Boeing XCH-62 Vertol - Gigantic ultra-heavy-lift helicopter
By Willie Bodenstein
05.07.2026
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In the 1970s, the US military was operating the Boeing CH-47 Chinook heavy-lift helicopter, with a payload capacity of around 25,000 pounds. Russia then was developing new ultra-heavy-lift helicopters, such as the Mil Mi-26, with a 44,000-pound payload, and the Mil V-12, with 55,000 to 88,000 pounds of payload.
Not to be outdone the US Department of Defence issued a request for proposal (RFP) for a Heavy Lift Helicopter (HLH) and in May 1971 announced that Boeing's Vertol was chosen to perform the first phase of the heavy lift helicopter (HLH) development.
Boeing started the development of its first prototype the XCH-62, a gigantic flying crane type helicopter. The XCH-62 prototype was in an advanced state of assembly in 1975, being readied for a planned initial flight in 1976. It's 60-hour Safety Demonstration Test was planned for the 4 August when on the 1st of August the program was officially cancelled. The prototype was at 95% completion, and it needed about three months of final assembly and checkouts before rollout and installation for pre-flight testing.
Almost twice the size of the Chinook the XCH-62 powered by three Allison T701-AD-700 turboshaft engines, each producing 8,080 horsepower was designed to carry massive cargo loads using a twin engine tandem-rotor with four blades at each rotor. Ahead of its time it was designed to be operated by fly-by-wire controls the XCH-62 Flying Crane was designed to lift a standard 22-ton container, with widely spaced landing gear to lift heavy loads such as armoured vehicles.
In the 1980s, the Army, the US National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA), and the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) loosely collaborated on a scheme to finish the XCH-62 for experimental flights. The collaboration requested some US$71 million in funding through to the fiscal year 1989. However, Congress declined this request and the craft remained incomplete.
The prototype was eventually moved from a warehouse storage site in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, floated by barge to Panama City, Florida and then lifted by a CH-47D Chinook helicopter to the US Army Aviation Museum at Fort Rucker, Alabama in December 1987 where it was displayed for the next 18 years until being scrapped in 2005.
