- Over the past 98 years, 1000’s of sorts of helicopters have taken to the skies.
- Unlike fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters sometimes emphasize lift over aerodynamics, making for some truly odd looking choppers.
- Tail rotors, wispy fundamental rotors, and enormous bulging canopies also give helicopters a vaguely insectoid look.
Helicopters are weird. Unlike fixed-wing airplanes that coax lift from the nearby air, nudging themselves into the sky, helicopters use their rotors to practically beat the air into submission, clawing their way skyward. Military helicopters, with their chin-mounted autocannons, missile rails, and bulging bellies to carry combat-ready troops, often look much more weird. Listed here are five of the strangest military helicopters that ever flew.
Mil-12 “Homer”
The Mil-12 helicopter, generally known as “Homer” to NATO, was the biggest helicopter that ever flew. The Mil was built for the Soviet Union’s Strategic Rocket Forces branch, and was designed to lift long-range ballistic missiles to mobile launch vehicles in distant regions. The dimensions of the missiles dictate the dimensions of the helicopter, and the result was a really mammoth helicopter.
The Mil-12 was 114 feet long—almost so long as a Boeing 737—with a wingspan 219 feet wide. This made it one in all the few aircraft in history, helicopter or otherwise, that was wider than it was long. The Mil featured two pairs of rotors in a tandem, side-by-side configuration, driven by 4 4 Soloviev D-25VF turboshaft engines, probably the most engines ever included in a helicopter. This allowed a prototype to lift as much as 88,636 kilos to an altitude of seven,398 feet; alternatively, the Mil-12 could carry as much as 160 troops. The aircraft never went into production because the Soviet Union modified its missile basing system, rendering the aircraft unnecessary.
Gyrodyne QH-50 DASH
The mode of warfare that helicopters have impacted most is anti-submarine warfare. Within the Fifties, the growing Russian submarine fleet promised a 3rd Battle of the Atlantic if World War III were to interrupt out. Helicopters, able to being launched into escort ships, can quickly reply to potential submarine contacts without the ship breaking formation in an ocean-going supply convoy. Helicopters can doggedly pursue submarines, hounding them and forcing them away from their intended prey.
In 1960, the U.S. Navy tested the primary Gyrodyne QH-50 Drone Anti-Submarine Helicopter (DASH). The unmanned helicopter used contra-rotating propellers, or two fundamental propellers that turned in opposite directions, to attain lift and stability. DASH, deployed on older destroyers to beef up their anti-submarine capability, could quickly, well, dash to the reported location of an enemy submarine, and drop a number of Mk.-44 anti-submarine homing torpedoes. The QH-50 could also carry the Mk.-57 nuclear depth bomb with an explosive yield between 5 and 20 kilotons, or 5,000 to twenty,000 tons of TNT.
Mil Mi-24 Gorbach (“Hind”)
In March 1969, the armies of the People’s Republic of China and the us clashed twice, along a stretch of the distant Ussuri River each side claimed. The 2 countries, once allies, became bitter enemies, and after the clashes worked intensely to fortify their borders. The Soviet Union, which held a technological advantage, decided it needed a heavily armed, heavily armored helicopter able to carrying a squad of combat troops. The Mi-24 “Gorbach” (“Hunchback”) was born.
The Mi-24 was the Soviet Union’s first attack helicopter. Unlike American attack helicopters, the Hind could patrol a big chunk of territory, land and permit Soviet troops to maneuver on foot, after which provide close air support if needed. The earliest version, the Hind-A, could carry eight troops, a mixture of as much as 4 57-mm rocket pods or AT-2 “Swatter” anti-tank missiles, and mounted a 12.7-mm (.51 caliber) machine gun within the nose. Its two Isotov TV3-117 turboshaft engines, each providing as much as 2,200 shaft horsepower, were mounted high above the troop cabin, giving the helicopter its unique hunchback-like appearance.
Boeing Vertiol CH-21 Shawnee (“Flying Banana”)
Some helicopters appear like insects, others like birds. Twin-rotor helicopters, with one rotor at front and one within the rear, are inclined to have long, bent fuselages that make them appear like a selected tropical fruit. Although several other helicopters built since have resembled bananas, the CH-21 Shawnee was the unique “Flying Banana.”
The Shawnee was a heavy-lift helicopter, able to carrying as much as 20 troops, and was tested within the air-assault role by the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. Like all U.S. Army helicopters, it adopted the name of a native American tribe, the Shawnee, with the tribe’s blessing. The Flying Banana was in service for just 15 years, replaced within the mid-Nineteen Sixties by the vastly more capable CH-47 Chinook, which continues to be in service today.
Kamov Ka-27 Helix
Soviet-era warships were notoriously cramped, designed to hold more weapons on the expense of crew comfort. The united states’s destroyers and frigates, like their NATO counterparts, carried helicopters for anti-submarine warfare and provide transport, but its helicopters also needed to take care of cramped conditions. The Soviet Navy needed a helicopter that would fit on a tiny flight deck and right into a tiny hangar, and so the Kamov design bureau got here up with the Ka-27 Helix.
The Ka-27 looks like a gray mechanical bumblebee. It lacks a tail rotor to stabilize the helicopter, as an alternative using a pair of contra-rotating rotors just like the Gyrodyne QH-50. This makes for a shorter, more compact helicopter. The Ka-27, nicknamed “Helix” by NATO, typically carries sonobuoys to detect enemy submarines or homing torpedoes. It may possibly also carry as much as 16 troops.