US Army retires ‘Creek' training helo

The US Army has retired its Bell TH-67 Creek training helicopter after 28 years of service.

The US Army retired the Bell TH-67 Creek training helicopter on 17 February 2021, after 28 years of service. (US Army)

The final flight for the TH-67 fleet that entered service in 1993 took place at Cairns Army Airfield, Fort Rucker, Alabama, on 17 February.

“If you’re a [US] Army Aviator who began your aviation career between 1993 and 2020, the odds are pretty good that the TH-67 Creek helicopter was the foundational tool on which you built your aviation tradecraft,” Brigadier General Stanley Budraitis, US Army Aviation Center of Excellence and Fort Rucker deputy commanding general, said. “The TH-67 has spent three decades preparing our aviators to eventually transition to the UH-1 Huey, the AH-1 Cobra, the OH-58 Kiowa and Kiowa Warrior, the UH-60 Black Hawk, the AH-64 Apache, the CH-47 Chinook, and even the C-12 [Huron fixed-wing aircraft].”

Based on the Bell 206 JetRanger, the TH-67 was a single-engine analogue-equipped helicopter that amassed over 1,915,000 hours and trained more than 25,000 students in the US Army’s initial entry rotor-wing programme, with the fleet comprising 181 aircraft at its peak.

The TH-67 has now been superseded in the US Army by the twin-engined and digitally equipped Airbus Helicopters UH-72A Lakota, the first of which was delivered in 2007 and which began training pilots at Fort Rucker in 2016. Airbus delivered the last of 463 UH-72As to the US Army in September 2020, and will shortly begin handing over 17 UH-72Bs in the coming weeks. As well as being used for pilot training, the UH-72A is also employed as a ‘behind the lines’ support helicopter for the US Army and National Guard.