Word: vertol
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...workers and their communities hung on a single Army contract for a helicopter known as UTTAS (Utility Tactical Transport Aircraft System). In December the Army announced the winner: Sikorsky of Stratford, Conn., which stands to reap perhaps $4 billion in sales over the next ten years. The loser, Boeing Vertol in Ridley Township, Pa., a suburb of Philadelphia, must now contend with doubts about its survival as a primary aircraft maker. To gauge the impact of the biggest helicopter award in 20 years, TIME Correspondent Eileen Shields visited both plants. Her report...
Sikorsky's slogan was UTTAS HAS A U IN IT; Boeing Vertol's was WIN WITH UTTAS. Since March 1972, when the competition for the assault helicopter began, these phrases have turned up on bumper stickers, plant posters, windows of local bars and gas stations, and T shirts. The boosterism was understandable: both companies needed UTTAS desperately. As divisions of larger concerns -Sikorsky of United Technologies Corp., Vertol of Boeing Co.-neither publishes separate sales and profit figures, but it is scarcely any secret that both have been hurt badly by declining military orders for helicopters since...
...Vertol employed 13,900 people to make 30 helicopters a month; by last year employment had sunk to 5,500 and production to two aircraft a month. Sikorsky's employment plunged from 11,000 to 6,200 in the same period, and its plant in 1976 was working at only 22% of capacity; for the first time since it started manufacturing helicopters 37 years ago, the company did not have a single Government contract. As the companies' fortunes declined, so did those of the decaying industrial river valleys in which they are camped. Unemployment hovers at about...
...commercial use has climbed from 936 in 1960 to 2,390 today, the main lift in the industry's fortunes has come from Viet Nam. The Defense Department last year took 80% of the $875 million output of the seven major producers: Textron's Bell Helicopter, Boeing-Vertol, United Aircraft's Sikorsky Division, Kaman, Hughes Tool, Fairchild-Hiller and Brantly, which was acquired last week by Lear Jet Corp. This year the Pentagon will spend $1.3 billion for 3,156 choppers, absorb 90% of U.S. production...
...Paddies. Considering the exploits of the 1,800 copters already in Viet Nam, it is no wonder. Such choppers as Bell's ubiquitous UH-1B Huey and Vertol's 44-passenger Chinook are able not only to harry the elusive enemy with rocket and strafing attacks but to carry foot soldiers into battle at 150 m.p.h., eliminating bone-wearying marches through flooded paddies and jungles. Four $2,000,000 Sikorsky CH54A Skycranes, which look gawky but can haul 87 men or a field hospital under their bellies, have so far retrieved 100 downed aircraft-$37 million worth...