Aviation: Cheyenne Warrior

When it lost out to Boeing last January in the competition for the contract to develop the U.S.'s first supersonic transport plane, Lockheed Aircraft Corp. still had a multimillion-dollar ace up its sleeve. The Army had earlier awarded the company an $86 million development contract for an aircraft to ride shotgun for the vulnerable troop-carrying helicopters in Viet Nam. Last week at Van Nuys Airport, Calif., Lockheed put its answer in the air: a prototype of the radical AH-56A Cheyenne—a combination helicopter and fixed-wing plane—gave a 15-minute display of its capabilities for members of the military, Government and the...

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