Fast Cat: The Story of the Westland Lynx Helicopter

Few helicopters have packed as much into one career as the Westland Lynx. It was the fastest helicopter in the world, and by the rules of the record books it still is. It could loop the loop.

It hunted submarines and tanks, fired the first Sea Skua missiles ever launched in anger, helped cripple the Iraqi navy in 1991, chased drug smugglers across the Caribbean and kept watch over the Falklands. It served the Royal Navy for forty-one years and the Army for almost forty, and it flew with well over a dozen air arms from Norway to South Korea.

It was also, unlike many of its contemporaries, a thoroughly British design. It was drawn up at Yeovil in Somerset, built there, and powered by British engines, even if a Frenchman or two had a hand in the paperwork. Small, quick, agile and a little bit feisty, it was well named.

This is the Lynx's story: where it came from, how it worked, its marks and specifications, its wars and its records, the foreign navies and armies that flew it, and its long farewell.

Every fact has been checked against at least two independent sources, among them Leonardo (Westland's successor), the Royal Aeronautical Society, the Helicopter Museum, the Royal Navy and the Army, the Ministry of Defence, the London Gazette, Hansard and the specialist aviation press. Where respected sources disagree, we say so rather than pick a number and hope.

Westland Lynx at a Glance

What it is: a twin-engined, four-bladed British military helicopter, built by Westland Helicopters at Yeovil in naval and battlefield versions. First flight: 21 March 1971. In British service: Royal Navy from 1976 to March 2017, Army Air Corps from 1978 (first deliveries 1977) to January 2018. Built: more than 400 of all versions; published totals run from "almost 400" to "over 450". Famous for: the helicopter world speed record of 400.87 km/h (249.09 mph), set on 11 August 1986 and still unbeaten in its class. Replaced by: the AW159 Wildcat, its direct descendant.

A Squad Carrier on the Drawing Board, 1962 to 1967

The Lynx began, as many good things do, as a sketch nobody had asked for. In the early 1960s Westland's Future Projects team, working under Reg Austin with the company's research director Raoul Hafner looking over their shoulders, began studying a tactical helicopter that could carry a squad of soldiers for the Army Air Corps.

The Royal Aeronautical Society's history of the project dates the studies to 1962; other accounts say design work began in 1963 or 1964. Either way, an earlier Westland study, the WG.3, supplied many of the ideas, and the new design took the project number WG.13.

The Army wanted something to succeed the Westland Scout, and the Royal Navy, which flew the Scout's naval sister, the Wasp, from the back of its frigates, soon realised it wanted one too. A joint Army and Navy requirement followed in 1966. That dual parentage is the key to the whole story.

From the start the WG.13 had to be tough enough for a muddy field in Germany and clever enough to land on a pitching deck in the North Atlantic.

One of Three: The Anglo-French Helicopter Deal

In January 1967 the British and French governments reached an agreement to share the development of three helicopters. The French firm Sud Aviation (later Aérospatiale) would lead two of them: the SA330, which became the Puma, and the SA340, which became the Gazelle. Westland would lead the third, the WG.13.

Hansard records the minister, John Stonehouse, announcing the deal to Parliament on 23 January 1967, and the two governments formally endorsed it in 1968.

On the Lynx, Westland took 70 per cent of the work and its French partner 30 per cent. France meant to buy naval Lynx and an armed version for its army. The army order was cancelled on grounds of cost in 1969, but the French Navy stayed loyal to the type for half a century.

Of the three helicopters in the deal, the Lynx was the only one designed on the British side of the Channel, which Westland's engineers were probably too polite to mention more than once a day.

Five Colours and a First Flight, 1971

The first Lynx, XW835, flew at Yeovil on 21 March 1971. Westland's chief test pilot, Ron Gellatly, was at the controls, with his deputy Roy Moxam beside him and Dave Gibbings as flight test engineer.

It made two short hops that day, of about ten and twenty minutes, which is modest, but every legend has to start somewhere.

XW835 was painted bright yellow, and its sisters were decked out like a packet of fruit pastilles: XW836 grey, XW837 red, XW838 blue and XW839 orange. The colours helped observers tell the development aircraft apart in the air.

XW839 survives at the Helicopter Museum at Weston-super-Mare, where it is described as the oldest complete original Lynx in existence.

The new helicopter did not take long to show off. On 20 June 1972 Roy Moxam and flight test engineer Michael Ball flew Lynx XX153 over a 15 to 25 kilometre course at 321.74 km/h (199.92 mph), a world record for helicopters of its weight class, and two days later set another over a 100 kilometre closed circuit.

XX153 is now at the Army Flying Museum at Middle Wallop. The Lynx, it turned out, liked going fast. It would do so again.

The Secret Is in the Head: Titanium, Gems and Loops

What made the Lynx special was the bit you could not easily see, the rotor head. Most helicopters of its day used fully articulated rotors, in which each blade hangs off a collection of hinges and bearings. The Lynx used a semi-rigid, or hingeless, design.

Its production "Monobloc" head was forged from a single block of titanium, with the flexing done by the metal itself rather than by hinges. It had fewer parts to wear out, and it transmitted the pilot's commands to the blades almost instantly.

That stiffness gave the Lynx astonishing agility. It is fully aerobatic: it can loop and roll, and in the hands of the Army's Blue Eagles display team it even performed backflips. The Helicopter Museum records that the naval prototype XX910 flew a complete loop on 28 August 1976.

It was not the world's only aerobatic helicopter, whatever you may hear in the bar, but few large military helicopters have been quite so happy upside down.

The power came from two Rolls-Royce Gem turboshafts. The engine began life at de Havilland and Bristol Siddeley as the BS.360 and became the Gem after Rolls-Royce bought Bristol Siddeley in 1966. Early Gems gave about 900 shaft horsepower each; later versions gave around 1,100 or more.

The gearbox used Westland's compact "conformal" gearing, which let the whole transmission sit low and neat above the cabin.

The naval Lynx had tricks of its own. It had folding blades and a folding tail so that it could squeeze into a frigate's hangar.

For landing on a heaving deck in foul weather, the pilot put the rotors into negative pitch, pressing the helicopter firmly on to the deck, and fired a hydraulic harpoon from its belly into a steel grid on the flight deck, where it locked the aircraft down. In a Force 8, that harpoon is the difference between a landing and a very expensive swim.

Into Service With the Royal Navy, 1976

The Royal Navy had the Lynx first. On 1 September 1976, 700L Naval Air Squadron was commissioned at RNAS Yeovilton as the Lynx Intensive Flying Trials Unit. It was a joint unit, with Royal Netherlands Navy crews and Dutch Lynx flying alongside the British aircraft.

In 1978 it became 702 Naval Air Squadron, the Lynx training squadron, and by the early 1980s 815 Naval Air Squadron was the parent squadron for the Lynx flights embarked in the Navy's frigates and destroyers.

The first naval version was the HAS2. Its job was to extend the eyes and the reach of the ship that carried it.

It could carry torpedoes and depth charges against submarines, it could search the surface with its Ferranti Sea Spray radar, and from the early 1980s it could attack ships with the new British Aerospace Sea Skua missile. Each ship's Lynx and its small team of aircrew and engineers was known as a "flight", and the Navy eventually had dozens of them.

Between prototypes and production aircraft, the Royal Navy received around 90 maritime Lynx, the last of them, ZF563, delivered in 1988. Remember that serial number. It will turn up again at the end.

Into Service With the Army, 1977 to 1978

The Army's version, the Lynx AH1, sat on skids rather than wheels and had no need of harpoons or folding tails. Deliveries began in 1977 and 1978; sources differ on the exact month, and the Army's own later histories simply say it entered service in 1978.

The first aircraft went to squadrons in West Germany, which tells you everything about what they were for. Westland built 113 AH1s for the Army between 1977 and 1984, and the Army eventually received about 140 Lynx of all marks.

For the soldiers it replaced the little Scout, and it was a revelation: faster, more powerful, able to carry up to nine troops or an underslung load, and much safer with two engines than one.

Tank Hunters: TOW on the North German Plain

The Lynx's main Cold War task with the British Army of the Rhine was to kill tanks. The AH1 could be fitted with eight Hughes TOW wire-guided anti-tank missiles in four twin launchers, aimed through a sight mounted on the cabin roof.

In the event of a Warsaw Pact invasion, the idea was that TOW Lynx, working with Gazelles scouting ahead, would pop up from behind woods and hedgerows, fire at the advancing armour and duck back down before anyone fired back. It was a nerve-racking way to earn a living, and thankfully it was never tested on the North German Plain.

The Army's Lynx took over the anti-tank role from the TOW-armed Scout, and the combination of a fast, agile helicopter and a long-range missile gave NATO commanders a mobile reserve that could be switched across the battlefield in minutes. The Royal Marines had Lynx too. 3 Commando Brigade Air Squadron flew Army-standard Lynx and Gazelles, and when it became 847 Naval Air Squadron on 1 September 1995 it kept them.

Hunting at Sea: The Naval Lynx in the Cold War

At sea, the Lynx was the long arm of the frigate. A ship's sonar could hear a submarine a long way off, but the ship itself could not always reach it quickly. The Lynx could. It flew out, dropped a homing torpedo on the contact and came home for tea.

Against surface ships it used its radar to find targets far beyond the horizon, and, once Sea Skua arrived, it could attack small warships and fast attack craft on its own, well outside the range of their guns.

The Lynx flew from the Navy's Type 21 frigates, the Type 22 frigates such as HMS Beaver, and the Type 42 destroyers such as HMS Glasgow, seen here with her Lynx over the forecastle, and later from the Type 23s. It made the smallest frigate a far more dangerous opponent.

South Georgia, April 1982: The Santa Fe

The Lynx's first real war came in the South Atlantic in 1982. Some two dozen Lynx HAS2s of 815 Naval Air Squadron sailed south with the task force; the Helicopter Museum counts 23 and other histories 24.

The first action came at South Georgia on 25 April 1982. The Argentine submarine Santa Fe was on the surface near Grytviken when a Wessex from HMS Antrim, flown by Lieutenant Commander Ian Stanley, caught her and bracketed her with depth charges, damaging her so badly she could no longer dive.

Two Lynx from HMS Brilliant, XZ725 and XZ729, joined the attack. One dropped a torpedo, which ran harmlessly beneath the surfaced submarine, and both raked her with their door-mounted machine guns. Wasps from HMS Endurance and HMS Plymouth then hit her fin with AS.12 missiles.

The Santa Fe limped back into Grytviken and was abandoned alongside the jetty, and the Argentine garrison surrendered later that day.

It is often said that Brilliant's Lynx sank the Santa Fe. It did not: the crippling blow came from the Wessex, and the submarine was never sunk in action at all. But the Lynx was there and in the thick of it. XZ725 is today a main exhibit at the Falkland Islands Museum in Stanley.

Sea Skua's First Blood, 3 May 1982

Sea Skua was so new in 1982 that it was still unproven. That did not stop the Navy using it. In the early hours of 3 May, a contact was detected north of the Falklands, and two Lynx were sent to investigate: XZ242 from HMS Coventry, and XZ247 from HMS Glasgow. The target was the Argentine patrol ship ARA Alférez Sobral.

Coventry's Lynx fired two Sea Skuas first, the first ever fired in combat. Glasgow's Lynx fired two more about twenty minutes later. Accounts differ on exactly which missiles hit what, but at least one struck the bridge and wrecked it.

The Alférez Sobral's captain, Capitán de Corbeta Sergio Gómez Roca, and seven of his crew were killed. The ship did not sink, as was believed at the time; she limped into Puerto Deseado on 5 May. It was a grim debut, and it proved that a small helicopter could now land a knockout punch on a warship.

The Lynx also went where the fighting was thickest. XZ720, flying from HMS Alacrity, was hit by fire from an Argentine gunboat, with a bullet passing through the pilot's windscreen; the pilot, Lieutenant Rob Sleeman, lived to fly another day. So did XZ720, as we shall see.

Losses, and a Lynx on the Other Side

Three British Lynx were lost in the Falklands, all within five days and none of them in the air. XZ251 went down with HMS Ardent on 21 May, XZ242, the Lynx that had fired the first Sea Skua, was still lashed to Coventry's deck when she sank on 25 May, and XZ700 was destroyed aboard the container ship Atlantic Conveyor when an Exocet struck her the same day.

And then there is the irony. Argentina flew the Lynx too. Two Lynx HAS23s had been delivered in 1978 for its British-built Type 42 destroyers, with more on order before the war stopped the deliveries. Both flew during the invasion of the Falklands on 2 April 1982.

One was lost at sea after an engine failure in May, with all three crew escaping; Argentine accounts put the date at 15 May, though one source gives 2 May. The other suffered an engine failure on 22 May, landed safely and never flew again for want of spare parts, which, given who made them, is hardly surprising.

Bandit Country: The Lynx in Northern Ireland

Closer to home, the Army's Lynx spent years flying over South Armagh during Operation Banner. From the mid-1970s the threat from roadside bombs and ambushes was so great that most military movement in the area went by air, and Bessbrook Mill became the main helicopter base, often called the busiest heliport in Europe.

Lynx carried troops, patrols and supplies to the border bases and watchtowers.

It was not a safe place to fly. On 23 June 1988 an IRA unit brought down an Army Lynx with heavy machine-gun fire near Crossmaglen; the pilot managed a crash-landing in a field, and only one soldier was slightly hurt.

Bessbrook's helicopters flew on regardless, and many Army Air Corps crews learned their trade in the skies over the border.

The Fastest Helicopter in the World, 1986

On 11 August 1986, Westland's chief test pilot Trevor Egginton and flight test engineer Derek Clews took a specially modified Lynx, registered G-LYNX, over a 15 kilometre course across the Somerset Levels near Glastonbury, running at about 500 feet between East Huntspill and Hartlake Bridge.

Their average speed was 400.87 km/h, or 249.09 mph, beating the previous record of about 368 km/h set by a Soviet Mil Mi-24 variant in 1978.

G-LYNX was not quite a standard aircraft. It had the new British Experimental Rotor Programme (BERP) blades, developed by Westland and the Royal Aircraft Establishment, whose distinctive paddle-shaped tips let the blades go faster before the air around them misbehaved.

It had two uprated Gem 60 engines with water-methanol injection, exhausts turned to push rearwards, and the gearbox and a twin-finned tailplane from the larger Westland 30. Anything that stuck out, from steps to windscreen wipers, was removed.

The Royal Aeronautical Society notes that the tips of the advancing blades reached Mach 0.97, only a whisker short of the speed of sound.

Forty years on, the record still stands. Experimental compound helicopters with extra propellers, such as the Sikorsky X2 in 2010 and the Eurocopter X3 in 2013, have flown faster, but they are not conventional helicopters and their speeds are not recognised in the same record class.

The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale and Guinness World Records both still list 400.87 km/h as the official helicopter speed record. G-LYNX itself is on display at the Helicopter Museum in Weston-super-Mare, restored to its record-breaking colours, and the BERP blades went on to fly on production Lynx and on the Merlin.

From AH1 to HMA8: The Many Marks of Lynx

The Lynx went through several major versions in British service. The Army's marks were these:

AH1: the original Army version, on skids, with Gem 2 engines of about 900 shp and provision for eight TOW missiles. AH5: an interim version with uprated Gem 41 engines and transmission, built only in small numbers (four or five, depending on the source) for trials. AH7: the main Army standard, with a tail rotor turning the opposite way, borrowed from the Westland 30.

It had a strengthened airframe and better avionics and defensive aids, and most AH1s were brought up to this standard. AH9: the "Battlefield Lynx", with wheels instead of skids and no TOW, for moving troops and command teams. Sixteen were built new and eight converted. AH9A: 22 AH9s re-engined with LHTEC CTS800-4N engines, giving about 37 per cent more power, for Afghanistan.

The Navy's marks were these:

HAS2: the first naval version, with Gem 2 engines. HAS3: uprated Gem 41-1 engines and gearbox, with further sub-versions such as the HAS3GM "Gulf Mod", which had improved electronic warfare equipment. HMA8: the final naval Lynx, converted from earlier aircraft from the 1990s onwards.

It had a new, deeper nose with the Sea Spray radar moved into a chin radome, a turret-mounted Sea Owl thermal imager, BERP-type blades, the reversed tail rotor and a maximum weight raised to 5,330 kg. With its bulbous chin it looked rather like a Lynx that had just eaten a large lunch.

There was also the Lynx 3, a stretched anti-tank and multi-role version with Gem 60 engines, which first flew on 14 June 1984. Only one was built, ZE477, as no orders came, and it too survives at the Helicopter Museum.

For export, Westland developed the Super Lynx, and later the Super Lynx 300 with a glass cockpit and CTS800 engines, which kept the family selling well into the 21st century.

Westland Lynx Specifications

Figures vary by mark and by source, so these are the most widely agreed. Crew: two pilots for the Army, often with a door gunner in later years; pilot and observer for the Navy, often with a third crewman. Main rotor: four blades, 12.80 metres (42 feet) in diameter. Length: about 15.2 metres (50 feet) with the rotors turning. Maximum take-off weight: about 4,875 kg for the AH7, rising to 5,330 kg for the AH9A and HMA8. Engines: two Rolls-Royce Gem turboshafts of 900 to about 1,135 shp each, or on the AH9A, two LHTEC CTS800-4N engines of about 1,360 shp each. Top speed: about 175 knots (201 mph) for the later marks; the record-breaking G-LYNX reached 249 mph. Range: roughly 320 to 330 miles on internal fuel. Service ceiling: about 10,600 feet. Load: up to nine troops, or an underslung load of 1,360 kg.

Weapons (Army): eight TOW anti-tank missiles, and door-mounted 7.62 mm general purpose machine guns, miniguns or the 12.7 mm M3M heavy machine gun. Weapons (Navy): up to four Sea Skua anti-ship missiles, two homing torpedoes such as the Stingray, or depth charges, and an M3M door gun. Later HMA8s also carried missile warners, infrared jammers and flares.

The Gulf, 1991: The Lynx Sinks a Navy

If the Falklands was the Lynx's debut, the Gulf War of 1991 was its finest hour. Lynx flights from the destroyers HMS Gloucester, HMS Cardiff and HMS Manchester and the frigate HMS Brazen spent the war hunting Iraqi patrol boats and minesweepers in the northern Gulf, and what they did there is set down in the London Gazette's awards of 29 June 1991, which make remarkable reading.

On 29 January 1991, Lieutenant Commander Michael Pearey, flight commander of HMS Brazen, found a force of 17 Iraqi vessels heading south, apparently to support the Iraqi attack on Khafji. He called in Gloucester's Lynx, and they were attacked and destroyed; he flew eight hours at low level that day.

The same day, Lieutenant Phillip Needham destroyed a landing craft, which the Gazette calls "the first sinking by a Royal Navy unit in the conflict", and went on to destroy a TNC 45 fast attack craft, a minelayer and two patrol craft in later attacks. (Other histories credit Cardiff's Lynx with sinking two Iraqi minesweepers on 24 January; the two accounts have never been fully reconciled.)

The star was Gloucester's Lynx, XZ720, the same aircraft that had taken a bullet through the windscreen over the Falklands nine years earlier. On 30 January her pilot, Lieutenant Commander David Livingstone, flew four sorties in nine hours, attacking targets up to 120 miles from his ship.

The Gazette credits him with destroying seven enemy craft over the campaign, including three Exocet-capable TNC 45s in the Battle of Bubiyan, and he flew 360 hours between September 1990 and March 1991. Both he and Pearey were awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, as was Needham.

XZ720 is now in the Fleet Air Arm Museum at Yeovilton, handed over on 26 April 2012 as the highest-scoring Lynx of the war.

Exactly how many Iraqi vessels the Lynx and Sea Skua accounted for depends on whom you ask. On 31 January the Government told the House of Lords that ten Iraqi patrol boats and minesweepers had been sunk and up to 25 damaged, with Royal Navy Lynx and RAF Jaguars playing an important role.

Later tallies range from "12 fired and 12 hits" in Navy material to 25 fired and 18 hits in independent analysis. What nobody disputes is that Lynx and Sea Skua crippled much of the Iraqi navy, and that a good share of the credit belongs to four small helicopters and their crews.

Bosnia, Sierra Leone and Operation Barras

Through the 1990s the Army's Lynx served with the United Nations and then NATO in Bosnia, and they went with British forces to Sierra Leone in 2000. There, on 10 September 2000, they took part in one of the most daring British operations of modern times.

Operation Barras was the rescue of British soldiers held hostage by the "West Side Boys" militia in the jungle near Freetown. According to the National Army Museum, Army Lynx gave fire support as RAF Chinooks landed the assault troops.

Sources disagree on whether two or three Lynx took part, but they agree that the Lynx led the way in, with their door guns suppressing the militia's positions. The hostages were all rescued.

Iraq, 2003 to 2007

When British forces went into Iraq in March 2003, the Lynx went with them. Army and Commando Helicopter Force Lynx AH7s, working with Gazelles, used their TOW missiles against Iraqi tanks and positions around Basra and on the Al Faw peninsula.

For the next four years Lynx supported British troops in and around Basra, carrying patrols, flying reconnaissance and escorting larger helicopters.

The most terrible day came on 6 May 2006, when Lynx AH7 XZ614 of 847 Naval Air Squadron was shot down over Basra City. All five on board were killed: Wing Commander John Coxen, Lieutenant Commander Darren Chapman, Flight Lieutenant Sarah-Jayne Mulvihill, Captain David Dobson and Marine Paul Collins.

The Board of Inquiry found that the aircraft had been hit by a shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile. Flight Lieutenant Mulvihill was widely reported as the first British servicewoman to be killed by enemy action abroad since the Second World War.

Drugs, Pirates and Hostages: The Navy's Lynx at Sea

For the Navy, the 2000s were the era of the long watch: patrols in the Gulf, the Caribbean and the South Atlantic, where a single frigate or destroyer and its Lynx might be the only British warship for thousands of miles.

On 23 March 2007, fifteen sailors and Royal Marines from HMS Cornwall were seized by Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats in the northern Gulf after inspecting a merchant ship. Cornwall's Lynx had been providing what the ship's commodore called "top cover" during the first part of the operation; contact was lost at 0910 and the Lynx returned to the scene, but the boarding party had already been taken.

They were released on 4 April. The Royal United Services Institute later noted that no report from the Lynx crew was ever published.

In the Caribbean, the Lynx became the scourge of the drug runners. On 28 June 2008, only four days after arriving on station, HMS Iron Duke's Lynx found a 50-foot speedboat several hundred miles north-east of Barbados and ordered it to stop.

A US Coast Guard team from the ship seized about 900 kg of cocaine and arrested five men. The haul was valued at about £40 million (one report says £50 million), and among the Lynx crew that day was a certain Prince William, on attachment to the Navy.

Frigates such as HMS Argyll made the same trade their speciality, and on 14 August 2013 HMS Lancaster's Lynx and boarding team intercepted a speedboat near Puerto Rico carrying 680 kg of cocaine, which the Ministry of Defence valued at £100 million. It was her third seizure in three weeks.

The Falklands never quite stopped needing the Lynx either. Destroyers and frigates took turns as the South Atlantic patrol ship, and their Lynx flew over waters that the older hands in the crews still remembered from 1982.

Hot and High: Afghanistan and the AH9A

Afghanistan exposed the Lynx's one real weakness. The AH7 and AH9 were superb in the cool, damp air of northern Europe, but in the heat and altitude of a Helmand summer their Gem engines simply ran out of breath.

Crews trained hard for it, flying Lynx Mk7s over the mountains of southern France on Exercise Gadfly in 2007, but by the late 2000s the Army's Lynx could do little useful work in Afghanistan for much of the year.

The answer was the AH9A. Twenty-two AH9s were fitted with the LHTEC CTS800-4N engines under urgent operational requirement contracts in 2008 and 2010, giving about 37 per cent more power, and in hot and high conditions much more usable performance than that.

The first AH9As were flown out to Camp Bastion by C-17 and were at work by the spring of 2010, able to fly all year round. Armed with the M3M heavy machine gun and carrying the MX-10 camera, they escorted Chinooks and Sea Kings, flew reconnaissance and carried troops, as in our prints of an AH9A over Helmand in July 2010, an AH9A lifting off with riflemen of 1 Rifles in 2011 and an Army Lynx escorting a Sea King over Afghanistan in 2011.

The Lynx's worst loss in Afghanistan came late. On 26 April 2014, Lynx AH9A ZF540 crashed about 20 kilometres south of Kandahar Airfield, killing all five on board: Captain Thomas Clarke, Flight Lieutenant Rakesh Chauhan, Warrant Officer Class 2 Spencer Faulkner, Corporal James Walters and Lance Corporal Oliver Thomas.

The Service Inquiry, published in July 2015, ruled out enemy action and found that the aircraft had flown into the ground during a training sortie.

Black Cats and Blue Eagles: The Lynx on Display

If you went to an air show in Britain between the late 1970s and the 2010s, you probably saw a Lynx doing something a helicopter has no business doing. The Army's display team, the Blue Eagles, was formed in 1968 with Sioux helicopters.

In 1982, the Army Air Corps' 25th anniversary year, it flew six Lynx AH1s and a solo Lynx, and for many years afterwards a lone Lynx flew alongside the team's Gazelles, looping, rolling and backflipping to the delight of the crowds.

The Royal Navy's pair began in 2001 as the "Lynx Pair" and became the Black Cats in 2004, taking their name from the black cat on the badge of 702 Naval Air Squadron. Our print of the Black Cats' Lynx pair shows them climbing away from RAF Fairford in 2009.

In 2014 the Black Cats flew one Lynx and one Wildcat, and from 2015 Wildcats only.

The Navy's Farewell, 2014 to 2017

The Lynx worked right to the end. In January 2014 the Lynx from the frigate HMS Montrose was flying escort duties in the Mediterranean on Operation RECSYR, the mission to carry Syria's chemical weapons away for destruction.

Early in March 2017, 208 Flight in HMS Portland fired the last Sea Skuas ever launched from a Lynx, in the mid-Atlantic north of the Azores, before coming home on 10 March after nine months away.

On 17 March 2017 four Lynx HMA8s of 815 Naval Air Squadron made a five-hour farewell tour of southern England. On 23 March the Lynx was formally decommissioned at RNAS Yeovilton, after which the Fleet Commander, Vice Admiral Ben Key, a former Lynx observer, flew in ZF563, the last Lynx ever delivered to the Navy, out to HMS Ocean off Cornwall to make the Lynx's final deck landing.

The type was officially withdrawn on 31 March 2017, after 41 years of Royal Navy service.

The Army's Farewell, 2015 to 2018

The Army said goodbye in stages. The AH7 retired on 31 July 2015, when the last six flew past Army headquarters at Andover and returned to Middle Wallop in the shape of a figure 7. The AH9A soldiered on with 657 Squadron at RAF Odiham, the last Lynx of any kind in British military service.

On 16 January 2018, four AH9As, call sign "Valhalla", flew a farewell tour across southern England, the Midlands and East Anglia, ending with a run along the Thames through London at 800 feet. The lead aircraft, ZG917, wore special markings for 657 Squadron's 75th anniversary and was flown by the squadron's commanding officer, Major James Peycke; it went on to the Army Flying Museum.

The last two Lynx landed at Middle Wallop later that month, and with that nearly forty years of Army Lynx flying, and all British military Lynx flying, came to an end.

Around the World: Europe's Lynx

The Lynx sold well abroad, especially to navies, and in Europe it became almost the standard frigate helicopter.

France took 40 Lynx for the Aéronavale from the late 1970s. They served for more than forty years, and French accounts list operations in Lebanon in 1982, in the Gulf War in 1991, in the Balkans, and over Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, and they protected France's ballistic-missile submarines as they went to sea.

The last French Lynx were withdrawn on 4 September 2020 at Lanvéoc-Poulmic in Brittany, replaced by the NH90 Caïman. By then they were costing a small fortune to keep flying, and fewer than one in six was available on any given day, which was a sad end for an aircraft that had served so well.

The Netherlands, which had shared the Lynx trials unit with the Royal Navy, took 24 Lynx in three batches from 1977, for search and rescue, anti-submarine work and submarine detection. They were later brought to a common SH-14D standard, flew more than 160,000 hours, and made their final flight on 11 September 2012 at De Kooy, having finished their operational career fighting piracy off Somalia.

Germany bought 19 Sea Lynx Mk88 from 1981 for its Bremen-class frigates, and later seven new Super Lynx Mk88A, bringing its fleet to 22. The Sea Lynx flew against Somali pirates with the European Union's Operation Atalanta, carrying boarding teams and providing top cover.

In June 2014 cracks were found in the tail of one aircraft, then in 15 of the 22, and the whole fleet was grounded, only returning to full capability in January 2017. Its finest late moment came in the Red Sea on 21 March 2024, when a Sea Lynx from the frigate Hessen destroyed a Houthi drone boat.

The German Navy is retiring its Sea Lynx at the end of 2026, replacing them with the NH90 Sea Tiger, and in August 2026 it sent them on an "End of an Era" farewell tour.

Denmark took eight Lynx from 1980 for its inspection ships, patrolling around Greenland and the Faroe Islands, and later had them rebuilt to Super Lynx standard.

The Danish Lynx flew its last flight on 15 December 2017, after 37 years and 77,958 flying hours, and was replaced by the MH-60R Seahawk. Norway flew six Lynx Mk86 for its Coast Guard with 337 Squadron at Bardufoss, north of the Arctic Circle. The last Norwegian Lynx landing was on the Coast Guard ship Svalbard on 7 December 2014, and service formally ended on 31 December 2014.

Super Lynx: From Brazil to Seoul

Further afield, the Lynx and Super Lynx found customers on almost every continent.

Brazil has flown the Lynx from its frigates for decades. In 2014 Leonardo won a contract worth about US$160 million to upgrade eight Brazilian Super Lynx to Mk21B standard, known locally as the AH-11B "Wild Lynx", with CTS800 engines, a night-vision compatible glass cockpit and new sensors.

The first flew at Yeovil in September 2017, and the upgraded aircraft are intended for Brazil's new Tamandaré-class frigates.

Portugal bought five Super Lynx Mk95 in 1993 for its Vasco da Gama-class frigates. They enforced the United Nations embargo on the former Yugoslavia, evacuated civilians from Guinea-Bissau in 1998, served off East Timor in 1999 and 2000, and fought piracy off Somalia.

All five were upgraded to Mk95A standard, the first returning to Portugal in July 2021, and they are planned to serve into the 2030s. In September 2026 a Portuguese Lynx fired a torpedo during NATO's REPMUS exercise.

South Korea became one of the biggest Lynx users, taking 12 Super Lynx Mk99 from 1990 and 13 Mk99A from 1999. In September 2026 it still had 22 in service, and Seoul approved funding that month to replace them with MH-60R Seahawks by 2032. Korea also bought eight AW159 Wildcats, delivered in 2016.

The Super Lynx 300, with its glass cockpit and CTS800 engines, sold to Malaysia (six, delivered 2003 to 2004, the first export customer), Thailand (two, in service from 2005), Oman (16, the largest order, flown by the Royal Air Force of Oman from 2004), South Africa (four, flown by the South African Air Force from the Navy's Valour-class frigates since 2007) and Algeria (ten in two orders, from 2010).

The Lynx even went into police service: Qatar took three Lynx Mk28s in 1978, and one of them, QP-31, is now at the Newark Air Museum.

Who Still Flies the Lynx in 2026?

In September 2026, 55 years after XW835 first lifted off at Yeovil, the Lynx is still at work in Germany (for a few more months), South Korea, Brazil, Portugal, Malaysia, Algeria and South Africa, and very likely in Oman and Thailand too. Malaysia lost one of its aircraft in a ditching off Melaka on New Year's Eve 2025, when all four crew survived.

The oldest airframe lines still flying are Germany's Sea Lynx and South Korea's Mk99A, and both are now in their final years. Britain has not flown a military Lynx since 2018, but the family lives on in its descendant.

The Wildcat: A Lynx With New Claws

The AW159 Wildcat, which replaced the Lynx in both the Army and the Navy, looks so like its parent that many people cannot tell them apart, and it is in effect a heavily re-engineered Lynx with CTS800 engines and a modern glass cockpit. It first flew on 12 November 2009.

Britain ordered 62, 34 for the Army and 28 for the Royal Navy, and it reached initial operating capability with the Army in August 2014 and the Navy in January 2015. It has been exported to South Korea and the Philippines.

Our prints of an Army Wildcat AH1 hovering in 2024 and a Royal Navy Wildcat of 815 Naval Air Squadron show the Lynx's successor at work today, still flying from Yeovilton and from the flight decks of the Navy's frigates and destroyers, and still, in the Black Cats tradition, happy to show off.

Where to See a Lynx Today

The Lynx is well represented in British museums. The Helicopter Museum at Weston-super-Mare has G-LYNX, the record breaker, along with the orange prototype XW839 and the one-off Lynx 3. The Fleet Air Arm Museum at Yeovilton has XZ720, the Falklands and Gulf War veteran.

The Army Flying Museum at Middle Wallop has XX153, which set the 1972 speed records, and ZG917, the leader of the Army's farewell formation. And in the South Atlantic, Brilliant's Lynx XZ725 is on display at the Falkland Islands Museum in Stanley, not far from where she fought.

Myths and Misunderstandings

"Brilliant's Lynx sank the submarine Santa Fe." It did not. The Wessex from HMS Antrim did the real damage with depth charges; the Lynx torpedo missed and the Lynx then strafed her. The Santa Fe was abandoned at Grytviken, not sunk in action.

"Sea Skua sank the Alférez Sobral." She was badly damaged and lost her captain and seven men, but she reached port.

"Britain lost Lynx in air combat over the Falklands." All three British Lynx lost in 1982 were destroyed aboard ships that were sunk.

"The Army's Lynx retired in July 2018." The AH7 retired in July 2015 and the last AH9As made their final flights in January 2018.

"The Lynx is no longer the fastest helicopter." Compound machines have flown faster, but G-LYNX's 400.87 km/h remains the official record for a conventional helicopter.

"South African Lynx rescued flood victims in Mozambique in 2000." South Africa did not receive its Lynx until 2007. Those famous rescues were flown by the SAAF's Oryx helicopters.

Frequently Asked Questions About the Westland Lynx

Is the Westland Lynx still the fastest helicopter? Yes, officially. G-LYNX's 400.87 km/h (249.09 mph) of 11 August 1986 is still the FAI world record for a conventional helicopter.

When did the Lynx leave British service? The Royal Navy retired its Lynx in March 2017 and the Army in January 2018.

What replaced the Lynx? The AW159 Wildcat, built by Leonardo (formerly AgustaWestland) at Yeovil.

How many Lynx were built? More than 400 of all versions; published totals range from "almost 400" to "over 450".

Can a Lynx loop the loop? Yes. Its semi-rigid titanium rotor head makes it fully aerobatic.

Why the Lynx Still Matters

The Lynx was that rare thing, a British aircraft that did everything it was asked, sold all over the world and broke a world record along the way.

It hunted tanks in Germany and submarines in the Atlantic, fired the first shots of a new kind of naval warfare in the South Atlantic, sank much of a navy in the Gulf, rescued hostages in Sierra Leone, chased smugglers in the Caribbean and flew through the heat of Helmand. Its crews loved it, its enemies learned to fear it, and it is still flying in 2026.

Our collection of Lynx helicopter prints follows the Lynx through its British career, including two AH9As of 9 Regiment over Cumbria in 2015, and every photograph in this article is available as a print, along with the rest of our Royal Navy helicopter prints and British Army aircraft prints. For the Lynx's big sister in the Fleet Air Arm, read our history of the Westland Sea King, and for the heavy lifter it escorted over Helmand, our history of the Chinook.

The Army that flew it is covered in our history of the British Army, and the Commandos it carried in our history of the Royal Marines Commandos.