was awarded the Order of St. George (4th class); Order of St. Vladimir (4th class); Order of St. Stanislaus (2nd & 3rd class); Order of St. Anne (2nd; 3rd; and 4th class). Emigration to United States During the 1917 Revolution, Seversky was stationed in St. Petersburg and remained in uniform at the request of the commander-in-chief of the Baltic Fleet. In March 1918, he was selected as an assistant naval attaché in the Russian Naval Aviation Mission to the United States. Seversky departed via Siberia and while in the U.S., decided to remain there rather than return to a Russia torn apart by the Revolution. Settling in Manhattan, he briefly operated a restaurant. Aviation career In 1918, Seversky offered his services to the War Department as a pilot. General William Kenly, Chief of the Signal Corps, appointed him as a consulting engineer and test pilot assigned to the Buffalo District of aircraft production. After the Armistice, Seversky became an assistant to air power advocate General Billy Mitchell, aiding him in his push to prove air power's ability to sink battleships. Seversky applied for and received the first patent for air-to-air refueling in 1921. Over the next few years, 364 patent claims were made, among them the first gyroscopically stabilized bombsight, which Seversky developed with Sperry Gyroscope Company in 1923. After joining the Army Air Corps Reserve, Seversky was commissioned a major in 1928. Seversky Aircraft Corporation Using the $50,000 from the sale of his bombsight to the U. S. Government, Seversky founded the Seversky Aero Corporation in 1923. Concentrating on making aircraft parts and instruments, the small company was unable to survive the stock market crash of 1929. On February 16, 1931, with the backing of Wall Street millionaire Edward Moore and other investors, he resurrected the enterprise as the new Seversky Aircraft Corporation in Long Island, New York. Moving into the former EDO Aircraft Corporation's float plane factory at College Point, Long Island, Seversky's patents were the primary assets of the new company. Resolved to invest in research and design rather than relying on licence-manufacturing, many of Seversky Aircraft's designers were Russian and Georgian engineers, including Chief Engineer Michael Gregor and Alexander Kartveli. Along with Seversky, the designers embarked on an advanced all-metal, multi-place monoplane amphibian, the SEV-3. This ground-breaking design would go on to set numerous speed records at the 1933–1939 National Air Races, often piloted by Seversky