RAF Chinook in 1967

[uk 75]

Does anyone have any brchure or picture material or info about the RAF Chinook
order which made and then cancelled in 1967. Flight Archive mentions that it involved
the B version. Sikorsky offered the CH53 for the same requirement. Any info on this offer
or better yet any visual record. The Germans ordered this aircraft.

 

[alertken]

The Piaseki/Vertol/Boeing line of bananas did rather better than Bristol's attempt to shunt 2 Sycamores into T.173/T.191-3. 26xT.192 were lumbered on RAF as an inducement to somebody to buy Bristol Helicopter Co., which Westland dutifully did 23/3/60. They asap shut it down, took a Vertol V.107 licence in 1961, and schemed WG.1 (military)/WG.11 (civil). Pyrotechnic Belvederes gravitated to 66 Sqdn/Seletar (FEAF had long been palmed off with kit no sane User wanted - see Buffalo, 1941). Replacement was funded 1967 as 15xCH-47B off-the-shelf on credit (like the F-4K/M, C-130K, F-111K package), to be delivered as shells to Yeovil for completion to UK standard (see C-130K/Marshall's). But scarcely had the order been made than Cabinet decided UK should cease subsidising rich S.Asians and announced withdrawal from East of Suez. 16/1/68 cancellations included F-111K and CH-47B. Those Belvederes that had not spontaneously combusted were withdrawn 20/3/69 and mostly junked at Seletar. Incomprehensibly 2 are in UK museums as dreadful warnings against hubris. The type should have been expunged from history.

RAF had first tried to buy Chinook in 1965 but had Puma imposed; tried again in 1978, ordering 33 CH-47C, which survived later Defence Reviews.

 

[fightingirish]

A Chinook powered by 4 Gnome engines.


Source: Flying Review, page 3, September 1963