At the age of 26, Pyotr Nesterov performed a maneuver in the air, which was considered impossible, and just a year later he died fighting in the First World War. Rambler tells about the personality of Nesterov and his path to aerobatics.
Childhood
Peter Nikolaevich Nesterov was born on February 15 (27), 1887 in Nizhny Novgorod. The father of the future aviation legend was the educator of the cadet corps Nikolai Fedorovich Nesterov. Little Petya hardly found his father: the officer died in 1890, when his son was three years old.
The family was noble, but there was no money left after the death of his father. Peter's mother, Margarita Viktorovna, moved with four children to the Nizhny Novgorod Widows House. At the age of 10, Nesterov entered the Nizhny Novgorod Cadet Corps – exactly where his father worked as a teacher at one time.
Studies
Nesterov finished his studies in 1904 and was enrolled in the Mikhailovsky Artillery School as one of the best graduates. At the age of 19, Peter passed the exams with excellent marks and was promoted to second lieutenant.
In 1909 he was sent to the Vladivostok Fortress Aeronautical Company. Nesterov several times ascended in a balloon and personally supplemented the rules for artillery fire from an aircraft.
Peter served as a clerk, a lieutenant, worked in a brigade. In 1912 he made his first flight in an airplane, and the next year he passed the exam for the rank of military pilot. In 1913 he was promoted to staff captain.
Work
Nesterov was not only a first-class pilot, but also had a deep knowledge of mechanics and mathematics, was engaged in design activities. For example, the pilot developed a project of an original aircraft without vertical tail, inspired by the rapid flight of birds.
In 1913, Nesterov developed a research design for a seven-cylinder engine. The aviator also wanted to design his own single-seat high-speed aircraft.
In addition, Nesterov was interested in the possibility of performing deep turns in the sky. The dream was to make a closed loop in the vertical plane. Nesterov knew that this was possible in theory, but no one was able to successfully perform the maneuver in real life. The “dead” loop was called because it worked only on paper – the pilots who tried to bring it to life did not survive, and the planes could not withstand the overloads.
Loop
In the early years of training as a military pilot, Peter wanted to embody the “loop” from the idea into reality. First, Nesterov proved the theoretical possibility of doing it.
“Air is a completely homogeneous medium in all directions. He will hold the plane in any position if it is properly controlled, ”Nesterov explained.
September 9 (August 27) 1913 in Kiev over the Syretsk field, Nesterov for the first time performed a “loop”, thus laying the foundation for aerobatics. The maneuver was carried out on a Nieuport-4 aircraft with a 70-liter Gnome engine.
Nesterov not only successfully completed the maneuver, but also approached its implementation in an original way. The pilot used the wing lift in both the horizontal and vertical planes. According to calculations, at the top point of the loop, the centrifugal force should have pressed Nesterov to the seat. Peter was so sure of the calculations that he did not even fasten himself to the chair.
The news of the stunt spread all over the newspapers. The French media said that for the first time a local pilot, Adolphe Pegu, made a “loop”. In May 1914, the Frenchman met with Nesterov and recognized his priority in performing the maneuver.
Death
Nesterov died on September 8 (August 26) 1914 during the First World War near the city of Zhovkva, Austria-Hungary. For the first time in the practice of military aviation, Nesterov used a ram. Peter flew into an enemy plane, which was conducting reconnaissance of the movement of Russian troops. The head captain was 27 years old.
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