UH-1 Iroquois ベル ヒューイ イロコイ [MonsterVerse]

Developed by Bell Helicopter, the UH-1 Iroquois was created for the US military. First called the HU-1, and nicknamed "Huey", it was originally designed to meet a 1952 requirement for a utility aircraft. By 1962, it was renamed the UH-1, and prepped for more direct conflict.

In 1963, the helicopters began arriving in Vietnam. More than 5,000 of the aircraft were deployed in Southeast Asia for the Vietnam War. Their role had expanded to function as medical evacuation, transportation and for assaults. One group to heavily utilize the crafts were the Sky Devils, a helicopter squadron under Colonel Preston Packard. The group fought hard in the war, with the Colonel striving to leave no man behind. However, when the United States declared they were pulling out of Vietnam, Packard resented the decision. He also lamented his future, having dedicated so much to a failed war.

Later in 1973, the Colonel was called for another assignment. This required escorting members from Monarch and Landsat to an uncharted isle. Called Skull Island, the landmass was surrounded by a fierce weather system. Undeterred, Packard took his squadron of Sky Devils into the system. Despite the immense turbulence, the group made it safely to the other side. Their work had only just started, though.

After dropping off personnel, the helicopters hovered far above the jungle. Monarch had requested that they drop seismic charges on the area as part of an experiment. Picked up and dropped by hand from the UH-1s, the charges detonated in the jungle far below. The explosives proved a theory that Skull Island was nearly hollow, hinting at immense underground systems. The explosions, though, also attracted the island's guardian...

Without warning, a tree sailed across the sky, ramming right through a UH-1. Thrown by King Kong, the giant ape proceeded to engage with the helicopter squadron. The crafts fired their machine guns at the beast, yet had no major effect against him. Agile, the monster out maneuvered the helicopters. This included leaping over one, causing it to accidentally lace another UH-1 with gunfire. From a combination of crushing them with his hands or throwing objects, including other helicopters, Kong defeated the aircraft. Not a single UH-1 was left airborne, as the survivors were now stuck on foot. Through a tiring journey, though, a small group did manage to survive. Reaching a rendezvous point where other helicopters came to claim those still alive.

Many years later, in 2014, the UH-1 Iroquois were called upon to assist in the battle against the MUTOs. It was utilized to ferry Ford Brody from an aircraft carrier to Hawaii, 50 miles away.

Later, in Las Vegas, the UH-1s escorted a military unit through the Yucca Flats. There, they discovered that a second, female MUTO had ripped through a Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. With both creatures on the loose, the military increased their efforts. Realizing that nuclear material attracted them, a plan was conceived using nuclear warheads as bait. To enact this, a train with the warheads was sent to San Francisco, the projected converging point of the MUTO. However, en-route, the train was attacked by the female, who consumed most of the nuclear material. It missed a nuclear warhead, though, which the military later recovered. This involved sending a UH-1 Iroquois and CH-47 Chinook to retrieve it.

With the recovered warhead, the UH-1 Iroquois, CH-47 Chinook, Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk and AH-64 Apache helicopters all converged on downtown San Francisco. The UH-1s and UH-60s traveled onward, though, dropping troops and survivors in Oakland, far away from the war zone.

• In Godzilla (2014), a UH-1 Iroquois is seen flying behind doctor Ichiro Serizawa, played by Ken Watanabe, before Godzilla makes landfall on the Hawaiian island. Consequently, it's possible that earlier the craft assisted the Sikorsky UH-60s that dropped off troops on the island, although was less visible during these sequences.
• Two different colored UH-1 Iroquois copters are seen during Godzilla (2014). One is colored grey, seen on the aircraft carrier, while the second is the more normal green coloring seen in Las Vegas and Bay Area sequences. In Kong: Skull Island (2017), the copters are all green with the Sky Devils logo painted on the front.
• As seen in the Tom Hiddleston: The Intrepid Traveler bonus feature on home video releases, real UH-1 Iroquois were utilized as part of filming and flew around the actors during segments of Kong: Skull Island (2017).