Hel1 - i think you missed my point. In the 60s, the RAF only ever had a requirement for 15 Chinnook. It was not the late 70s that some cash was found to buy the 33 to meet a new BAOR task ... And then reluctantly. In other words, there simply was not a requirement for enough Uk built ac for our own services to sustain profitable production. Why would Australia and Canada then buy an overly expensive Belvedere 2 compared with the small number of more cost effective CH47s they would have found cheaper and more supportable. Had the RAF and the Army had the vision to want a lot more in the first place, then maybe a sustainable and cheaper product could have been made. Forget not that with the Defence budget as always under great pressure, all the money in that era was going on Polaris, TSR2 and the reequiping of BAOR with hundreds of tanks etc. You would have found very few voices supporting spending precious R&D money on a large helicopter...and thats in the military staffs, not the government.