The UH-1 Iroquois helicopter, produced by Bell Helicopter Textron [TXT] was officially retired by the Army National Guard Sept. 30, ending a service life of more than 50 years with the Army and close to 40 years in the Army National Guard.
The helicopter, known to most simply as the Huey, was first manufactured in 1956 and fielded to the Army by 1959. Its distinctive nickname came from the pronunciation of its first Army designation of HU-1–helicopter, utility. Later models featured the word “Huey” stamped on the pilot’s foot pedals.
More than 15,000 of the aircraft were produced with about half that number having been flown during the Vietnam conflict.
“The UH-1, more than any other helicopter or any item of equipment, became the symbol of Vietnam,” said Maj. Gen. Raymond Carpenter, the acting director of the Army National Guard at Oct. 2 retirement ceremonies for the helicopter in Maryland.
“I can also attest to you that it was not just a machine, it became part of us,” said Brig. Gen. Alberto Jimenez, the assistant adjutant general for the Maryland Army National Guard and the Army Guard’s senior aviator. “It was our lives. It was our friend. It was the aircraft that took us in and out of Vietnam, and it was also the aircraft that saved many countless lives as we rushed the wounded and the sick out of the battlefield.”
The Army Guard first began receiving the aircraft in the early 1970s and at one time the number of UH-1s in the ARNG hovered around 1,500.
“Those were the modern aircraft that replaced the CH-37 (Mojave) and the UH-34 (Choctaw),” Jimenez said. The Huey was replaced by the UH-60 Blackhawk beginning in the late 1970s.
“The old adage of the UH-1 pilots was that when the last UH-60 (Blackhawk) was flown to the bone yard, the crew would fly back in a UH-1,” said Carpenter. “It may still happen, but not likely.”
But, that distinctive “whoop, whoop…will remain in our hearts,” Jimenez said.