Originally Posted by
BEagle
Yes, the piston-engined Whirlwind HAS. 7 in 1956. It was the Fleet Air Arm's first anti-submarine helicopter and carried but a single 'homing torpedo'.
It clattered along at a max IAS of about 95 knots - and had a range of only 290 nm at a stunning 75 knots.......
It also lacked the power to carry both the dipping sonar and the torpedo, and neither did the Wessex that succeeded it - the later Sea King and subsequent Merlin did. But all technologies have to start somewhere. For whatever reason, probably the ability to deploy a dipping sonar, the ASW Whirlwind displaced the ASW Gannet from RN carrier decks by the early sixties.
