I had the pleasure of working at the Ridley Park plant for 40 years as an Engineer, recently retired. I’ll tell you that in all 40 years, I never got tired of watching these birds go through their flight test. Whatever the customer and paint scheme, it constantly amazed me to see them in production and flight. My favorite had to be the MH-47’s for the 160th out of Fort Campbell; these were Chinooks on steroids! Now THEY were BADASS!!!
I've been in one of the beasts back in the late 1980's when I was in the TA's (Territorial Army (UK)). They're a great piece of kit. I love the sound they make, you can hear them miles away, if the wind is blowing in the right direction. I can't believe the British Army is phasing them out. I have no idea what they're going to use in it's place???
We just bought new ones. They may be phasing out what used to be the old Mk1 airframes (Under the modification program they became Mk2 then later Mk4). The older airframes are more time-consuming to maintain and are not quite the same quality as later models. These two, however, look like swamp Germans (Dutch) and not RAF. (D model nose, narrow fuel tanks but similar chaff and flare dispenser locations to the RAF). Glad you liked our Chinooks, they took me all over the world.
Siempre me he preguntado por qué el Chinook en los trenes de aterrizaje traseros tienen 2 ruedas simples mientras que los delanteros tienen 4 dobles ,he visto, imágenes de primitivos Chinook y estos sí tenían las 8 ruedas dobles en los 4 trenes de aterrizaje. También me pregunto ¿ por qué no se recogen los trenes de aterrizaje? Un saludo desde Sevilla, España y gracias. 👋
Imagine your out in a field training and two of them land and it turns out they're flying Field kitchens flying roach coach. Beats the hell out of MREs. And like they say an army travel's on its stomach.😊
