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Happy 60th Birthday to the Huey

This day 60 years ago on this day the Bell XH-40 flew for the first time and the rest is history,

cheers

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Crikey...... It's a year and a day younger than me!

I always liked this helicopter although I've never flown in one but what would a film about the Vietnam war be like without a "Huey" in it?

It just wouldn't seem realistic!
 
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one is kept not far from me
its a very distinctive sound and shape when it clatters past
not bad for something that started out as a commercial aircraft
 
I managed to blag a flight in one with USAAF around 1980 for the price of a slab of German beer. I was then treated to a display of low level flying down the Rhine. Memorable and great fun.
 
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Thread divergence, please excuse.
I went to ZHills Florida in 79,80, 81
There were 3 x DC's flying on the airfield for skydiving. ( the rest had been impounded for flying cocaine from Columbia, Panama etc )

Just behind the cockpit, there was a plaque stating the individual aircrafts wartime pedigree.
40 Tango and Mr Douglas were both veterans of D Day + all the rest of the grind they went through.
And they were over 40 years old as we were using them then.
This is the same aircraft, not the design.
 
I always had a fondness for these . Loved the fact the engine can me switched off , then it can be made to hover and turn around with remaining inertia in the blades .
 
I only had a cabby in one once during exercise in BAOR. I was picked to play a casualty and me plus stretcher were loaded on to the floor of the Huey parallel to the door and canvas bench. The yanks took off and immediately banked to port causing the stretcher, and me, to slide towards the open door. That was the first time I demonstrated my 'reflexes of a scalded cat' routine, the bastards.
 
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