I know it's now ancient history, but there's a great deal of error in people's view of our SH procurement history since 1978.... Blackhawk never won any assessment despite it's popularity, and in the competition that ended in the Merlin 3 buy of 1995 it was directly against the CH47 and nothing else. A part buy of 22 Merlins was politically directed. They were not fitted with folding tails and heads as in the early nineties they were being procured for overland ops primarily, and the extra weight of the folding mods precluded the ac being able to lift the maximum trrops stated as essential in the spec.... But then what do I know.
