![]() ![]() ![]() Its association with Vietnam in history and in pop culture assured its status as did its groundbreaking use by American Forces. The UH-1 Iroquois, called the "Huey," is the embodiment of the helicopter for people all over the world. Over 1,500 Alouette IIs were built through 1975, including license-built versions produced in the U.S. The SA-313 would go on to serve in 47 armed forces, earning distinction as the first helicopter equipped with anti-tank munitions (Nord S.11s). An Alouette II drew attention when it became the first helicopter to perform a mountain rescue, evacuating a stricken climber over 13,000 feet up in the Alps, and again in 1957 when it searched for the crew of a crashed Sikorsky S-58 on Mont Blanc (pictured above). It began setting records almost immediately, establishing a helicopter altitude record of 26,932 feet in June of that year. The resulting Alouette II flew in March 1955, becoming the first production jet-powered helicopter. To consolidate French backing and further boost performance, Sud paired another design (X.310G) with a single shaft turbine developed by Joseph Szydlowski, the founder of Turbomeca. While the Alouette prototype broke several helicopter speed and distance records, government support was lukewarm at best. In the early 1950s, French state-owned manufacturer, Sud Aviation, experimented with a variety of rotary wing designs including the SA 3120 Alouette light helicopter. Focke's helicopters proved vertical flight and auto-rotation concepts, and gained even more notoriety when German aviatrix, Hanna Reitsch (flying in the picture above), flew one indoors at the Deutschlandhalle sports stadium in Berlin in 1938. The first of two Fw-61s prototypes flew on 26 June 1936 with pilot, Ewald Rohlfs. A small propeller mounted in front of the radial was used for cooling only, not thrust. A 1935 government order allowed Focke to develop a full-scale prototype using the airframe of a training aircraft (Focke-Wulf's Fw-44) to mount rotors on tube steel outriggers on either side of the fuselage and to house a radial engine driving the rotors through gears and shafts.Įach rotor consisted of three articulated and tapered blades employing cyclic pitch, a core concept of helicopter control. He built a model in 1934 to explore a twin-rotor configuration with articulated rotor blades. ![]() Professor Henrich Focke started designing what would become the Fw-61 in 1932, using experience gained with autogyros from British maker, Cierva Autogiro. Germany made rapid progress in vertical flight in the 1930s with the design and construction of the Focke-Wulf FW-61, generally regarded as the first functional helicopter. ![]()
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