June 19, 1910 (according to the new style) can be considered one of the birthdays of Russian aviation - then, a hundred years ago, an airplane first took off into the Russian sky, which was fully developed and built in Russia.
The device, which bore the name "Gakkel-III", was designed by 34-year-old hereditary engineer Yakov Modestovich Gakkel, a teacher at the St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, one of the founders of the Moscow tram and the builder of the first power line in Russia - at the Lena gold mines.
Like many talented engineers, Gakkel did not pass by the then fashionable hobby for aviation. In the spring of 1910, he built a workshop in Novaya Derevnya near the commandant's airfield near St. Petersburg, where he began work on his airplanes.
The first machine Gakkel - "Gakkel-I" - died without taking off, caught fire during the test of the engine. The second machine, "Gakkel-II", could not take off due to an unsuccessful design and was rebuilt into "Gakkel-III", which, as a result, made a successful first flight. This airplane did not make long flights because of an unreliable engine, but left its mark on aviation.
True, the honor of the first flight on a domestically-built apparatus is disputed by another Russian aircraft designer - a professor at the Kiev Polytechnic Institute, engineer Kudashev, about whose flight there was a note in the press: "On May 23, a test flight of the professor of the Polytechnic Institute, Prince Kudashev, took place on an airplane of his own design."
However, unlike Gakkel, Kudashev did not warn the official authorities about the flight and his success was not documented.
Yakov Gakkel continued to work on new aircraft: in 1910-12 he created successfully flying aircraft "Gakkel-IV", "Gakkel-V" (the first amphibious aircraft in Russia) and "Gakkel-VI" after a breakdown on tests, improved and restored under the index "Gakkel-VII". It was the only one of all the aircraft presented in the "First Military Competition for Aircraft Built in Russia" held by the Ministry of War, which withstood all the conditions of a complex program. The plane even took off and landed on a plowed field.
[center]
The Gakkel-VII became the most successful aircraft of Yakov Gakkel. In the course of the competition program, pilot Gleb Alekhnovich flew Petersburg - Gatchina five times in a row on September 23, 1911, covering a total of 200 km at an average speed of 92 km / h and on September 24 - a flight lasting three and a half hours in strong winds. Gakkel's plane was the only one of all the presented planes to fulfill the program of the competition. However, it was under this pretext that the Main Engineering Directorate considered the competition invalid and did not award the prize to Ya. M. Gakkel. The plane "Gakkel-VII" was purchased by the military department for 8 thousand rubles.
Obedient in control, with a very solid landing gear, "Gakkel-VII", as experts believed, could become a good training aircraft. However, the instructors of the Gatchina school, accustomed to French "farmers", did not begin to master the unfamiliar car. They even forgot to drain the water from the radiator, and on the very first frosty night the radiator was torn apart by ice. There was no new engine, and the plane was scrapped.
Happier was the fate of the second instance of "Gakkel-VII", built in early 1912. At the Second International Exhibition of Aeronautics in Moscow (March 25 - April 8, 1912), he received the Great Gold Medal of the Moscow Aeronautics Society. After the exhibition was closed, Gleb Alekhnovich performed flights on it. During the competition held in May 1912, Gleb Vasilyevich set the altitude record for biplanes on the "Gakkele-VII" - 1350 meters.
The lack of orders for the serial construction of aircraft forced Gakkel to move away from the active construction of new machines, although he continued to design new aircraft. Later, Yakov Gakkel became known as the creator of the first domestic diesel locomotive, built in Leningrad on August 5, 1924, and later his main work was connected with transport. Professor LIIZhT (former University of Railways) Yakov Mikhailovich Gakkel died in Leningrad on December 12, 1945.
