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Aviation History
1971
1971 - 0587.PDF
533? WILDCAT WORK-OUT •JL «,V»r J»/Jti « •sub ~- riMi"iifciiii MI'II" 'ii n'liifj*' mi /* NEXT MONTH SEES A SIGNIFICANT EVENT in Royal Air Force helicopter his tory—the start of formation of its first squadron of aircraft supplied under the 1967 Anglo-French helicopter package deal. These are the Snias- Westland SA.330E Pumas, the type formally handed over to the RAF on January 29 this year (Flight, February 4 and 18) and due to be operated first by 33 Sqn at Odiham, Hants. A second squadron, No 230, is being formed there later this year. The RAF will have 40 Pumas all told, built jointly in France and the UK. Since the new helicopters have been at Odiham, the Air Training Sqn there has been proving them both in the air and on the ground. The French Army, whose Pumas are basically the same as those of the RAF, has already accumulated more than 15,000hr flying experience on the type. None of this has been passed on to the new operators, 38 Group of Air Support Command; and apart from four weeks which some of the RAF crews spent with Snias at Marignane (three weeks' ground school, one week flying), the .i«l«<'< Air Training Sqn has had to discover the Puma for itself at Odiham and over the green fields of Hampshire. First impressions of the new type, both as a flying machine and as an engineering task, have been favour able. Ample power (two Rolls-Royce/ Turbomeca Turmo IIIC4s giving a take-off power of 1,300 s.h.p., 970kW at 33,450 r.p.m.) is allied to stream lined design, good capacity—e.g., for 16 armed troops—and pleasant hand ling characteristics. As far as servicing is concerned, the bull point in favour of the Puma (which was fully des cribed, with a cutaway drawing, in Flight for May 14 last year) is the accessibility of its engines and con trols through fold-down cowlings and hinged covers. Its acceptability to the engineers, and the success of logistics planning, were shortly to be proved by the first lOOhr inspection. Flight recently visited the ATS at Odiham to talk with its OC, Sqn Ldr Barnet Swinton-Bland, about RAF Puma progress; and while there the journal's representative had the ex perience of flying in one of the new M '^m-mi mm helicopters with the Puma Flight com mander, Fit Lt Dickie Langworthy. Sqn Ldr Swinton-Bland said that initially the Puma pilots and crewmen (one of each per aircraft) would be second-tourists, that is, already experi enced on the Whirlwind or Wessex. The crewmen, first of whom arrived at Odiham at the end of March, do a ten weeks' course—five weeks on the ground and five in the air, teamed up with a pilot. The pilots do one week's ground school before their four weeks' flying. Later, the pilots trained at Odiham for Puma squadrons will be doing their first tour on the type. When fully operational in the RAF, Pumas will work side by side with the Wessex and can perform four different roles, as required according to operational needs: troop carrying (16 armed soldiers, four of them facing inwards, 12 sitting back to back); freight transport (about 3,5001b, 1,588kg payload, with full fuel and two crew) with either a distributed internal load or one slung externally on a hoist depending from the main gearbox; casualty evacuation and SAR.
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