The Most Innovative & Colossal Helicopters of All Time

Tonight, the greatest ever goes in search of the ultimate helicopter. Helicopters don't really fly, they vibrate so badly the ground rejects them. It's the magic carpet of the sky. The things that it can do that no other flying vehicle can do. To earn the right to be the greatest ever helicopter, the machines must prove their worth. They have a greater potential than other aircraft to change the world. On a battlefield, supporting troops, or if it means out in the bush putting out fires, there really is nothing that can match the performance of a helicopter. It's the ultimate extension of the human body that allows him total freedom over the whole planet. Flying a helicopter is great because you feel free. It is an exhilarating experience to fly a helicopter. To fly is heavenly, to hover is divine. We're going to push these helicopters to the limit, turning the world's fastest upside down. We'll deliver a glass of champagne the hard way in a Forsake Gale, and discover just how deadly they can be. Ten machines, but only one can hold the title, greatest ever helicopter. Starting our countdown is the greatest aerial crane ever built. At number ten, it's the Ericsson Aircrane. The Ericsson Aircrane is the most powerful, most versatile helicopter in the western world. This particular helicopter is the sports car of heavy lift helicopters. Bar none, there's maybe some that lift more, but none that move faster. It's a fun machine to fly. It's very agile, very quick, and has a lot of horsepower. For heavy lift of heavy equipment into really difficult situations, it is absolutely without peer. The Aircrane can lift an incredible twelve and a half tons, but its real strength is in its ability to place these colossal loads with absolute precision. In 1976, an Aircrane topped off Toronto's CN Tower. At 553 meters, it's the tallest freestanding structure in the world. The Aircrane really is a Swiss Army knife of the skies. The capabilities of it from an aerial crane, if we're talking about ski towers, if we're talking about helilogging, or if we're talking about from a firefighting perspective, there really is nothing else out there that will match on the capabilities. It's amazing. It can scoop up 2,000 gallons of water in a mere 45 seconds, which is absolutely fabulous. It can refill its tank in as little as 45 centimeters of water. So if we're looking in areas such as California, when they had the Santa Ana fires, these aircraft have actually gone in, and they're allowed to basically go after water sources anywhere. This might mean your pool in your backyard, and there has been instances where the helitanker has gone in and sucked out someone's pool. Originally designed to recover downed aircraft and move heavy military equipment, the Aircrane now excels in its civilian clothes. In the remote forests of Canada, its precision lift capability has given it a new role. In a place where no other vehicle can go, it's become the ultimate logger. It's an odd thing to see. When you look at it, you're thinking, it's like prehistoric, yet futuristic. There really is nothing pretty about the Aircrane. It's actually the nickname is the Dragonfly. Helicopters aren't designed for style points. They're designed to fulfill a job. I mean, a tractor or trailer isn't as pretty as a Ferrari, but a Ferrari can't haul 40 tons of cargo. And there are times in life when you need to get 40 tons of bricks or fertilizer or whatever from point A to point B. Its lack of style is really based on giving it as much functionality as it can. Wanting to get rid of as much of the fuselage claptrap and the weight, so that you've got the most payload that you can possibly pick up. It's basically nothing but engines, an absolutely minimal airframe, and a rotor system. There's nothing there that's there for aesthetics or looks. It's just there to lift stuff vertically. And lifting is what the Aircrane is good at. As the co-pilot monitors the dials, the pilot leans out and manipulates the hydraulic grapple. A difficult task as the grapple is on the end of a 200-foot cable. The jaws can exert over 32,000 pounds of pressure to hold the logs, which can weigh up to 10,000 pounds each. But this muscle power comes at a premium. The cost to operate the Aircrane, you're looking at $9,000 US per hour. That's before you start adding the fuel cost for the aircraft. I would say in just an average logging cycle, the aircraft burns about 500 US gallons of fuel an hour. So it's a thirsty bird. Overall, that's a whopping $10,000 US per hour. The real key to its success is to keep it flying as often as you can and as regularly as you can. Because it costs so much money to operate. With so much money at stake, speed is definitely the name of the game. A skilled Aircrane pilot can lift 45 bundles of trees from mountain to landing zone in one hour. I guess the object of the game is to be as fast as you can and as smooth as you can. At this rate, the Aircrane clears up to 1,000 trees a day. With each log worth up to $5,000 US, that's a turnover of $5 million a day. Compare that to the daily cost of the Aircrane, just $140,000, and it's suddenly an incredibly economic tool. Like everything else, it's a compromise. It's very thirsty in fuel, and it's not designed for going long distances. It's designed to lift loads, and it does that well. There is really nothing out there that can match the performance of the Aircrane, and I think you're going to see it in the skies probably for another 20 or 30 years. I think that the Aircrane could be called the muscle man of heavy lift helicopters. I think it's one of the greatest helicopters I've ever flown. Definitely the most favorite machine that I've ever flown. And I don't know if I really want to fly anything else. The Aircrane is an incredible lifting machine, but without a cargo area, its hauling capability is limited to external loads. For that, it gets 10th place. Coming up, nine more fantastic helicopters, including the ultimate transport machine. If we can tie a sling to it, we can take it. Plus, we toast the most courageous chopper in the sky. When you see it coming over the horizon, you know the cavalry have arrived. As we search for the greatest ever helicopter. And in our search to find the greatest ever helicopter, the Ericsson Aircrane claimed the number 10 slot. And at number 9 is a machine that scaled new heights of helicopter design. It is the Lama. The Lama, of course, is the highest flying helicopter ever. In 1972, the aircraft actually flew to an altitude of 41,000 feet. Frenchman Jean Boullée's incredible 12,442-meter record still stands to this day, over 30 years later. If you put that in perspective today, that's where you're looking at where airliners would be flying. If you're looking at 747 or anything in that range, that's typically the altitudes that those aircraft would be flying at. The Lama was originally designed for the Indian Air Force to defend their high-altitude borders in the Himalayan mountains. The Lama is amazing because it does many things that the ordinary helicopter cannot do. Most helicopters operate efficiently up to around 8,000 to 10,000 feet. In other words, fairly close to the ground. The Lama, however, can operate very efficiently in the 20,000 feet altitudes. To operate at such high altitude, the Lama had to overcome the laws of physics. The problem with flying at altitude is a lack of oxygen molecules in any given square foot of airspace. The higher you go, basically the thinner the air gets, and there's really less and less for the rotor blades to bite into, less air for the engine to breathe. At 20,000 feet, the air is less dense and cuts the engine's performance in half. The Lama uses a very powerful engine. Its 870 horsepower provides over twice the amount of vertical thrust of all other helicopters in its weight class. The engine itself is capable of blowing up the transmission at lower altitudes. Up until 13,000 feet, you're not able to use all the power that the engine provides, and from 13,000 feet above you are. To utilize all this power, the Lama has the lightest airframe possible. It's really nothing more than a bubble for the pilot to sit in attached to an open tail boom. Its only additional equipment is to enable the pilot to operate at altitude. This is probably the only civilian aircraft in the country that is set up with an oxygen system. Without the oxygen, it would be impossible for the pilot to breathe above 12,000 feet. If I have a problem of any type, you know, at 14,000 feet or above, that's an environment that I can't live in. It's a pretty dangerous situation. I'd probably have a half hour, 45 minutes of useful consciousness once my oxygen was depleted, and probably take a big nap after that point. Why do I like the Lama when I see it? Because it's like a little wasp. It's lightweight, and it buzzes around, but you know that it's got huge capability. There is nothing else out there today that would compare to the aircraft. It was meant to do one thing, and that was fly at high altitude. But a helicopter designed with one purpose in mind limits what it can be used for, so the Lama gets ninth place. If you've got loads of cargo and want it shifted in a hurry, then a helicopter at number eight is the beast for you. It's the greatest transport helicopter ever. It is the Chinook. The Chinook. Ugly beast. It's a bit of a laugh. It's a fun helicopter. Kids love it. Unlike most helicopters, the Chinook has two main intermeshing rotors. This gives it incredible amounts of power. There's an additional efficiency from having two lifting rotors. You don't waste any power on a tail rotor. So Chinook becomes a very powerful lifting helicopter with a great capacity to carry a lot of people and a lot of load. It can lift a massive 12 tonnes inside or out. And not only that, with a flight control system based on that of a 747, the Chinook is one of the smoothest rides in the sky. This system maintains heading, altitude, airspeed, and any other control that I deem necessary in order to get from point A to point B. As well as its flight control systems, the Chinook has a complex gearbox to prevent the intermeshing rotors from hitting one another. Other than that, it's just like flying any other helicopter. The flight controls in the Chinook are identical as that in a regular helicopter. The cyclic stick forward makes the aircraft go forward. The cyclic stick aft is going to slow the aircraft down. Application to the left will make the aircraft turn left. And an application of right cyclic will make the aircraft turn right. The thrust control in the Chinook, normally referred to as the collective in other aircraft, we here in the Chinook call it thrust control. Me pulling up on the thrust control will make the aircraft climb. And the reduction in thrust or power will make the aircraft descend. The tail rotor pedals in conventional aircraft are used to control the tail rotor and enable the aircraft to turn about its own axis at a hover. The same function is true for the pedals on the Chinook. A lightly loaded Chinook is like a sports car. It has unbelievable handling and response, and it's a delight to fly. When it's heavily loaded, it's still a delight to fly, but you have to think a little more ahead of time because of the inertia of the helicopter. Even carrying its maximum load, the Chinook can still fly at over 160 miles an hour. This is the center cargo of the aircraft. It provides us the capability of lifting up to 12 tons. If you consider that the helicopter, for example, is capable of lifting 50,000 pounds altogether, and it only weighs 30,000 pounds, you've got quite a bit of extra thrust capability that you can use. And it is just an incredible rush to just lift off the ground and climb vertically at 2,000, 3,000 feet a minute almost immediately off the ground. The Chinook is always the right tool for the job just based on its multitude of roles. If we can tie a sling to it, we can take it. But the Chinook is so much more than just a versatile heavy lifter. We have coined the Chinook our Boxer Legos just based on its multitude of roles that it can assume. One of them, when we do joint training with the U.S. Special Forces and we're doing water extractions, by that I mean that the aircraft will physically land in the water. We will lower the ramp. Water will enter the cabin area, allowing the boat to physically drive into the aircraft. The Green Beret guys come zooming up in their Zodiac, drive the boat right into the hull of the airplane, and the airplane takes all the thumps of water and flies home. And I didn't believe that until they showed me a picture of it. The Chinook is a truly awesome machine, and I wouldn't fly anything else. The Chinook is a workhorse. It's a solid, reliable piece of machinery that lifts loads, carries heavy weights, and does it in all kinds of good conditions. It's got a great big fuselage. You can pack lots of troops and equipment in it. It truly is a versatile machine for the military operator. The Chinook is undoubtedly the greatest transport helicopter ever, and it gets eighth place. At number seven is a helicopter that everyone knows. It's the Jet Ranger. What I like about the Jet Ranger is that it's got style. It's a bit like a classic car. You know, it's a child of the 60s, really. The Jet Ranger is probably one of the most attractive machines that's ever been designed and built. Yes. The Jet Ranger is one of the greatest helicopters, because it was the first civil helicopter that looked nice. It was designed by a designer, not by an aircraft person. And they just created this outside mold line, and then went out and flew it, and started selling them like hotcakes. Since it first flew, Bell has sold more than 4,500 Jet Rangers, making it the most prolific civilian helicopter on the planet. With energy-absorbing landing gear and seats, rupture-resistant fuel cells, and over 54 million trouble-free flight hours, it's also the safest helicopter ever. Not bad for something that started out as a failure. Bell Helicopter had designed or developed the Jet Ranger in 1961 as a light observation helicopter for the U.S. Army. It actually lost the contract that went to Hughes with the OH-6. But Bell then, they moved forward and they developed the Jet Ranger into a commercial variant. The Jet Ranger has been brilliant for executive use as a private helicopter and for civil applications. However, the interesting thing was that after they had built a whole lot of civil versions of it, the military came back again and they ordered the helicopter as the Bell Kiowa. It's not all death and destruction. The Ranger's ability to fly at over 120 miles an hour, to a range of almost 430 miles, has made it excellent for scenic tours and construction, news gathering and law enforcement. Truly a Ford of the skies. What is its weakness? I would have to say now it's its age. It's an old, very old design, mid-60s design. The engine is a mid-60s concept engine. It's not particularly fast and it's not the most comfortable helicopter in the back. Slightly over-complex and unnecessarily clever in places it didn't need to be. But it conjures up, it is the image of a helicopter in millions of people's minds. It brought a new style to helicopters. It made them an attractive proposition for executive operators and for commercial users of helicopters in a way that had never happened prior to the aircraft arriving. Although a number one bestseller, it only makes our number seven due to its old design and cramped conditions. At number six is a long-range helicopter that can fly in any type of weather. It is the Sea King. When you see it coming over the horizon, you know the cavalry have arrived. Obviously, if the most powerful person in the world is going to fly on a Sea King, then the aircraft is good enough for anyone. The Sea King is a really versatile helicopter. It combines range, it combines physical lifting capacity and it combines a large fuselage which can carry troops, can carry a lot of equipment and can be changed quickly by an operator from one role to another. The Sea King was designed for US Navy shipboard operations. It first flew an incredible 46 years ago. The Sea King was really the first helicopter of its kind. Turbine powered, twin engine, all weather capability, nothing else out there could match it. For its life on the ocean wave, the Sea King had some innovative design features. It was also the first aircraft to have a blade fold capability which made them portable on ships. It also had a tail fold capability which was the first helicopter to have that as well. The Sea King is also unique in shape because it has the boat hull shape to it. The aircraft can actually land in water if required. But the Sea King's special features weren't only on the outside. The aircraft's got an autopilot that allows you to fly in any weather and establish yourself in the hover even over the pitch black sea. When the aircraft was developed originally in 1959, it was basically developed for one thing and that was detect, track and destroy submarines. The Sea King would hover and drop its sonar buoy down into the ocean and then wait and listen for submarines, sometimes for hours on end. Trying to hover for that length of time, often at night, was impossible to do. So a sophisticated autopilot system was developed. Hovering a helicopter is like balancing this pole. I want to make sure this stays vertical so I need to keep looking at the top of this pole. So if we start doing this, I can do this fairly easily. I'm now hovering and I'm making small corrections all the time down here. Now, if we're going to do this in the middle of the night, over the ocean, we have no references. I can't see anything. The ocean is dark. The sky is dark. There's no horizon. The only thing I can do to simulate that is close my eyes. And that's what the Sea King has, is the stabilization system to keep this upright, if you will, over the ocean in the middle of the night. The flight control system works by emitting Doppler radar and radio waves to detect the Sea King's position and automatically makes any adjustments to pitch, roll and heading to keep the aircraft steady. The Sea King is probably the most stable platform of all helicopters. This superb stability has allowed the Sea King to excel in probably its most famous role, search and rescue. When you are flying into the mountains at night in snow and poor weather, you want to feel safe. And the Sea King gives you the sense of security that you need to be able to go and rescue somebody from one of those dangerous situations. Precision flying is the Sea King's forte, getting into tight situations in all types of weather with no room for error. When you compare the handling of this aircraft to more modern aircraft, what you tend to find is that it handles a bit more like a truck than a sports car. And when you're tucked up close against a cliff, actually what you don't want is a particularly fast response to control input. So when I'm flying this helicopter, I know exactly how it's going to respond and actually it's perfect for what I want it to do. It's critical that you can hold a stable hover because there's a brave guy on the end of that rescue winch who's putting his life in your hands while he tries to rescue somebody else. So if you make a mistake, the implications of that could be potentially fatal. The greatest ever is going to put the Sea King to the test. Its crew is about to deliver a glass of champagne the hard way. Winchman Dixie will be lowered 60 metres below the aircraft and attempt to pour the fizz into a glass. Lieutenant Martin Lanny must position the Sea King alongside the rock face and hold a steady hover. This is a true test of precision flying. Easy. Easy. Right anyone, easy. Easy. He's with him. He's now got the chumpers. He's just gone for the Michael Schumacher. Well it is the ultimate search and rescue helicopter because he's a big friendly beast and you know where you stand with this aircraft. If I was a yachtsman sitting in the middle of the sea and I saw the Sea King coming towards me, I'd have a great degree of confidence. It's not the biggest, but it's large enough to put lots of casualties, troops or stores in. It's got a fairly long range, up to about five hours flying. It's fast enough for the role it's going to be used for. So although it's not at the cutting edge of all of those examples, it does everything well enough to make it excellent for purpose. The Sea King's incredible robustness and flight controls have made it the ultimate search and rescue helicopter. It's the sixth greatest ever helicopter. We're halfway through our countdown of helicopters. So far we've had heavy lift champions, machines that took helicopter design to new heights, but still to come, the fastest chopper on the planet and the most lethal helicopter ever built. That's a real death machine. They say don't run away, you'll just die tired. As we search for the greatest ever helicopter. We've another five machines to fly before we find out which one is the greatest ever. But first, a helicopter that can outrun any other. It's the Ferrari of the skies and it's our number five. It's the Westland Lynx. It's the fastest production helicopter ever. It's a marvellous aircraft to fly for many reasons. It's an extremely powerful aircraft. It's very agile, very manoeuvrable and very responsive. The Lynx is unique really in its field. It has changed the whole way that helicopter operators can use an aircraft in battle conditions. The Lynx was designed during the Cold War to ambush tanks using its optically tracked TOW missiles. Quite an expensive system. We always used to equate one missile as being the equivalent of firing a BMW M3. But the deadly TOW missiles are just the beginning. It's the Lynx's incredible manoeuvrability that has made it such a formidable fighting machine. The thing about the Lynx is that it is an advanced design. And a lot of thought has gone into the rotor head which allow it to be extremely agile. Its one piece titanium rotor head is practically fused onto the main fuselage. When a control input is made in a conventional helicopter, as you start to move, the rotor will tilt and then a second or so later the body will follow. With the Lynx, as you make the control input, and even quite a small control input, the actual fuselage and the head will move together as one piece. The Lynx is one of the most agile helicopters ever made. But that's not its only distinction. The Lynx is the fastest recorded helicopter ever. It holds the world speed record still. At an amazing 200 miles an hour, the Lynx has held the world speed record for over 30 years. The main reason really why the aircraft is so fast is thanks to the Burt Blade technology. Burt Blade being the British experimental rotor profile. And as you can see from the blades behind me, on the end is a sort of paddle affair which helps the blades move faster. The Burt tip is basically a swept tip on the end of the rotor. It has very similar benefits that you have on the swept wings of conventional commercial airplanes that fly at high subsonic speeds. It reduces the drag. If you have less drag, then that same amount of power will allow you to get more speed. Because of its speed and agility, the Lynx can do for military operators things that helicopters have not been able to do ever before. But it's in the hands of the British Army's Blue Eagles display team that the Lynx really shows what it can do. The greatest ever persuaded them to explain their most tricky manoeuvre, turning a helicopter upside down. The loop is the most difficult manoeuvre to get absolutely right because really the aircraft doesn't really want to do it. It's a real coordinated manoeuvre, coordinated with both the cyclic stick, with the pedals and also the collective movement. So the old analogy of rubbing your head and patting your stomach really does come true when trying to fly the loop. I will raise the power lever. All I then do is pull back as fast as I can on the stick and the aircraft goes straight over on itself. It's just really committing to the manoeuvre and ensuring that you go all the way back over the top and don't spend too much time upside down. Otherwise you will just gently be sucked towards the ground. Lynx, classic British excellence in its field. The Lynx is like a Lynx. It goes fast and it hits its prey quickly and it's a really remarkable fighting machine. It does everything that you want it to do and more and I've never flown a helicopter that's better. The Lynx's remarkable speed and agility make it a unique machine and earn it the title Fifth Greatest Ever Helicopter. At number four is a true giant of the skies. It's the largest, most powerful helicopter ever made. It's the Mil-26. The Mil-26 is the gargantuan of the helicopters. Everything is big. Even the pilots are big. It is the largest, it is the most powerful helicopter that is out there. There is nothing that comes close to it. It's huge. It's very, very capable. Very simple. It was a Russian solution to a Russian problem. The problem was how to transport nuclear missiles to remote Siberia during the Cold War. The answer was to build the largest helicopter in the world. With a capability to lift 40,000 pounds, there is nothing that outlifts the Mi-26. It's 40 meters long, 6.5 meters wide, as tall as two double-decker buses. If you need to move something that's extremely heavy above what a Chinook or what an aircrane can move, there's only one aircraft that you can turn to and that is the Mi-26. The Mil-26 can lift an incredible 20 tons, the equivalent of lifting two Chinooks at the same time, either externally or inside its cargo hold. It's the same size as a Hercules and large enough to fit four family cars or 100 parachutists, whatever your needs may be. With its huge payload, you need to do something extraordinary to lift it off the ground. With the Mil-26, of course, the designers were faced with the problem of getting the maximum lift that they could because it's a heavy helicopter and it has a heavy lift capability. And the answer to that was to put more blades onto the rotor hub. The Mi-26 is the only eight blades helicopter in the world. Each blade has a length of around 15 meters and with a weight of approximately 300 kilos. And what gives those blades such enormous lift? The most powerful engines ever put on a helicopter. Okay, here we are, the heart of the Mi-26. Two engines called D136 of 12,000 horsepower each. The fuel consumption is around two and a half tons an hour, so that means around 3,000 liters. That's a lot of fuel, but there is quite a lot of horses too. In fact, that's over 50 times more powerful than a Ferrari. The size is huge, the size of the helicopter, the size of the engines used, but the size of what the helicopter can perform is huge too. The Mil was used in the cleanup of Chernobyl and today operates in some of the most hostile environments around the globe. Welcome to the hugest helicopter cockpit of the hugest helicopter in the world. It's big for a reason. It takes two pilots, an engineer, navigator and loadmaster to fly this beast. Of course, the Mil-26 comes with some problems for a western operator. They've all been designed in Russian and they come with Russian instruction manuals. So it can be quite complicated converting to operating an aircraft like the Mil-26 in a non-Russian environment. Would we have ever built one in the West? Probably not. We couldn't justify the expense of designing and producing and certifying it, whether for civil or military use. It's very exciting to fly it because I think the main reason is because it's the biggest one in the world. Well, I think it's like a great big Russian bear and it really moves the equipment and it gives a lot of muscle. The Mil-26, summing it up, a machine to move mountains. The Mil-26 is definitely the most powerful helicopter ever. But unless you have a job big enough, it's just too expensive to run. So it gets fourth place. At number three is an aircraft that has changed the face of warfare. It's the world's deadliest helicopter. It's the Apache Longbow. Apache is the ultimate fighting machine. It's a good, efficient aircraft with really nasty efficient weapons. It'll ruin your whole day if it's coming after you. The Apache is not meant to look nice, but underneath its ugly outer shell is the most sophisticated helicopter ever designed. As requirements for helicopters have evolved over the years, this has really driven the requirement for mission equipment, for avionics, far more than it has driven the requirements for how fast or how far a helicopter can fly. Each Apache Longbow is fitted with over $12 million worth of avionics equipment, all intent on getting the kill. It has very highly integrated electronics and optics to let you fly the aircraft in the middle of the night, like it was broad daylight, and go out and shoot tanks. And that's really pretty spectacular. Its mast-mounted radar and nose-mounted day and night vision systems allow the pilot to clearly detect and identify targets up to five miles away. And in order to accurately aim his weapons, the pilot relies on his integrated headset. Once we have the helmet on, then we actually take what's called the helmet display unit and attach it to the right side of our helmet. So that when I turn my head left and right, up and down, I can actually see where I'm looking at with my night vision sensor. And additionally, it gives me information as far as an aiming point with my crosshairs inside there, so when I turn my head, I can actually put my crosshairs on a target, squeeze the trigger, and the rounds will impact on a target. But this precision sighting system is nothing without the weapons it controls. The Longbow Apache has three main weapons systems on board of it. It's got the 30mm chain gun, which is right underneath the co-pilot's station. If I'm attacked by something out my right door, I can literally turn my head, look out to the right and down, and squeeze the trigger, and rounds will burst on target. And it just follows my line of sight. No matter where I'm looking, left, right, up, down, it's going to follow my head movement. It's got a range of about 4,200 meters. It's got a rate of fire of about 650 rounds per minute. This is a rocket pod, and it shoots what's called 2.75-inch folding fin arrow rockets. If we have troops in the open that we just want to make them button up, stop shooting this kind of thing, we can shoot rockets at them. It's not necessarily going to go exactly to the point where you're trying to aim it. It's going to go in that general area. Of all the weapons, it's the Hellfire missiles that are the most deadly. The Hellfire missile system is our primary weapons system on board the Longbow Apache. With the help of the U.S. Army Apache squadron at Fort Rucker, Alabama, the greatest ever got to see the sheer firepower of these Hellfire missiles. Each missile costs a whopping $85,000 U.S. dollars, and the Apache carries eight of them. They're guided by a laser beam, which is programmed to the crosshairs on the pilot's sights. With the help of its fire control system, the aircraft scans the battlefield, identifying up to 1,000 separate targets. It prioritizes the most dangerous and initiates an attack. The pilot then marks the target with his laser beam and fires the missile. All this can be done in under 10 seconds. Once fired, the missile accelerates beyond Mach 1. It takes less than 40 seconds to destroy a target five miles away. The Apache's awesome firepower has made it one of the most feared weapons ever. I suppose for the soldier on the ground, the one thing that he fears most of all is seeing an attack helicopter coming over the top of those trees. And the Apache is the one helicopter I would not like to see coming towards me. That's a real death machine. They say, don't run away, you'll just die tired. You look at the three different weapon systems we have on board and the different roles that we can perform in combat, it is without a doubt the most lethal attack helicopter in the world. The Apache is certainly the most lethal helicopter ever, but it comes with a hefty price tag, $25 million. It's the third greatest ever helicopter. If you think a flying car is a thing of the future, you need to think again. Our second greatest helicopter is the amazing Robinson R-22. The Robinson revolution has made a simple helicopter which is finally a practical helicopter for the individual. This has been a dream ever since World War II, that you could have a personal flying vehicle which would do exactly the same thing as your automobile. That has come true with the R-22. The two-seat R-22 and its big brother, the four-seat R-44, were the brainchild of one man, Frank Robinson. A bored helicopter designer who in 1973 set out to bring flying to the masses. At that time I was already 43 and it did bother me that I had not really started what I thought would be my life's work. My real life's work was to design and build a small personal type of helicopter. So I decided to just go ahead and gamble everything and give it a try. It would be easier to accept if I knew that I had tried and failed than if I had never tried at all. It was the right decision to take and Robinson annual sales now exceed $200 million. The guy is a total genius and a revolutionary. He has made a revolution in helicopters. The revolution was in the simplicity of the design. I visualized the type of helicopter that I would want myself and how I would want to use it. A lot of helicopters required very, very little maintenance and one that was much lower in cost than existing helicopters. What Frank Robinson did was strip away everything that was unnecessary. The R-22 is so lightweight that it can run on an inexpensive piston engine, usually used in light airplanes. This is set to draw only 75% of its total power, making it very reliable and long-lasting without compromising performance. It can fly faster, travel further and carry more than any other in its class, earning it a unique place amongst helicopters. What has the Robinson got that no other helicopter has? Commercial success at this end of the market. We compare just the sheer numbers of aircraft that are delivered by Robinson, we're talking 17 a week. If we compare that with other turbine helicopters out there, we might be talking one up to maybe three a week. Frank Robinson has now sold 6,000 helicopters, R-22s and R-44s. That's an unbelievable record for this end of the market. No one else has come close to that volume of sales. It's affordable, it's reliable, it's efficient, it's fast, it's practical. It's about the first time a helicopter has been seriously practical as personal transport. The R-22 slashed the price of a helicopter to a quarter of what it was before. At just $185,000, it's the same price as a top-end Mercedes, and that's made flying possible for practically anyone. I designed it not as a trainer, but I designed it as a personal helicopter. But it's also turned out to be a good trainer. It produces a very good quality pilot. It's not necessarily the easiest helicopter to learn to fly, but as you learn to fly it, you're developing the best habits. The Robinson R-22 is today the most popular training aircraft for new pilots. This really is the marker stone of what the personal helicopter is going to be. Practical, reliable, efficient, easy, simple, just brilliant. Robinson helicopters now operate in over 60 countries around the globe, making it arguably one of the most ubiquitous helicopters ever. It's our second greatest helicopter. We've counted down nine incredible machines in our top-ten search to find the greatest ever helicopter. But which one gets first place? We're about to find out. In our search to find the greatest ever helicopter, we've gone through nine groundbreaking machines, all of them incredible helicopters, but none as revolutionary as our number one. Flown into battles the world over and immortalized in movies such as Apocalypse Now, it's nearly 50 years old and it is the icon of helicopters. It's the Bell UH-1. There is no other helicopter that is as recognizable as the Huey. If you think helicopter, most people will instantly have a vision of the UH-1. The Huey, which of course is the UH-1, that's how it got its name, was the archetypal Vietnam helicopter. The Huey is the machine that we rode to war. It took us in and brought us back safely. The UH-1 first appeared in Vietnam in 1963. From an initial order of 60 helicopters, the U.S. Army went on to deploy over 7,000. My name is Steve Vermillion. I'm a retired Army officer after 26 years. My role on the UH-1 was initially as a co-pilot in Vietnam and then an aircraft commander. My name is Burl Dooley and I was a door gunner on the UH-1 in Vietnam in 1963. My training as a door gunner consisted of giving me an M2 carbine, flying out over the Mekong River and putting some bullets into the river. And then I was a trained door gunner. What is impressive for me about the Huey is that you can do anything with it. It's like a flying truck. It was built around an open box and so you can take the doors off and you can put anything that you like inside a Huey. And that made it hugely versatile when it was operating in Vietnam and other battle conditions. The Huey was the first mass-produced helicopter with a turbine engine. This nearly doubled the speed it could fly at and meant it could lift nearly twice as much payload. The Huey was very simplistic in design but it was a very rugged helicopter. In Vietnam, the U.S. Army lost only one helicopter for every 8,000 missions that were flown during the conflict. The Huey's toughness is legendary. The UH-1 took a lot of damage and would keep on flying. You could take multiple hits in the rotor system, the fuselage. Unless it hit a major structural component, it would just keep flying. The feeling everyone had is something bad always happened to the other person, never happened to you. When you get out of the helicopter and you begin to inspect it, then you start seeing where the holes and exit points were. You say, damn, that was within about an inch of my head. That's real close. But here again, big sky, little bullet concept. They have to hit you to kill you. Probably the most iconic of the Huey's features is its sound. The quick answer is it sounds like the sound of freedom. The noise from the UH-1 dominantly comes because of its two-bladed rotor. Those are really almost shockwaves that are coming off there. Today, helicopters are built to be a little more friendly. They make them quieter, they design the blades so that there's not near as much noise. The Huey was really designed and built in the 1950s. Back then, the evolution of the helicopter was still fairly new. They hadn't really designed the blade to be quiet. They just designed the thing to fly. Back in Vietnam, the troops could hear it coming from miles away and know that some form of aid or support was coming to them. Anytime I hear that wop-wop, it just says, there's my brother flying. Today, the greatest ever is giving Steve and Burl the chance to fly once again in a UH-1. This one looks in a lot better shape than the last couple I flew. It doesn't have bullet holes in it, all the parts are on it. That's good. That's great. The last time I flew a Huey was 20 years ago. To be able to fly it today will be a special thrill. It's a coming home. It's like when I quit flying the Huey, I lost a family member. And now I'm being rejoined with a family member. Now, for the first time in 20 years, Steve gets his chance to take the controls. Okay, I got the controls again. Thank you. Oh yeah, this feels great. You know, it's the sights and the sounds and the smell. It brings back negative memories, it brings back positive memories. And being bonded once again between man and machine. The terrain we're flying over is very similar to some of the stuff we were flying over in Vietnam. It brings back a lot of memories. As a door gunner, I'd really be concentrating right out here and to the back of the helicopter. And that's where I'm going to receive fire if I receive it at all. Even after 42 years, it all comes back. I think I could still do a pretty good job as a door gunner if I had to. The Huey is, of all these helicopters, the greatest of all time. The Huey is a classic, and I think it always will be. What's the most remarkable thing about the UH-1? It's longevity, it's simplicity, and probably the people who flew it. I didn't expect to be back in a Huey again. The helicopter is great. It can do any job assigned to it. And it's very, very, it's an outstanding helicopter. If I were reactivated today and sent to Iraq, I'd like to have a Huey. With a lifespan of 50 years and counting, the Huey has prevailed in conflict, been immortalized in movies, and embraced in the hearts and minds of those who've flown it. It is the greatest ever helicopter.