The Australian National Aviation Museum (ANAM) at Moorabbin has been successful in tendering for ex-Army Bell Kiowa helicopters.
The Kiowa is a militarised version of the Bell 206 Jet Ranger that served with the Australian defence forces from 1972, being retired recently with the advent of the Helicopter Aircrew Training Scheme (HATS) at Nowra, which uses Airbus EC 135s.
ANAM will get serials A17-006, A17-045 and A17-055. Australia's first 12 Kiowas were built by Bell in Fort Worth, Texas, but the remainder were built by the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation (CAC) as the CA-32, which is why the aircraft are significant to ANAM, which specialises in Australian-built aircraft. Both A17-045 and A17-055 are CA-32s
"The current plan is to assemble A17-055 to a complete display condition to sit along side Wirraway A20-10 to have the oldest (Wirraway) and youngest production CAC products displayed together," ANAM has announced. "A second display airframe will also be built from the remaining Airframes."
The aircraft will leave Queensland on Wednesday 23 August and are expected to arrive in Moorabbin on Friday 25 August.