CH-47 Chinook: Guns-A-Go-Go, Bravo November and Water Drops on Fukushima

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The Boeing CH-47 Chinook came out of a late-1950s split in Army aviation between those who wanted a nimble troop carrier, which became the Huey, and those who wanted a flying crane for artillery and Pershing missiles. The Army rejected Vertol's V-107 as an awkward middle ground, though the Marines took it as the CH-46 Sea Knight, so Vertol scaled up to the Model 114, designated the CH-47A in 1962. Its tandem rotors spin in opposite directions and cancel each other's torque, so no tail rotor steals 15 to 20 percent of engine power, and the early Chinook reached about 170 knots, faster than contemporary utility and attack helicopters.

In Vietnam, heat and humidity cut its lift by more than 20 percent in the lowlands and up to 30 percent in the mountains, yet it slung artillery onto mountaintop firebases and recovered more than $3.6 billion in downed aircraft. Four heavily armed ACH-47A Guns-A-Go-Go gunships deployed in 1966; one crashed while taxiing and another shot off its own forward rotor blades when a cannon retention pin vibrated loose. In the 1982 Falklands War, an Exocet strike on the Atlantic Conveyor destroyed three of four British Chinooks, leaving Bravo November, which once carried 81 combat-loaded troops. In 2011 Japanese Chinooks dropped seawater on Fukushima's reactors with lead plates on the floor.

• Argentina also flew Chinooks in the Falklands, putting the type on both sides of the same war.
• Iran used Chinooks to land troops behind Iraqi lines in Operation Fath ol-Mobin in 1982 and still keeps part of its fleet flying under embargo.
• In Afghanistan's Hindu Kush, one Chinook could do the lift work of up to five Black Hawks, and the 2011 Extortion 17 shootdown killed 38.
• After Hurricane Andrew in 1992, Chinooks delivered 1.2 million pounds of supplies in Florida.
• India's ISRO uses Indian Air Force Chinooks to drop Pushpak space plane prototypes and Gaganyaan capsules, and the Army plans to fly the type beyond 2060.