Even if you don’t know what the CH-47 is, you probably have seen it doing something cool in combat footage either on live television or online. The Boeing CH-47 Chinook, commonly referred to as just as the “CH-47”, is a tandem rotor helicopter developed by American rotorcraft company Vertol and manufactured by Boeing Vertol. This is a heavy-lift helicopter that had its name, Chinook, originate from the Native American Chinook people of Oregon and Washington state.
Vertol, which had started construction on a brand-new tandem-rotor helicopter known as the Vertol Model 107 or V-107 in 1957, was the company that initially created the Chinook. A new gas turbine-powered helicopter would take the place of the Sikorsky CH-37 Mojave, which is currently powered by piston engines, the US Department of the Army said around the same time. The U.S. Army bought a few V-107s from Vertol in June 1958 under the YHC-1A name, but after testing, some Army authorities decided that it was too heavy for attack missions and too light for transport. The Army needed a heavier transport helicopter and bought an expanded variant of the V-107 with the Vertol designation Model 114. The U.S. Marine Corps would later develop and adopt the YHC-1A as the CH-46 Sea Knight. On September 21, 1961, the prototype rotorcraft, originally known as the YCH-1B, made its maiden flight. According to the 1962 United States Tri-Service aircraft naming system, the HC-1B was renamed CH-47A.
The Chinook has numerous doors spanning the fuselage, a large loading ramp at the back of the fuselage, and a total of three exterior ventral cargo hooks to haul underslung loads, among other ways to load diverse cargoes. When it entered service in 1962, the helicopter had a top speed of 170 knots (200 mph; 310 km/h), making it one of the fastest in the US inventory at the time. It is still one of the fastest helicopters in service today.
Since the Chinook’s introduction, improved and more potent variations have also been created; one of the most significant of these was the CH-47D, which first saw service in 1982. The CH-47D’s improvements over the CH-47C standard included upgraded engines, composite rotor blades, a redesigned cockpit to lessen workload, improved and redundant electrical systems and avionics, and the adoption of an advanced flight control system. Along with the fixed-wing Lockheed C-130 Hercules freight plane, it is still one of the few early 1960s-era aircraft that has lasted more than 60 years in both production and active service.
It is most certainly a cool helicopter that can do many things other helicopters cannot. One of the most spectacular moments when the Chinook landed on water during a Special Forces operation as captured below in video.
Ben