AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 100 / 123

Plate 100 of 123 · Cold War · Utility helicopter

Bell UH-1H Iroquois

UH-1H, painted as 72-21605, a Bell UH-1H Iroquois of the United States Army: the stretched, Lycoming T53-L-13 powered utility version of the ‘Huey’, a single-engined helicopter with a two-blade teetering main rotor and stabiliser bar, a two-blade tail rotor on the left of the fin, a synchronised elevator on the tail boom, large sliding cabin doors and skid landing gear; ordered in the Army's 1972 fiscal year and displayed in the American Air Museum at IWM Duxford; painted as it is shown there: faded olive drab overall with ‘UNITED STATES ARMY’ along the tail boom and the serial ‘0-21605’ on the fin in faded blue-grey, green-tinted roof windows, dark grey main rotor blades and light grey tail-rotor blades, with empty door-gun mounts at both cabin doors; no national star is painted because none shows in any photograph, the main rotor is parked as photographed from 2017, and the starboard fin serial is assumed to match the port.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as 72-21605, a Bell UH-1H Iroquois of the United States Army: the stretched, Lycoming T53-L-13 powered utility version of the ‘Huey’, a single-engined helicopter with a two-blade teetering main rotor and stabiliser bar, a two-blade tail rotor on the left of the fin, a synchronised elevator on the tail boom, large sliding cabin doors and skid landing gear; ordered in the Army's 1972 fiscal year and displayed in the American Air Museum at IWM Duxford; painted as it is shown there: faded olive drab overall with ‘UNITED STATES ARMY’ along the tail boom and the serial ‘0-21605’ on the fin in faded blue-grey, green-tinted roof windows, dark grey main rotor blades and light grey tail-rotor blades, with empty door-gun mounts at both cabin doors; no national star is painted because none shows in any photograph, the main rotor is parked as photographed from 2017, and the starboard fin serial is assumed to match the port. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (762 KB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (); engine, crew and dimensions are for the UH-1H modelled here.

History

The UH-1H Huey

In 1955 the United States Army asked for a helicopter to carry casualties, troops and supplies, and Bell won with its Model 204, one of the first helicopters designed around a gas turbine. The Lycoming T53 sat on the cabin roof behind the rotor mast, leaving the cabin clear, and the two-blade rotor with its stabiliser bar was a development of Bell’s piston-engined designs. The first prototype, the XH-40, flew at Fort Worth on 20 October 1956, and the Army took the HU-1A into service in 1959.

The Army named it Iroquois, but its designation gave it the nickname that stuck. In 1962 the services’ designations were merged and the HU-1 became the UH-1. Bell stretched the cabin to seat a squad of troops in the Model 205, the UH-1D of 1961, and the UH-1H of 1967 was the same airframe with the more powerful T53-L-13. The H became the most numerous version of all.

The Huey carried the Army’s new airmobile tactics in Vietnam, where some 7,000 of them flew troops into landing zones, brought out the wounded and, as gunships, gave fire support. More than 16,000 were built, many under licence in Italy, Germany, Japan and Taiwan, and they served with dozens of air forces. The US Army retired its last UH-1H in 2016, but Hueys are still flying around the world.

This airframe

UH-1H 72-21605

72-21605The airframe modelled

72-21605 is a UH-1H ordered in the US Army’s 1972 fiscal year, and it is displayed in the American Air Museum at IWM Duxford. The model shows it as photographed there: faded olive drab overall, “UNITED STATES ARMY” along the tail boom and the serial “0-21605” on the fin in faded blue-grey, green-tinted roof windows, dark grey main rotor blades, light grey tail-rotor blades and empty door-gun mounts at both cabin doors. No photograph shows a national star, so none is painted. The parked position of the main rotor has changed over the years; the model follows photographs from 2017 onwards. No photograph shows the starboard fin, so its serial is assumed to match the port side.

See it at IWM Duxford

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the UH-1H Huey in 3 UK collections. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 123 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.