New 5-place Turbine OH-6 (369) Hughes Helicopter $27,000 – by Jack Schweibold.
That was the winning price for an Army helicopter in 1965: $27,000! This article is the forth in a series by Premier Jet Aviation remembering fifty years in development of the Light Observation Helicopter. The Hughes OH-6 (Model 369) was the eventual winner of the contest. Howard Hughes effectively “bought in” at some $19k with an Allison engine near $7k. Wow, I’ll take a dozen myself! The Army couldn’t resist either and they bought over 1,400 units. Bell had long before dropped out to rush the civil 206 Jet Ranger to market and Hiller overbid the final round by almost $2,000 per copy.
Once Howard was officially crowned as winner, I began frequent trips to Culver City to fly our Allison engine in their YOH-6A’s. The “A” was to designate our new T-63A engines with a faster accelerating bleed valve. While we were in the flight shack on one of these early trips, Bob Ferry, Hughes Chief Pilot, asked if I’d like to meet Mr. Hughes. “There he is, standing on the ramp,” Bob said, pointing out the door to a man standing in tennis shoes, slacks and sweat shirt.
“He doesn’t look like one of the richest men in the world to me, but yes, I’d be pleased to meet him,” I replied. We strolled out to the ship we would fly. I was introduced as Allison’s Chief Test Pilot. He had numerous, intelligent questions regarding performance and operation letting me know he had been intimately involved with his ship’s design and progress. After the 15-20 minute conversation, he walked off with another man standing nearby.
When we got back inside, Bob asked, “Do you know who the fellow was standing with him?”
“His body guard?” I flipped a guess, “That’s probably a breakdown machinegun he’s carrying inside the black case.”
“No,” Bob said, “that’s his food taster. Mr. Hughes has germaphobia or whatever you call it. He has all of Mr. Hughes tableware and condiments in that case and pre-tastes and checks all of his meals.”
“Not much to live for,” I thought. Even though I saw him only occasionally, he continued to remember me as “Mr. Allison”. A few years later Howard died a recluse alone with his own fears. It reminded me of a verse from the Bible, “…godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it.”
The OH-6, “Cayuse” or “Loach” became a frontline friend in Vietnam and Israel’s Six Day War with Egypt. (A side note on the six day war. Israel developed a tank busting manuever with the OH-6 where they would fly nap of the earth pass over the top of a tank and perform a teardrop inverted manuver firing their missles into the more lightly armored top of the opposing tank with deadly accuracy and instant kills while minimizing their exposure to hostile fire. The Allison engine’s acceleration allowed the pilot to be able to accelrate fast enough through the collective input over the top to perform the pull out.) Japan loved its size and locally produced the ship at Kawasaki, in the long term all rights were sold to McDonald Douglas where it matured as the MD-500 series. Oh, that $27,000 price? What a bargin! Sorry, a new one now hovers around $1,600,000.
One of Howard’s final aviation directives was to fund thirty days of World Record attempts with one of the Army’s Hughes OH-6 prototypes, these will be reported here next in “Going for the Gold”.
Hughes OH-6 First Flight http://jetav.com/?p=2901
Bell OH-4 First Flight http://jetav.com/?p=2859
Hiller OH-5A First Flgiht http://jetav.com/?p=2484