Westland Wessex

Uncommon card · No. 148344

The Westland Wessex is an early turbine-powered helicopter produced by the British rotorcraft specialist Westland Aircraft (later Westland Helicopters). It was an under licence development of the piston-engined Sikorsky S-58. During the mid-1950s, Westland arranged with the American helicopter manufacturer Sikorsky Aircraft to demonstrate one of its S-58s in Britain to garner sales. Having secured an order from the Royal Navy (RN), Westland implemented several modifications to the S-58 design ahead of quantity production in the UK. One major change from Sikorsky's S-58 was the replacement of the piston-engine powerplant with a turboshaft engine; while early models were powered by a single Napier Gazelle engine, later builds used a pair of de Havilland Gnome engines. The use of a turboshaft engine was credited with increasing payload capacity while reducing both vibration and noise levels. The Wessex was first introduced by the RN in 1961; it was the service's first purpose-build anti-submarine...

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