Flight deck trials with the EHI Merlin HM.1 helicopter have been performed aboard the Royal Navy carrier HMS Invincible and the helicopter training ship HMS Argus, Commander Phil Shaw of the Royal Navy's 824 Squadron at RNAS Culdrose in Cornwall, said at a Farnborough briefing.

Shaw is the senior "hands-on" service pilot tasked with seeing the Merlin begin its operational naval career. The Merlin training squadron has now accrued some 2,000 hours of trials flying, he reported, either from Culdrose or embarked aboard ship. The first planned deployment aboard a Type 23 frigate, HMS Lancaster, will take place in the autumn. Deployment of a squadron aboard the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal will follow later.

Despite its far greater capability in both the anti-surface vessel (ASV) and anti-submarine warfare (ASW) role than the Sea King it replaces, the Merlin HM.1 has only a three-man crew, compared with the Sea King's four, unless a second pilot is taken along to assist in "particularly busy" operations, Shaw said.

Shaw made clear the great superiority of the Merlin over the "poor old Sea King." Its Blue Kestrel 5000 radar has easily tracked surface vessels close inshore on the distant French coast while flying over Somerset. The Merlin has at least three times the Sea King's effective radar range, while with their Thomson-Sintra FLASH dipping sonars two Merlins could effectively screen a "choke point" at the English Channel that would take a "fence" of sixteen other helicopters to do as effectively.

After emphasizing ASV capabilities, Shaw stressed that ASW abilities were still required despite the ending of the Cold War because of the possibility that a small nation with conventional submarines could still take out a capital ship with single torpedo. The Merlin improves on the Sea King in having an automatic sonar buoy dispensing system and better active and passive sonars, he said. It can monitor the same number of sonobuoys as a Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft, but with a 700-meter cable for its "dunking" sonar, was a far more effective hunter of deep-diving submarines.

Inevitably, even the most sophisticated helicopters get called into rough-and-ready unsophisticated military and mercy operations where vertical lift capability is essential. By simply "unplugging" units, the Merlin can be converted within two hours into an emergency trooper capable of carrying 12 heavily-equipped soldiers. Take out the observer and aircrewman's tailored stations and you could carry 20 lightly-equipped troops, yet return to normal duty with hours. Reconfiguring a Sea King similarly keeps it out of service for days, or even weeks.

Referring to RN operations such as the humanitarian airlift conducted recently off stricken Sierra Leone, Shaw said that Westland had proved that it was possible-just-to cram 53 people into a Merlin. As a "flying crane" it can carry a 5,000-pound load with "insignificant endurance loss" -- though with a 13,200-pound load endurance is "severely reduced."

By Bob Rodwell