Originally Posted by
MPN11
I think it proved its capabilities many times over. Age is just a number, and with Lynx they seemed to have got it right despite its 'vintage'. There' now't wrong with being old, you know!
I never wrote that it was "wrong", but pointed out that the aircraft's length of service was remarkable. Mind you, it took them a while to overcome certain "issues" with the type. In "Cold War" Germany the army used to go to great lengths to "cam up" their deployed, field parked Lynxes. Then when their Gem engines were started they produced so much blue oil smoke that everyone for miles around used to say "Ooh, look, there's a Lynx starting up!" ;-)
Similarly remarkable is the longevity of other UK military helicopters, such as the Wessex and the Puma. The old, dyed-in-the-wool, RAF Wessex crews said in 1971 that the newly introduced Puma, apparently being made almost totally from plastic, "Could never last long in RAF service". But they're still going, albeit in HC2 form, almost 46 years on. The Chinook will undoubtedly go on for aeons.