All Dutch Chinooks have names, painted on the right side of the fuselage, behind the cockpit. This is "Red October", a Boeing ICH-47D Chinook c/n 3661/NL001 of the Royal Netherlands Air Force (RNLAF) 298 squadron with tailnumber D-661. It is the only Dutch Chinook that ever made a waterlanding. But the ditching, that took place in The United States, went terribly wrong. The aircraft almost became submerged and the electronics were severeley damaged. After the incident it was decided to name the chopper "Red October", after the Russian submarine in Tom Clancy's bestselling novel "The hunt for Red October". In 1990, a thriller film was based on the book, starring Sean Connery, but, alas, not co-starring D-661, which was only delivered on 3d August 1996. Red October was photographed in the Chinook maintenance hangar at Gilze-Rijen AB in The Netherlands on 16 June 2011. In contrast with other D-variants the Dutch Chinooks have the special prefix ICH, with I standing for "Improved" (and CH for "Cargo Helicopter"), because they have a glass cockpit and are the only D-variants with an advanced Avionics Control Management System with more built-in logic than in other D-variant Chinooks.
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