It’s interesting to compare these long lived airframes with older designs. The Puma is now the Mk2 version, after 50 years. The Spitfire was only in RAF service for some 17 years and yet the final version was the Mk24!

Although the Puma had some rather awkward limitations and nasty vices, Aerospatiale did alright with it, by my reckoning after over 2500 hours on them.

Was on No 4 Puma course (the first batch of aircrew for 230 Sqn), and ended up with 3000 hrs. Not many problems other than a blown hydraulic jack at night so ended up with only two wheels down and no AP. Oh, and half a tail rotor blade that came unstuck in the middle of Belize.

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....d11f8241f.jpeg
Did we larf!! £100 and loss of seniority, as I remember. Mog

A bit late in the day to put the intake blanks in :E

Ahh tail strikes.... One I remember was night flying at Upavon when they stuffed it in with a young WAAF in the centre seat.... after a couple of rotations it stopped and she didn't realise that they had been in an accident despite seeing the hangar...hangar...hangar... whizzing past, the crewman checked the tail rotor blades with his torch and it was initially looking good as the blade was intact where he started , but they got decidedly worse as he went around them all, then the give away was the hump in the transmission covers where the drive shaft had decided enough was enough..

The other was a certain Hyphenated Wing Commander, he of toppling Wessex fame i believe, who having stuffed the skid in at Odi on his Puma course more or less accused the Rigger on his turnround of missing the skid hanging off, as well as his crew assumedly on their preflight etc, it then followed some poor beggar having to drive all over the airfield looking for the tell tale sign of a strike!



..

That sorry looking Puma is XW214. When the blades clipped the door gantry it turned over and after the blades had disintegrated the head started winding up the gannet wire surrounding the hangar. One of the blade weights went across the pan, through a thin brick wall and carved a groove along the desk of the occupant. Just before it had gone to NI Airfix used it as a model for a 1/72 kit. When the kit was ready we were asked to collect the first (gratis) kits at Battersea and fly them in XW214. We then had to break the news that yet another of their kit sources had suffered an accident.
We flew them, anyway.

When we first got our Pumas in 1971 they were not equipped with 'stings'. After 230 were equipped we then started getting Pumas in the 231 range. They were fitted with the stings so we waited for them to be retrofitted to our earlier examples. No way; was the official line, they are going to stay like that.. Then XW219 had this discussion with the the ground in Stamford PTA.

Two weeks later they were all fitted.

Ahem " Vortex Ring" 1975 in South Armagh Mike Trace and George Blackie IIRC. I helped with the BOI supplying the internal imagery aspects.

Walking out for a ride in a 230 Sqn Puma to one of the Gütersloh out stations I say a techie walking away with a toolbag in his hand. I recognized him as a someone who had previously sat before me in one of my classes in Halton on my previous tour. As I recall, he was not the best student in the class but those who came after me must have done a good job because it stayed in the sky. I suppose the moral is, it doesn't matter how far you are from the front line, you never know when your work may come back to bite you so best do the best job you can.

That was XW 215 in the middle of a field. I collected it from Weston after it had had a new lower hull section put on.

Earlier I had collected XW219 from Weston. The previous attempt had ended in the pilot returning to Weston after a few miles because of the vibration.
The factory insisted it was within limits so I was sent down to collect it with the orders to bring it to Odiham if it was flyable. It wasn't that bad; I had flown worse but when I landed it back at 230 Sqn's dispersal the crap hit the fan because 230 didn't want it.

It went to the main engineering hangar and was immediately cannibalised to get another one out of the door.