Originally Posted by
check
Geoff, just checked my logbook and found that G-AZYB was the first Bell 47 I flew after leaving the Army, .......... I can't remember which but one of them was a D model with wooden blades, got jack stall avoiding a low flying fighter and needed both hands on the cyclic to recover
YB was actually an H1, the others were G2's, and after it was written off in an accident was restored as OO-SHW and is in the Helicopter Museum in Weston-Super-Mare. The D-1 I flew in '69 (G-ASJW - the Air Britain photo of it in December 1969 at Plymouth Roborough matches my logbook)) was a pig if the irreversibles were not set up perfectly and the feedback forces in the cyclic could be horrendous if you moved the cyclic sharply - much as I expect you felt in avoiding the low flying jet.
I came close to stoofing JW in on one occasion because of the feedback forces experienced when mishandling the cyclic in a steep turn and sadly John Zwozny (ex-RN) was killed in JW in 1971 due to the irreversibles not being set up right. He pulled up at the end of a spray run and never came out of the manoeuvre.