Last week I made my first visit to the International Helicopter Museum in Weston-super-mare and I have to say how impressed I was with it – not overly commercial environment and some interesting aircraft on display – attached to this post are some pictures from the trip.

However during the visit a couple of questions occurred to me:
1. Why is it that Lynx 3 wasn’t a success – was it because there was a concern as to the power output cability of the Gem engine?
2. One of the attached pictures shows a model that is allegedly representative of 1985 Westland attack helicopter – can anyone point me in the direction of any further information about this helicopter?

Apologies for the quality of the images, they were taken on a mobile phone rather than a proper camera.

At risk of answering my own question – is it possible that this model represents one of the variants that were studied during the work on the Tonal programme – which as i understand was a cross European effort to create an anti tank helicopter based upon the Agusta A129? I believe that from a UK perspective the British Army always wanted the Apache, and that given that Tonal programme was happening about the same time as the Westland crisis I suspect this is why the programme died a death.

Its intersting to see the comments about Westland 30 and maintenance etc.

Also intrigued to see the comment about alot of Lynx variants that didn’t progress anywhere – and I’m intrigued to hear more about these, as to the best of my knowledge the only key variant that didn’t progress was Lynx 3 – and I’l still trying to understand what was so wrong with Lynx 3 that it didn’t progress – Westland must have thought there was some chance for sale to go to the cost of producing a prototype – just seems that it was left to whither and die and its not clear to me as to why?

Are there any good referecnce books for the Westland Lynx that people could point me in the direction of?

Cheers

Did you use photobucket to host by any chance?

Nope tried to upload the image using the facilities on the site, but for some reason why the image is posted inline its 10% of the size of the actual uploaded image.

No your right, UAV’s can’t but Lynx, Merlin, Chinook, Puma and Wildcat can 😛

Agreed, but surely more expensive options given that they are all multi engine solutions???

Thanks Sticky847, and that’s sort of the reason for my question – I can understand that the power output of the original engine might not be enough once all the additional kit was added, but I’m just surprised that the British forces haven’t looked to perform an upgrade of the engine to add more power – it must be cheaper to run a Gazelle than a Lynx with two engines I would have expected?

And yes I know everyone seems to be focussed on UAVs these days, but UAVs can’t perform casevac type missions or special ops insertion support.

Just surprised that the MoD hasnt’ tried to “sweat” the asset that they paid for – there was obviously a need when they purchased the aircraft back in the late 60’s/70s (I can’t believe it was just to get the French to by the Lynx) and I’m just interested to see how that mission is now being performed.

Gazelle is very poorly protected. It was intended to shoot at Warsaw Pact tank, then hide. Very agile system, but not what expect modern forces. (See recent death of Cpt Boiteux in Mali). More suited to spec ops then anything els now.

Whilst it may be the case that the original design in some countries was used in an anti tank role, I don’t believe that the Gazelle in British Army used was ever assigned this role – as far as I’m aware the anti tank role was performed by the Scout and then Lynx and now Apache.

So I think the Gazelle was used me for recce/liaison/casevac – and Im just curious why this may not still be seen as a pertinent role at this time.

Is it the case that it was seen as being more vulnerable than the Lynx because it only had a single engine perhaps?

Jur – thanks very much for the advice, I shall try that approach at Dawlish and see how it works for me.

Cheers