"Birth of the Cobra" Topic

"What was on Mike Folse's drawing board at Bell Helicopter that day in March 1965 was supposed to be a hovercraft. It wasn't. "I had an idea instead," he explains. "My boss would be on vacation for two weeks."

Gloom pervaded Bell's Preliminary Design Group. In a Pentagon competition to develop an ambitious concept for an attack helicopter, Bell's proposal had just lost out to Lockheed's—a demoralizing beat-down from an airplane company that had never made a helicopter. At Bell's Hurst, Texas plant, an exodus was under way as dispirited engineers and executives started burning up accrued vacation time. On his way out the door, Folse's boss issued explicit instructions: "Forget what you're working on. While I'm gone, start on a hovercraft."…"

Main page
link

Amicalement
Armand

Fantastic, Armand!! I have been reading Vietnam for year with a big interest in air cavalry and this was totally new to me. What a fascinating development story of a tremendous helicopter.

I saw this as coming up in that same website or publication or whatever I should call it: "Snakes and Loaches," the Cobra's exploits in Vietnam.

I have to find that.

Thanks for yet another great post.

Tom

Garryowen,
I think "Snakes and Loaches" would be the article in the August 2017 issue of Air & Space magazine. A quick Google search of the magazine makes me think that the title might have been changed to something more prosaic, though. The article in the back issue is titled "The Birth of the Cobra," same as the internet article.

Happy you enjoyed it my friends!. (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Thanks Brian.

Tom