"Bernie the Bunion" wrote in message
...
As a young kid I can remember seeing pictures of these helicopters in
magazines etc., and being captivated by the looks of the beast.

Recently while surfing the big WWW I came across some trivial
information that the Canadian government had bought 50 of
these machines at a cost of $10,000 each.

Don't know what that would work out to in current dollars but I'm sure
there is a big difference as too what a state of the art helicopter
cost in that era compared to what our government is going to have to
pay
for state of the art replacements for our (aging) Sea King fleet.

Jeremy replies:

I wonder if these were our old ones? We only stopped flying the Wessex a
few years ago, replaced them with the Sea King Mk 3a (again built under
licence by Westlands).

I understand that Westlands are bidding to replace the ageing Canadian Sea
King fleet with Merlins. IIRC an ASW Merlin comes out at around $30M US
each. Makes a $10,000 Wessex/Sikorsky S-58 seem a real
bargain...............................

Jeremy