This month brings the 50th anniversary of the Boeing CH-47 Chinook's service entry - and it is entirely possible that the venerable tandem-rotor helicopter might serve with the US Army for another half-century.
The service initially signed the contract to develop the Chinook in 1959 with what was then Vertol, says Boeing business development director for mobility rotorcraft Mark Ballew. The first prototype flew two years later on 21 September 1961 - but by then, Boeing had purchased the Vertol Aircraft Corporation, the former 20-year veteran Chinook aviator says. Less than a year later, the army took delivery of its first aircraft on 16 August 1962.
"Believe it or not, that aircraft is still flying," Ballew says. "It's gone through multiple iterations from the A-model to the D-model."
Currently that aircraft is being remanufactured once again into the latest F-model configuration. "It just came back from Afghanistan, and it's going to go back to Afghanistan probably in the January timeframe," Ballew says.
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