Long Island was fortunate in having some Russian émigré’s who escaped from the Bolshevik revolution.  They were Igor Sikorsky, Alexander deSeversky, Alexander Kartvelli, and Michael Gregor. 

                Mikhail Greegorashvili was born in Russian Georgia in 1888.  He was trained in the Russian Imperial technical schools.  This training provided him with the aviation engineering skills that he used later in life.  These schools also educated the talented Kartvelli, deSeversky, and Sikorsky. 

                With the fall of the Czarist rule and the Soviet takeover, these men immigrated to United States.  To Americanize his name, Mikhail Greegorashvili changed it to Michael Gregor.  As a recognized professional engineer, he was hired by the Brenner-Winkle Aircraft Company, Glendale, Queens, who built the popular “Bird” airplanes.  He was chief  engineer of that firm at the time Lindbergh was teaching his wife to fly a Bird biplane at the Aviation Country Club, Long Island.

                In 1931 he was recruited by deSeversky, of the new Seversky Aircraft Corporation, Farmingdale, Long Island.  Severky had a propensity to hire Russian immigrant engineers like Alexander Kartvelli.  From this start evolved the Republic P-47’s.

                The Canadian Car and Foundry Company, upon finishing a contract with the Grumman Aircraft Company to build 57 of their two seat FF-1 biplanes, 15 of which were used by the RCAF as the Goblin Mk.1’s and 40 that were used by the Spanish Republican Airforce.  After finishing this contract, CCFC decided to manufacture their own design and hired Gregor to be chief engineer.

                In the following photographs, you will see two of his airplane designs; the GR-1 and FDB-1.  The GR-1 was a two-place open cockpit training biplane.  The FDB-1 was a single-place fighter aircraft.  

The prototype FDB-1 is shown with its test pilot George Adye (l) and Michael Gregor (r)

FDB-1 pauses at Roosevelt Field, New York, during a lengthy cross country flight.  Gulf fuel truck is seen refueling the airplane.

Side view of the GR-1

A ¾ front view of the GR-1

         View of the cockpits and wing supports.  Notice the stout interplane strut.

GR-1 at Roosevelt Field, next to Hangar B.  Gregor rented the facility at the time,as the Gregor Aircraft Company.

Rear ¾ view.  Here you can see the upper Gull wing and the struts replacing landing

and flying wires.

In this photograph you can see the enclosed cockpit, which provides high visibility.

Also, the placement of the wheel when retracted.

The fuselage and tail surfaces awaiting the installation of the wings.  Here you can see landing gear extended and the indented well for the retracted wheel.  Also, the Gull

mounting for the upper wing and the lower wing attachment point.

Here is the operation of the landing and it’s mechanism, which is operated pneumatically.  The gear is retracted in a very compact configuration that looked like the gear on the Grumman F2F and F3F, but the only similarity was that they both folded into the space in the fuselage.

                Although this was a fine aircraft, its time was wrong.  The age of the biplane had given way to the dominance of the monoplane fighters.  Because of this, only one of these beautiful airplanes was built.

End  

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© 2009 The Long Island Early Fliers Club, P.O. Box 221, Bethpage, NY 11714-0221 • info@longislandearlyfliers.org