"I can't promise you that I will bring you all home alive, but this I swear: I will be the first one to set foot on the field, and I will be the last to step off. And I will leave no one behind. Dead, or alive, we all come home together. So help me God."
- Colonel Hal Moore, from the feature film "We Were Soldiers"

The Piasecki H-25 Army Mule/HUP Retriever was a compact single radial engine, twin overlapping tandem rotor utility helicopter developed by the Piasecki Helicopter Corporation of Morton, Pennsylvania during the late 1940s and produced during the early 1950s. The company changed its name in the 1956 to Vertol Aircraft Corporation and subsequently was bought by Boeing Aircraft Company in 1960, and became Boeing-Vertol.

The design was a product of a competition by the U.S. Navy in 1945 for a compact utility/rescue helicopter to operate from ships including aircraft carriers, battleships, and cruisers. The prototype was designated as the XHJP-1, and first flew in March 1948. It was selected for production, as the HUP-1 in a side-by-side flight evaluation against the Sikorsky XHJS-1. It entered service with the navy in 1949.

Pictured here is a 1:72 scale replica of a US Navy Piasecki HUP-2 Retriever utility helicopter. Now in stock!

Dimensions:
Rotor Span: 7-1/2-inches
Length: 8-inches

Release Date: April 2014