Bell UH-1 Iroquois

Bell UH-1 Iroquois
Real-world information
Model	Bell UH-1 Iroquois
Production	1956–1987
Role	Utility helicopter
Crew	1–4
Powerplant	1 × Lycoming T53-L-11 turboshaft, 1,100 shp (820 kW)
Range	315 mi (510 km, 274 nmi)
Behind the scenes
First seen	On Her Majesty's Secret Service (film)
Last seen	Quantum of Solace (film)

The Bell UH-1 Iroquois (nicknamed "Huey") is a military transport helicopter featured in handful of James Bond media. Manufactured by Bell Helicopter, it has served the United States Armed Forces in various conflicts, including the Vietnam War, and is the most widely used military helicopter in history. The original model was introduced in 1959 and was the first turbine-powered helicopter to be used by the United States Armed Forces. There are also two civilian versions of the aircraft, the Bell 204 (which was also produced under license by Italian Agusta as Agusta 204B / Agusta-Bell AB 204) and 205.

Film appearances

On Her Majesty's Secret Service (film)

The Agusta-Bell AB-204 copters are used by Draco's men to transport his men and James Bond to raid Piz Gloria.

Diamonds Are Forever (film)

UH-1 helicopters appear during the final battle at Blofeld's oil rig hideout in Baja. One of them gets destroyed by the anti-air defenses.

The Living Daylights (film)

An UH-1 helicopter is used as the fake air medical service copter by Koskov's henchmen to extract him out of the safe house and complete his ruse.

GoldenEye (film)

U.S. Marine Huey copters leaving Cuba at the end of the film.

After the defeating Alec Trevelyan and destroying the Janus Satellite Control Centre, the AS355 copter that was meant to extract Trevelyan drops James Bond and Natalya Simonova on a grassy field. Afterwards, Jack Wade appears and calls out the U.S. Marines, with camouflaged troops revealing themselves and the Huey copters then appearing off screen.

Wade offers to take Bond and Natalya to Guantanamo Bay, with Bond then starting to princess carry Natalya, who starts to joke about Bond's track record with vehicles getting destroyed, with Bond quipping "Darling, whatever could possibly go wrong." We then cut to the Huey copters leaving the area and the credits begin to roll.

Quantum of Solace (film)

An civilian Bell 205A (probably meant to pose as UH-1) appears in the sequence involving the Douglas DC3 and SIAI-Marchetti SF.260.

Other appearances

GoldenEye 007 (1997 game)

Appears at the end of the Cradle mission, during the cutscene after Bond defeats Trevelyan. Like in the movie, Bond jumps and latches onto the copter's land skids and leave the beam steering mechanism. In the movie, the copter appearing at the beam steering mechanism (that got hijacked by Natalya) was a Janus Syndicate-owned Eurocopter AS355, with the UH-1 Iroquois copters appearing afterwards by the order of Jack Wade.

Behind the scenes

On Her Majesty's Secret Service

All the Agusta-Bell AB-204 helicopters featured in this film were rentals, two which belonged to the Heliswiss helicopter company.

The Living Daylights

The UH-1 posing as air medical copter has the registration is G-HUEY, c/n 13560. This particular unit was built in 1973 and was used by the Argentine military during the 1982 conflict, during which it was seized by the British, got rebuilt and sold in UK. Since 2002, its been exhibited in the Bournemouth Aviation Museum.

The appearance of the UH-1 with red cross emblem (along with bags of raw opium distributed by the Snow Leopard Brotherhood during the film's Afghanistan segment) drew protest from numerous Red Cross groups.

Gallery

From The Living Daylights (film)

From GoldenEye (film)

From Quantum of Solace (film); Bell 205A during the aircraft battle sequence.

Trivia

• Although the UH-1/204/205 family has had only a very small number of non-combat losses and accidents, one of the few does include the very infamous 1982 Twilight Zone helicopter accident - regarded as one of the worst on-set accidents in movie-making history - which resulted the deaths of a prolific TV actor Vic Morrow and child actors Myca Dinh Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen.