Bell UH-1 Huey: Vortex Slap, 151 TOW Hits and Rhodesia's Smuggled Cheetahs

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More than 16,000 Bell UH-1 Iroquois helicopters have been built since 1960. In the early 1950s the U.S. Army needed a medevac and utility aircraft to replace underpowered piston-engine helicopters, and in 1955 Bell won the contract for its Model 204. The XH-40 prototype flew in late 1956 with a 700 shaft horsepower Lycoming turboshaft, giving it far more power for its weight. Its first designation, HU-1, became the nickname Huey, which stuck even after the switch to UH-1, and Bell eventually cast "Huey" into the cockpit's anti-torque pedals. Its two-bladed semi-rigid rotor produces the famous thump through blade vortex slap, as each blade strikes the swirling air left by the one before it.

The Huey reached South Vietnam around March 1962. Troop-carrying slicks flew dust-off medevac missions, while gunships armed with machine guns, grenade launchers and rocket pods suppressed landing zones. More than 7,000 served in Vietnam; over 3,300 were destroyed, and more than 1,100 pilots and 1,200 crew members were killed. Bell stretched the cabin 41 inches into the UH-1D, carrying up to 15 people or six stretchers, and by 1966 the Lycoming T53-L-13 delivered 1,400 shaft horsepower. A Vulcan cannon mounted in the door proved too violent for the semi-monocoque airframe and was scrapped, but in the 1972 Easter Offensive, Hueys rushed into action with experimental TOW missiles hit with 151 of 162 fired. The Army retired its last UH-1 in late 2016, while the Air Force's twin-engine UH-1N still guards ICBM sites.

• The Air Force's 20th Special Operations Squadron, the Green Hornets, flew camouflaged Hueys on covert missions into Laos and Cambodia.
• The Navy's HAL-3 squadron, the Seawolves, flew armed Hueys over river patrol boats in the Mekong Delta.
• Argentina used Hueys in the 1982 Falklands War, and British forces captured several that now sit in UK museums.
• Agusta-Bell Hueys bought by Israel reached sanctioned Rhodesia through intermediaries, reportedly including a Singapore logging company, and flew as Cheetah gunships.
• The DEA flew Hueys against jungle drug labs in Operation Snowcap in the 1980s, and its FAST teams used contractor-operated Hueys in Afghanistan.