Robert M Stanley
He was Bell Aircraft's chief test pilot at the time. Bell's small helicopter design and development team was located at an offsite facility in Gardenville, New York at the time. The Bell Model 30 had just been hovered the month before in tethered testing, first by its inventor, Arthur Young (a non-pilot) and then young Floyd Carlson, a Bell test pilot. Stanley tried to fly it in January 1943. As you can see, it is still tethered but not tightly enough. After Stanley's rough introduction to helicopters, he left further helicopter testing to Carlson.
Last edited by Tailspin Turtle; 11th March 2010 at 23:18.