ZE477. GREEN, SAND/BROWN

 

First Flight: 14 June 1984.

Purpose: Development airframe, Company Demonstrator. The private venture single prototype Lynx 3, ZE477, built by Westland at Yeovil in Somerset, married a stretched and thickened Lynx AH.1 fuselage to a crashworthy, wheeled, undercarriage and more powerful 1,260shp Rolls-Royce Gem 60-3/1 turboshaft engines. A low-set tail unit, with endplate fins from the Westland WG.30, was fitted. Heavyweight cabin-side hardpoints, similar to those on naval Lynx variants, were fitted giving a capability to carry 8 or 16 Hellfire or TOW systems. Armour-plated Martin-Baker seats were fitted in the cockpit while provision was made for mounting Stinger self-defence missile launchers and an Oerlikon 20mm cannon. 

Fate: The Lynx 3 project was abandoned by Westland in 1987 and ZE477, having flown for the last time on 10th March 1987, was transferred to The Helicopter Museum, at Weston-super-Mare, in June 1989. Refurbished in 2011.