Shy Torque.
There were stacks of things wrong with the Puma when it arrived.. Pilot’s angle of view, windscreen reflections, cockpit lighting plus a host of other things. The general opinion was that it wouldn’t last five years because of it’s fragility of construction compared with the Wessex.. After a series of incidents where the nose wheel retracted at 90 degrees there was serious consideration that the undercarriage should be locked down and isolated but despite this after 37 years they are still in service. The Anglo French Puma, Lynx, Gazelle deal meant that we had to have it, warts and all.
Even with the EU 225 you still have a fuselage which will fit into the back of a Nordatlas or a Wagon-Lis truck because that was a French Army requirement. The biggest mistake was made in about 1968 when Aerospatial were considering a five bladed head to cure the inherent 4R then some GOON invented the barbeque plate, an Achilles heel that has remained throughout the 330 and 332 until the 225.
As far as I can remember I was the first operational pilot to fly a Puma with plastic blades. I had retired from the RAF and was flying the J model for Bristow on my terminal leave. I wrote a very strong letter to Wg. Cdr. Harding, my old boss, pointing out they were globe movers as opposed to the metal blades we had with 1 hour BIM inspections. As a result of this a set of blades kipping in stores at Boscombe were sent to Odiham for trialing. The rest is history.
A 330C at 7000kgs can fly a Perf A take off profile eyes shut, but they don’t, so it doesn’t matter, because you need a prepared surface, i.e. a runway.
As you infer it is a requirement to have two fire bottles in civil life but it is primarily as a backup for one that does not work, not very often, and if the first bottle doesn’t put it out the second has little chance. Both engines on fire, forget it, nothings going to put that out. Overseas 332s have a gearbox bay fire warning but no extinguishers. At Crossmaglen after a downwind landing I had a very senior officer in the jump seat frantically gesticulating at the fire warnings lights which were both on. A wave of the hand failed to pacify him and it wasn’t until we crossed the sports field boundary outbound and they went out that he settled down.
Old Beefer
The Puma was heavily Sikorsky copied. Both the head and tail rotor. The autopilot was very a la S61 apart from magnetic breaks. The Super Frelon had the S64 rotor and transmission which is why the Frelon rotors go round the wrong way French style. The BIMs for the MR blades. The tail rotor blades had the same problems as Whirlwind and Wessex, delamination. Thats why they used to tap it with a shilling, sorry, 5p.
If the Wright brothers had built a Puma instead of their Flyer the Battle of Britain would have been fought with Pumas and Bolkows. They have both been in service that long.