By 1962, a confidential Bell project culminated in the D-225 Iroquois Warrior concept. helicopters to fight Algerian rebels in the late 1950s, the Army paid close attention.
“Fixed-wing support just didn’t work in Vietnam.”Ĭonnor notes that when the French mounted weapons on U.S. “It would take 30 minutes or more to get effective Air Force close air support,” says Connor. Any functions other than that are purely an Air Force responsibility.’ ” The Army, conversely, viewed the Air Force as unwilling or unable to provide timely, specialized air support for flash firefights. Says Connor: “So the Air Force basically said to the Army, ‘You can have certain aircraft, but only as long as they’re the equivalent of flying jeeps or trucks. Providing close air support to ground troops was a traditional Air Force role. Interservice rivalry was part of the reason, says Roger Connor, curator of vertical flight at the National Air and Space Museum. “They could barely keep up with the troop transports they were supposed to protect.” “They couldn’t fly over 90 miles per hour,” says Folse. Though Huey gunship variants came equipped with side-door machine guns and rocket pods, the “UH” designation stood for “utility helicopter”-and all the inherent trade-offs. Two years later, a dedicated attack helicopter was on nobody’s assembly line.Īs the Vietnam War escalated, Bell Hueys were deploying in increasing numbers, mainly in transport and medevac roles. In 1962, the Howze Board, a Pentagon study group, recommended creation of an Air Cavalry Combat Brigade as well as development of new rotary-wing aircraft specific to the air mobility mission. “egg-beaters” inserted troops and arms into combat zones, and little whirlybirds evacuated the wounded. During the Korean War, piston-powered U.S. Army, mounted it on the landing skid of a two-seat copter, and nailed ground targets on a test range. In 1950, Bell engineers borrowed a bazooka from the U.S. In the early 1940s, practice bombs were heaved from hovering Sikorskys. Designed, built, and deployed to the battlefield in just over two years from that day, the Cobra at last gave the rotary-wing genre a combat game-changer, purpose-built for offense. Now among a skeleton staff in the design group that March, Folse took out a sheet of vellum paper and began rendering the sleek outlines of what would become the Bell AH-1 Cobra, the world’s first production attack helicopter. military helicopter in history-to development of the 206 JetRanger.
The youngest design engineer ever hired at Bell, Folse climbed the ladder in the 1950s, working on projects ranging from the “goldfish bowl” Model 47 light helicopter, for which he was a flight test engineer, to designing airframe components for the UH-1 “Huey”-the most-produced U.S. On his way out the door, Folse’s boss issued explicit instructions: “Forget what you’re working on. At Bell’s Hurst, Texas plant, an exodus was under way as dispirited engineers and executives started burning up accrued vacation time. In a Pentagon competition to develop an ambitious concept for an attack helicopter, Bell’s proposal had just lost out to Lockheed’s-a demoralizing beat-down from an airplane company that had never made a helicopter. Gloom pervaded Bell’s Preliminary Design Group. “My boss would be on vacation for two weeks.” What was on Mike Folse’s drawing board at Bell Helicopter that day in March 1965 was supposed to be a hovercraft.