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| Search this site for CH-47 Chinook helicopter related information. |
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| Search this site for CH-47 Chinook helicopter related information. |
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| 86-01655, Knox Army Airfield, Fort Rucker, Alabama. |
| Searching for a tail number? Click-N-Go Here, otherwise see below... |
| Helpful Search Hints |
| By default, we use certain keywords and meta tags to help locate tail number information on this website. Some of the default keywords are listed below: |
| If you are looking for destroyed Chinooks, use the word "destroyed" in the search box. Destroyed is used when the airframe was lost due to enemy action while the aircraft is on the ground. |
| If you are looking for crashed Chinooks, use the word "crashed" in the search box. Crashed is used when the airframe was lost due to an accident. |
| If you are looking for Chinook accidents, use the word "accidents" in the search box. Accident is used when the airframe was dinged for some cause, but not lost. |
| If you are looking for Chinooks that were shot down in combat, use the phrase "shot down" in the search box. Shot down is used when the aircraft was lost due to hostile fire, from ground or air sources. |
| If you are looking for Chinooks that were scrapped, use the phrase "scrapped" in the search box. Scrapped is used when the aircraft was cannablized for parts and the basic airframe was recycled and no longer exists. |
| If you are looking for Chinooks that are flyable, use the phrase "flyable" in the search box. Flyable is used when the aircraft is still flyable or undergoing maintenance such as Depot Level Repair or Overhaul, Phase, On-Condition-Maintenance (OCM), or is in storage for some reason (parts, not needed right now, nobody wants to fix it, etc.). It may include airframes that have been dinged, but will eventually be repaired and still continue in the inventory. |
| Search this site for Chinook tail numbers. |
| Enter the tail number in an 7 digit format (2x5 or XX-XXXXX), as in " 59-04982 ". |
| All known United States Army H-47 Chinook tail numbers, from 1959 onwards, are listed on this site. There are several other countries represented as well. When searching, remember to include the dash or hyphen, but not the quotes, in the tail number search string. Regarding the tail number convention in use today... Once upon a time there were no computers. No, really - its true. Aircraft numbers were assigned by the U.S. Air Force as the contracts were let. There were no leading zeros in the suffix of a serial / tail number (i.e. 59-4982). Then came Excel spreadsheets. The vertical lines on the spreadsheets were wiggly with a mixture of 2x4 and 2x5 tail numbers. Nobody in the Army liked that. So the fix was to add a leading zero in the suffix to make the columns line up neatly. 59-4982 unofficially became 59-04982 and so on. And that's just the way it is folks. So, for ease of database management, the search strings are set up with a prefix of 2 digits, indicating the year the contract was signed to produce the airframe (may be different than the year in which it was actually manufactured), and a suffix of 5 digits, indicating the sequence number. If the tail number one is looking for originally had a 4 digit suffix, include a leading zero, as in "59-04982". |
| NOTE: To make things just a little more complicated, someone in the government decided that if an airframe is more than ten years old when it receives a fresh coat of paint, the suffix on the aft pylon indicating the year the contract was signed to produce the airframe would be changed to the two digits indicating the year it was repainted. Confused yet? In examining the F model airframes, one will often note a 07 or a 08 prefix tail number that is quite young compared to the date the contract was let to manufacture the aircraft. Often it will be two or more years later before the airframe is actually built. The only way to be 100 percent sure is to examine the data plate in the left front pedal area of the cockpit and note the correct tail number the aircraft had when manufactured. |
| Aircraft Data Plate Location |
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| The aircraft data plate location on CH-47 Chinook helicopters. |
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