I know that there were gyro-planes in the 30's and that the commercial helicopters were built by sometime in the 30's. But seeing a helicopter contemporary to the late 60's being used in a movie set in the 40's was jarring. I felt like I'd been dropped into an episode of M*A*S*H.
Does anyone know if the Germans or any WWII era military used helicopters. Not causally - routinely.
Full thread on the subject:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065207/board/thread/106248983
Why don't you read, comment and bring it up.
I too thought it a mistake but as another contributor points out, there was the Focke-Achgelis Fa 223 Drache helicopter however this was a large twin rotor design with a fabric covered fuselage of distinctly period appearance. What appears in the film is a Bell 47 (1946-). Grateful to Wikipedia for this information.
shareThe helicopter was introduced during 1942:
The Flettner Fl 282 Kolibri ("Hummingbird") is a single-seat open cockpit intermeshing rotor helicopter, or synchropter, produced by Anton Flettner of Germany. According to Yves Le Bec, the Flettner Fl 282 was the world's first series production helicopter.
The Fl 282 Kolibri was an improved version of the Flettner Fl 265 announced in July 1940, which pioneered the same intermeshing rotor configuration that the Kolibri used. It had a 7.7 litre displacement, seven-cylinder Siemens-Halske Sh 14 radial engine of 150-160 hp mounted in the center of the fuselage, with a transmission mounted on the front of the engine from which a drive shaft ran to an upper gearbox, which then split the power to a pair of opposite-rotation drive shafts to turn the rotors.(Wiki)( https://www.facebook.com/387650604758179/videos/472615309595041/ )