force headquarters. Kenney would become the chairman of the board, Quesada would become the president, and Strukov himself would be content with the position of chief engineer. The order would begin to be fulfilled in Trenton, and in the meantime, with the support of the army, production would be launched at a rented plant in Alabama.
But the Air Force headquarters recommended against accepting this proposal. “[w]e cannot afford to experiment with a producer whose record of accomplishment, from an economic standpoint is poor.” wrote one of the specialists subordinate to Wolfe. And the transfer of two active generals to an Air Force supplier company threatened scandal and accusations of corruption.
Instead, in May 1951, the military offered the immigrant designer another option – to involve big business in the case, represented by industrialist Henry Kaiser. He had just recently acquired a large Ford aircraft assembly complex, Willow Run, in Michigan. And the Air Force headquarters came up with a scheme under which Kaiser would buy 49% of Chase shares and become the company’s president. And then the Air Force would issue an order to Chase.
Strukov was forced to agree, but the decision turned out to be unsuccessful and almost buried the promising aircraft. The fact is that another aircraft was being manufactured at Willow Run – the C-119, which was extremely profitable for Kaiser’s company. So profitable that in 1953 everything ended in an investigation and a huge scandal. It turned out that Willow Run received several times more for each C-119 than the competing company Fairchild, which produced the same machines.
Is it any wonder that Henry Kaiser was in no hurry to build Stroukoff’s competing aircraft. As the aircraft designer’s son, also named Mikhail, explained on an amateur forum in 2006, 8 sets of Stroukoff’s aircraft bodies were even brought to the plant in Michigan, but the aircraft were never assembled.
Of course, the hot-tempered inventor could not stand this. When the scandal broke out, Stroukoff offered Kaiser either to sell 49% of Chase shares or to buy him, Stroukoff, 51%. The industrialist preferred to buy, and the emigrant founded his own company, Stroukoff Aircraft.
The army order was given to Fairchild, the one that produced the C-119 at a normal price without multiple markups. And it was there that Stroukoff’s plane found real fame, although the inventor himself no longer had a direct relationship with the plane. The new manufacturer changed the shape of the vertical stabilizer and made a truly mass-produced plane, the C-123B Provider.
Fairchild C-123K Provider “Thunder pig”
A total of more than 300 of these machines were produced. At some point, a turbojet was added to the piston aircraft engines in each wing, developing the idea outlined by Stroukoff. And this made the Provider an absolute hit, capable of using the shortest runways.
The main transport of the Vietnam War, it continued to serve until the late 1970s and in some countries into the 1980s. Stroukoff’s aircraft flew in the air forces of the United States, Cambodia, Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippines, South Korea, Brazil, Venezuela, El Salvador and Saudi Arabia. Several C-123s are still in good condition and are in the hands of vintage aviation enthusiasts.
Heavenly all-terrain vehicle
In 1953, Michael Stroukoff turned 70. And he tried to start all over again. Of course, not from scratch. He had a small production facility in Trenton, hundreds of employees who chose to stay with him (apparently, he was not such an unsociable boss), and numerous developments, patents, intellectual property. There was no order, but the inventor decided to find a special niche.
Stroukoff decided to bring the ability of his aircraft to take off and land from a poorly prepared and short strip to the limit. And to reduce the takeoff run to 150-300 meters (depending on the type of surface), which is unprecedentedly little for a large transport aircraft. To achieve this, the engineer’s design thought moved in two directions.
First, the aircraft had to land on any surface: on snow, on ice, in a sandy desert, in a swamp, on water. The concept was called Pantobase, which means “the one that can base everywhere”. The 123B Provider’s hull was sealed, and the chassis was supplemented with universal floats that could also serve as skis.
It was tested on various surfaces and received excellent results. A video of the 1955 tests on the Delaware River has been preserved.
Stroukoff YC-134
The second know-how of the deeply redesigned aircraft, which the designer called the Stroukoff YC-134, was the wing boundary layer control system. This breakthrough technology for that time combined a very complex flap design and a system of air channels in the wing connected to the engine.
With the help of these channels, the boundary layer of air was blown off the wing surface during landing, which prevented the aircraft from stalling when the speed decreased. This meant that the aircraft could land with a shorter takeoff run, on a much shorter section. Stroukoff patented his method in 1958
His aircraft became one of two experimental machines with a shortened takeoff and landing that were tested at NASA’s Ames Research Center. The second was the Lockheed NC-130B Hercules, which soon became NATO’s main transport aircraft and is still in use today.
These two machines are, in principle, similar. The same high-wing aircraft with a short takeoff run, the same loading ramp at the rear. But the Hercules was much more spacious, and this was the official requirement of the American army for the prospective transport aircraft.
Stroukoff Aircraft, despite the excellent results of the new aircraft, never received orders. Historians explain this in different ways. Some point directly to the lobbying capabilities of competitors. Aviation historian Bill Sweetman writes in the Smithsonian Institution’s Aerospace Journal that “the project fell victim to a budget crisis… and a lack of interest in things that were not supersonic or nuclear.”
Finally, piston aircraft were becoming a thing of the past. And the Hercules with its turboprop engines flew further and faster. Michael Stroukoff tried to sell his aircraft to other countries, but also failed.
It was 1957. The inventor was already 74 years old. He announced the closure of the company and also stopped flying as a pilot.
Michael Stroukoff returned to designing civil buildings. And he lived for another 16 years. In December 1973, the 90-year-old inventor fell ill at the opera and was taken to St. Francis Medical Center in Trenton, but could not be saved. Stroukoff left behind three children and seven grandchildren. The inventor is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, in the same grave with Larisa, whom he outlived by almost 30 years.
Inscription on the monument. On the left pedestal: “Michael 1883 – 1973”, on the right: “Larisa 1892 – 1946”.
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Text: NIKITA ARONOV
Sources
Fairchild C-123K Provider “Thunder pig”
Glider Legacy in the U.S. Air Force.
Popular Science, февраль, 1952.
Vadim R. Mikheev. Aircraft designer from Yekaterinoslav. — «Aviation and time», 1996, № 2 (rus).
Burt Rutan’s Ski-Gull and Other Would-Be Seaplanes.
NACA-NASA and Boundary Layer Control, Externally Blown Flap, and Upper Surface Blowing STOL Research.
The grave of Mikhail and Larisa Stroukoff..
Nikita Aronov 17.10.2024