Igor Sikorsky accompanied his father to Germany and through conversations with his father, became interested in natural sciences. After returning home, Sikorsky began to experiment with model flying machines, and by age 12, he had made a small rubber band-powered helicopter. Sikorsky began studying at the Saint Petersburg Maritime Cadet Corps, in 1903, at the age of 14. In 1906, he determined that his future lay in engineering, so he resigned from the academy, despite his satisfactory standing, and left the Russian Empire to study in Paris. He returned to the Russian Empire in 1907, enrolling at the Mechanical College of the
Sikorsky S-12 In September 1913 an S-12 became the first Russian aircraft to perform an inside loop at the Kolomyazhskiy hippodrome north of St. Petersburg. Later an S-12 set an altitude record of . During World War I and the Russian Revolution S-12s served with the Russian Air Force and some were still in service until 1922. Sikorsky S-12 The Sikorsky S-12 was a Russian single engine trainer aircraft completed in the spring of 1913 by the Russian Baltic Railroad Car Works while Igor Sikorsky was the chief engineer of the aircraft manufacturing division. The S-12 was a single seat mid-wing monoplane