Boeing CH-47 Chinook in Australian service
The RAAF has 30 Chinooks in service, with six being available at any time. The Army has ordered eight CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters to replace the ageing Douglas Dakotas. They will be replaced by the new Boeing Chinook C-47D, which has been in service with the Australian army since 2012.
About Boeing CH-47 Chinook in Australian service in brief
The Australian Defence Force has operated Boeing CH-47 Chinook heavy-lift helicopters for most of the period since 1974. The helicopters have been operated by both the Royal Australian Air Force and Australian Army. An initial order of eight Chinooks for the RAAF was placed in 1962, but soon cancelled in favour of more urgent priorities. The Australian military still required helicopters of this type, and twelve CH- 47C Chinooks were ordered in 1970. The Chinooks have mainly been used to support the Australian Army, though they have performed a wide range of other tasks. Three Chinooks took part in the Iraq War during 2003, when they transported supplies and Australian special forces. A detachment of two Chinooks was also deployed to Afghanistan during the northern spring and summer months for each year between 2006 and 2007 and 2008 to 2013, seeing extensive combat. Two of the Chinooks deployed in Afghanistan were destroyed as a result of crashes. The Chinooks have also frequently been assigned to assist recovery efforts following natural disasters and undertook a range of civilian construction tasks while being operated by RAAF. The RAAF has a total of 30 Chinooks in service, with six being available at any time, and out of six helicopters in service at any point in time, six of them have been Chinooks. They are currently being replaced by seven new Chinooks, and another three were delivered in 2016. They have been replaced with seven newCH-47F aircraft during 2015, and seven new CH-49Ds, and three CH-48F aircraft, which have been delivered since 2012. They were replaced with the new aircraft by the end of last year, and the last of these were delivered during the first half of this year.
They will be replaced by the new Boeing Chinook C-47D, which has been in service with the Australian army since 2012 and will be in service until 2018. The new aircraft will be based on the same basic design as the original Chinook, but with a number of upgrades to improve their capabilities. The Army has ordered eight CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters to replace the ageing Douglas Dakotas, which are still in service. The order was suspended later in 1970 when a series of engine problems affected the United States Army’s Chinook fleet. It was reinstated in March 1972 after these engine issues were affected, and an order for twelve CH47C Chinook was placed for twelve helicopters was planned to rotate between the Army and the Australian-administered Territory of Papua and New Guinea. The orders were cancelled when it was learned that it would take several years for the helicopters to be delivered. The Government subsequently accepted a recommendation to acquire a package of twelve Caribou fixed-wing aircraft and eight Chinook helicopters, and placed a order for these aircraft within weeks of the evaluation. At this time the helicopters were intended to be deployed to South Vietnam as part of the Australian contribution to the Vietnam War. Another team of Air Force officers travelled to the U.S. and evaluated the Sikorsky CH- 53 Sea Stallions and the Chinook. In September 1962, the Air Board rejected the recommendation and directed the air vice-marshal to review the choice of helicopters.
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This page is based on the article Boeing CH-47 Chinook in Australian service published in Wikipedia (as of Oct. 31, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
