British military helicopters

Bristol’s helicopter department designed the Sycamore around a single main rotor and a piston radial engine mounted low in the nose, under the glazed dome. The prototype Type 171 flew on 27 July 1947, and the type was the first British-designed helicopter to enter RAF service.

The Sycamore’s Leonides engine sits in the nose, and a long shaft carries its power up and back to the rotor above the cabin.

XL829 is a Sycamore HR.14 in the RAF search-and-rescue finish of silver below and royal blue above, with a white cheat line, Type D roundels and the serial on the tail boom.

The Dragonfly was the Sikorsky S-51 built under licence by Westland at Yeovil, with a British Alvis Leonides radial in place of the American Pratt & Whitney Wasp Junior. The first Westland machine flew on 5 October 1948, and 149 were built up to 1954. The Royal Navy took its first HR.1s in 1950, which made the Dragonfly the first British-built helicopter in military service.

The Dragonfly’s engine sits upright behind the cabin, under the rotor head, and drives the tail rotor through a long shaft down the boom; the pilot sits up front inside a fully glazed nose.

WH991 first flew on 4 February 1953 and joined HMS Illustrious soon afterwards, then served aboard HMS Centaur and at Lee-on-Solent and Eglinton in Northern Ireland.

The Skeeter began as the Cierva W.14, a small two-seat helicopter designed by the Cierva Autogiro Company. The first prototype flew at Eastleigh on 10 October 1948 with a 110 hp Jameson engine. When Cierva’s helicopter work passed to Saunders-Roe in January 1951, the Skeeter came with it, and the Isle of Wight firm spent the next few years curing its faults.

The Skeeter’s engine came from the de Havilland Gipsy Major family that powered the Tiger Moth, here mounted behind the cabin to turn a rotor instead of a propeller.

XL764 was delivered to Eastleigh in September 1958 and joined the Army Air Corps at Middle Wallop on 9 October.

Westland built the Whirlwind under licence from Sikorsky’s S-55. The first British-built machine flew in November 1953, and it served the Royal Navy and the RAF in a long run of marks, powered at first by the American Pratt & Whitney Wasp radial engine in the nose.

The Whirlwind’s turbine engine sits in the nose, so its single exhaust leaves through a port on the left side only.

XP299 is a Westland-built HAR.10 delivered to the RAF in 1962 and flown on search and rescue with No. 22 Squadron in the overall yellow scheme, with “RAF RESCUE” on the nose and a red-and-white rescue badge on each cabin side.

The Wasp grew out of the Saunders-Roe P.531, a small turbine helicopter developed from the Skeeter that first flew on 20 July 1958. Westland took over Saunders-Roe in 1959 and developed the design two ways: as the Scout for the Army and as the Wasp for the Royal Navy. The first pre-production Wasps flew on 28 October 1962.

On 25 April 1982 Wasps from HMS Endurance and HMS Plymouth attacked the Argentine submarine Santa Fe off South Georgia with AS.12 missiles, helping to put it out of action.

XS567 was delivered to the Royal Navy in June 1964 and flew with 829 Naval Air Squadron’s ship’s flights, first in HMS Gurkha and then in HMS Apollo, with which it took part in the first Armilla patrol in the Gulf in 1981.

The Puma was designed by Sud Aviation in the early 1960s to give the French Army a medium transport helicopter that could carry a section of troops in any weather. Two Turbomeca Turmo turboshafts sat side by side on the cabin roof, driving a four-bladed main rotor, with the tail rotor on the starboard side of the boom and the main wheels retracting into sponsons on the cabin sides. The prototype SA 330 first flew on 15 April 1965.

The Puma came to the RAF through the 1967 Anglo-French helicopter agreement, the same deal that produced the Gazelle and the Westland Lynx.

XW222 was one of the RAF’s 48 Westland-assembled Puma HC.1s, delivered in the early 1970s.

Sud Aviation designed the Gazelle in the mid-1960s to replace its piston-engined Alouette II, using a Turbomeca Astazou turboshaft, a streamlined fuselage with a large glazed cabin and a three-bladed main rotor. The first prototype, the SA 340, flew on 7 April 1967 with a conventional tail rotor borrowed from the Alouette II. In 1968 the second prototype was given the feature that made the type famous: a fenestron, a small many-bladed fan turning inside a duct in the fin.

The Gazelle was the first helicopter to fly with a fenestron, a tail rotor of thirteen blades spinning inside a duct in the fin, which is safer for people on the ground and quieter than an open rotor.

XW855 was built by Westland as a Gazelle HT.3 and issued to the RAF on 31 July 1973, flying to Ternhill that August to train helicopter pilots with the Central Flying School.

The Sea King began as the Sikorsky S-61, a twin-turbine anti-submarine helicopter for the US Navy that first flew on 11 March 1959 as the SH-3. It had a watertight boat hull with stabilising sponsons, so that it could alight on the sea, and a five-blade rotor driven by two engines mounted side by side above the cabin. Westland took a licence and re-engined it with Rolls-Royce Gnome turboshafts, added British sonar and avionics, and flew the first Sea King HAS.1 at Yeovil on 7 May 1969.

Prince William flew Sea King HAR.3s as a search and rescue pilot with C Flight, No. 22 Squadron, at RAF Valley on Anglesey from 2010 to 2013.

XZ585 was the first Sea King built for the RAF and flew for the first time on 6 September 1977.

The Lynx was the British-designed member of the three helicopters that Britain and France agreed to develop together in 1967, alongside the Puma and the Gazelle. Westland drew it up as the WG.13, a fast twin-turbine utility helicopter with a semi-rigid main rotor hub machined from a single titanium forging, which made it unusually agile, and two Rolls-Royce Gem engines. Aérospatiale took a share of the production work.

On 11 August 1986 a modified Lynx, G-LYNX, flown by Westland test pilot Trevor Egginton, set a world speed record for helicopters of 249.1 mph (400.87 km/h) over Somerset. It still stands, and G-LYNX is now at The Helicopter Museum in Weston-super-Mare.

XZ720 was built at Yeovil as a HAS.2 and later brought up to HAS.3 standard.