Chinook, the Early years...Big Pics
 

Found some old negatives I thought had gone many moons ago, these are not cleaned up and have been scanned by me, so quality is not that good, but the will give you an insight into the early years of the Chinook... Indeed the two metal bladers in the images where the only two Chinooks in RAF service at the time and were new to the OCU, that is how early these are...:ok:
Pilot in one of the ground shots in the cockpit and indeed the flying shot is C**** T***** and the folks at the rear are being shown round by the Boeing guys.


http://i536.photobucket.com/albums/f...inooks6ODI.jpg

http://i536.photobucket.com/albums/f...inooks5ODI.jpg

http://i536.photobucket.com/albums/f...hinooksODI.jpg

http://i536.photobucket.com/albums/f...inooks3ODI.jpg

http://i536.photobucket.com/albums/f...inooks2ODI.jpg

http://i536.photobucket.com/albums/f...inooks4ODI.jpg

http://i536.photobucket.com/albums/f...F/FG240OCU.jpg

http://i536.photobucket.com/albums/f.../RAF/_Odi1.jpg


http://i536.photobucket.com/albums/f.../RAF/_Odi2.jpg

Wow!




A Work-Platform Rover!

Lightweight no less, with helistart :)

You must have seen one of those before.

Spent quite a few dark evenings slipping off them! and then trying to degrease them....

But thanks for showing the pic. Oh, I remember those nice clean Chinnies too.

Great pics!

Haven't seen an RAF hanger that clean or free from clutter for a while!
I assume they were taken at ODI in 81?

Loved the haircuts and denims too!

No yellow vests or ear defenders in sight………they were the days………pardon? :rolleyes:

Great pics, thanks for posting:D

Great pics... Quite strange really in a way too seeing those unmodified basic aircraft... No one had any inkling of what was but a few months away... The Falklands War.. and all that was to mean for the newly born Chinook force... And how it was just a precursor for the many continuous years of operational battle hardened service to come.
Good to see CJ there too... He did his bit to help get it started on the right track too RIP.

CJ? RIP?? Are we talking Ch** Ta****

I wonder if those two went to the Falklands and were on the Atlantic Conveyor.

No. We collected chinooks at the time and some transferred over to 18 as their crews trained on them, but they were original OCU aircraft and stayed on the OCU.

Flirty Gerty and Firey Fred as they were known, named by sadly the late Arthur Mitchell, a true Gent.

Regrettably C T passed away a year after taking redundancy in the mid 90's. We worked on the Chinook MLU, just the sort of bloke you needed on that sort of project. RIP indeed.

I didn't know, I used to get on with him very well, such a shame he was one of the good un's :(

Same happened with Arthur, went within a year of leaving... Again I only learnt about it many years later, I wonder how many others I served with have gone on to pastures new :(

That is a shock, I was unaware that CJ had passed away. A true Gent liked and respected by all who knew him.:sad:

500N

FF serial number ZA672 was involved in the Hannover crash with the sad losses and FG serial number ZA673 was destroyed near Sangin in the summer of 2009 all escaped unhurt.

I believe these were the 3rd and 4th aircraft delivered to the RAF, ZA670 & 671 (the first 2) are still with us and will soon be seen as MK4s.

Thank you to all who answered my question. The only reason I asked was because I still remember the Falklands War on TV every night.

After Nutloose's reply, I googled ZA673 and saw that it was destroyed in Sangin. Glad all were OK. Sorry to hear about the other one.


Out of interest, is the famous BN the only one of the original's left ?

If you follow the link to the ZA page of this website, UK Serials and scroll down to ZA670 - 721 you can see what happened to all of our first 33 aircraft. By clicking on the 'i' at the end of each row you will get an explanation of the fate of the airframe. One third of the original delivery have been written off to various accidents or incidents.

The newer airframes can be found in the ZD and ZH pages.

Having followed the aforementioned link, do I see correctly that Bravo November is still alive and well and doing her duty? Is there any historical precedent that she might at least be allocated a "safe" home based OCU role? Would hate to see her lost after such a distinguished career. In a country really struggling to find Greatness of late, this is the kind of thing we really need to be protecting.

Thank you for the link.

Agree Coochycool, with all the comments about the lack of other aircraft kept from previous wars, it would be nice to see BN kept.

Yep, seem to remember first 2 went direct to Boscombe for trials and acceptance, when done they arrived Odiham, the first 2 at Odiham were FF and FG however.

Thought plans are BN will go to RAF museum, if it survives to retirement. Which one cannot see anytime soon.

SRENNAPS.... No need for A tabbard, after degreasing that hangar several times by opening a couple of 45 gallon drums of trichlorethylene and rolling them the length of the hangar, then using squeegees to sweep the contents down the hangar and into the drains, one can only assume they deemed a tabbard pointless as our life expectancy wasn't that great.

RetiredSHrigger, I was as shocked as you at the sad news, I never knew :(

If my memory serves me correctly, BN has been out to Afghanistan and is mentioned in one of the books to rise from there (Immediate Response _ Maj Mark Hammond?)