ALOUETTE II

The first Alouette had a 200 hp piston engine and was not a success.

The very early helicopter heritage of the Alo 2 is immediately evident as it looks like a large fishbowl attached to the base of the Eiffel Tower, yet it is still wonderfully a capable and versatile machine.

The first Alouette was a piston helicopter built by French aircraft builder Sud Est. It had a V shaped tail and two tail rotors, and with just 200 hp from its Salmson engine, it was generally considered pretty horrible, although performance was quite good.

Sud Est needed a radical improvement, so they discarded almost everything but the powertrain. Most importantly for the future of helicopters, they decided to make the first production helicopter in the world to have a turbine engine. In the 1950s this was far from an easy decision. Turbines were in their infancy – they were temperamental, used lots of fuel, had short lives and huge maintenance requirements, so they were treated with suspicion by conservative aeronautical engineers. But Sud Est had to take a leap of faith to make their Alouette fly in the market, so they decided to risk it.

They found a new turbine engine; the Artouste, built by Turbomeca. This company had been formed by a Polish refugee, Joseph Sudlovsky, who had escaped the Nazis to set up an engineering works in a small town called SaintPé-de-Bigorre in the south of France. It turns out that the Turbomeca engine was the perfect partner for the all-new Alouette airframe. The resulting product made its first flight in 1955 and went on to become one of the most successful light helicopters ever.

During its twenty-year production span the SE 3130 Alouette II was adopted by over 30 armies and air forces around the world. It set innumerable records for hot and high performance. Even the Americans belatedly recognised its merits when Republic Aviation obtained a license to build it in the USA.

The SAAF operated 8 Alouette 2s between 1960 and 1973. In its military roles it achieved enormous success with a wide variety of weapons, including anti-tank missiles and even homing torpedoes. With the ability to easily.....

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