User Guide

The Fleet
189
8
Bell Helicopter
It is fitting that the permanent collection of the
Museum of Modern Art in New York City contains
a Bell-47 helicopter, an object whose beauty is
inseparable from its efficiency. The genius of
Leonardo Da Vinci produced the idea of vertical
flight; centuries later it would take another
brilliant innovator, philosopher, and artist to bring
the concept to commercial reality. His name was
Arthur Young.
Young came to Larry Bell’s attention in 1941 after
Young had been working on helicopter design for
over a decade. Bell was an entrepreneur and
successful manufacturer of military aircraft like
the Airacobra P-39. A demonstration of Young’s
working model convinced Bell of the design’s
importance. He set Young’s research group up in
their own facility in Gardenville, New York, and let
them go to work. Thirteen days later, Pearl Harbor
was attacked, initiating United States involvement
in World War II.
During the war, Young’s small team worked hard
on developing the helicopter while the rest of the
company constructed war machines. Two
dramatic unplanned mercy flights in 1945
presaged the helicopter’s future role as a medical
evacuation (“medevac”) vehicle. On March 8,
1946, the Bell Model 47 was awarded the world’s
first commercial helicopter license, and the U.S.
Army took delivery of production models the same
year. Model 47s saw medevac service in the
Korean conflict. The Bell-47 had a long production
life and hundreds are still in service around the
world.
Textron Corporation acquired Bell in 1960, and by
1976 it was Textron’s largest division. Among its
most successful developments was the UH-1
“Huey,” the workhorse of the Vietnam War.
Variants of the Huey were used as troop trans-
ports, gun ships, and air-ambulances. They also
see service today as corporate shuttles and
medical transports. The AH-1 Cobra attack
helicopter, H-40 Iroquois, OH-580 Kiowa Warrior,
TH-67 Creek trainer, and CH-146 Griffon also join
the ranks that make Bell the largest supplier of
helicopters to the U.S. armed forces. Bell is also
teamed with Boeing to produce the V-22 Osprey
tilt-rotor aircraft for the United States Marine
Corps.
Perhaps the most recognizable Bell is the 206B
JetRanger. The highly regarded 206 is employed
around the world in military service, as a corpo-
rate transport, as a rescue service/medevac
vehicle, as a police unit, and in television report-
ing.
With more than 35,000 aircraft delivered in more
than 120 countries, Bell notes that their helicop-
ters around the world accumulate fleet flight time
at more than 10 hours per minute. That gives a
whole new meaning to the old adage, “Helicop-
ters don’t fly, they beat the air into submission.”
When at the controls of the
JetRanger, imagine you’re
trying to balance one ball on
top of another. Make small,
smooth control movements or
you’ll likely put the aircraft into
unrecoverable oscillations.