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Bell Helicopters


mustang

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Hi everyone, I’m looking at building the helicopter from the tv series M*A*S*H

 

I believe the helicopter was a Bell 47, I’m wanting to build this in 1:48.

 

There doesn’t seam to be many kit for this helicopter so I was looking at buying the Italeri Bell OH-13S Sioux Helicopter Kit 1:48

 

does anyone know what the differences are as they seam purity mush the same except for the fuel tanks and or course the stretchers. 
 

Thank you for any info on this. 

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The OH-13 is the military designation for the Bell 47.

 

the OH-13S was a military Bell 47G-3B,these are 3 Seaters as opposed to the H-13D which had 2 and was the medevac bird. Unsure which ones they used in the TV series it’s been a while since I last saw it.

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The actual helicopter used to film the series was a former US Navy TH-13L, denomination that replaced the original HTL-4 in 1968 (when the common designation system was implemented through all US services). This variant should be equivalent to the Bell 47D-1.

In any case this specific 47 is still around, with US civil registration N5167V, there are many pictures on the web and you can compare these with the content of the Italeri kit

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The old 1/35th scale MPC H-13 had the single flat fuel tank while the Monogram/Revell one had twin tanks. The Italeri 1/48 kit has the twin tanks. I don't know when the twin tanks were introduced but the flat tank was certainly used in the Korean War.  

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Thanks everyone for the info, I managed to find some photos showing both type's of fuel tanks.

 

The single tank seams to be more visual in the M*A*S*H tv series. 

 

But I did manage to find a twin fuel tank version from the Film version.

 

So I should be ok with the Italeri kit 

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On 11/8/2021 at 6:09 PM, Giorgio N said:

The actual helicopter used to film the series was a former US Navy TH-13L, denomination that replaced the original HTL-4 in 1968 (when the common designation system was implemented through all US services). This variant should be equivalent to the Bell 47D-1.

In any case this specific 47 is still around, with US civil registration N5167V, there are many pictures on the web and you can compare these with the content of the Italeri kit

Giorgio, I believe that the designation system changed back in 1962. Other than that, your dissertation was perfect.

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