Exercise Hell Tank

Exercise Hell Tank (sometimes Helltank) was a series of military exercises carried out by the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) in 1966 and 1967 to study the use of the helicopter in the anti-tank role. A follow-up test in 1969, Exercise Sparrow Hawk, demonstrated helicopters could avoid fixed-wing aircraft.

Helicopter forces consisted of Westland Scout and Aérospatiale Alouette II firing the SS.11 wire-guided anti-tank missile, supported by BAOR infantry units acting in defence. "Enemy" ground forces were BAOR tanks and infantry, equipped with the Blowpipe and Rapier surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), both of which were still under development at that time. This led to some criticism of the tests, as they could not truly be sure how well the production versions would work.

The conclusions were simple. When the tanks were on the move, the helicopter was devastatingly effective at killing them; one participant calculated it was 45-to-0 in favour of the helicopters.^[1] When the tanks were in a defensive position with their engines turned off, they were very difficult to spot and the helicopters often flew into range of their machine guns without noticing them, while the tank crews could hear the helicopters approaching long before they came into range.

The tests were influential in Europe, but did not have a significant effect on US Army operations in spite of strong support for the air cavalry concept at the time. It was not until the US, along with Germany and Canada, carried out the similar Ansbach tests in 1972 that the idea of the anti-tank helicopter as a primary anti-tank system became cemented across NATO.