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Robert Caro

Robert Allan Caro (born October 30, 1935) is an American journalist and author known for his biographies of United States political figures Robert Moses and Lyndon B. Johnson.

After working for many years as a reporter, Caro wrote The Power Broker (1974), a biography of New York urban planner Robert Moses, which was chosen by the Modern Library as one of the hundred greatest nonfiction books of the twentieth century. He has since written four of a planned five volumes of The Years of Lyndon Johnson (1982, 1990, 2002, 2012), a biography of the former president. Caro has been described as "the most influential biographer of the last century".

For his biographies, he has won two Pulitzer Prizes in Biography, two National Book Awards (including one for Lifetime Achievement), the Francis Parkman Prize, three National Book Critics Circle Awards, the Mencken Award for Best Book, the Carr P. Collins Award from the Texas Institute of Letters, the D. B. Hardeman Prize, and a Gold Medal in Biography from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2010 President Barack Obama awarded Caro the National Humanities Medal.

Due to Caro's reputation for exhaustive research and detail, he is sometimes invoked by reviewers of other writers who are called "Caro-esque" for their own extensive research.

Life and career
Caro was born in New York City, the son of Jewish parents Celia (née Mendelow), born in New York, and Benjamin Caro, born in Warsaw, Poland. He grew up on Central Park West at 94th Street. His father, a businessman, spoke Yiddish as well as English, but he did not speak either very often. He was 'very silent,' Caro said, and became more so after Caro's mother died, after a long illness, when Robert was 12. It was his mother's deathbed wish that he should go to the Horace Mann School, an exclusive private school in the Riverdale section of The Bronx. As a student there, Caro translated an edition of his school newspaper into Russian and mailed 10,000 copies to students in the USSR. Graduating in 1953, he went on to Princeton University, where he majored in English. He became managing editor of The Daily Princetonian, second to Johnny Apple, later a prominent editor at The New York Times.

His writings, both in class and out, had been lengthy since his years at Horace Mann. A short story he wrote for The Princeton Tiger, the school's humor magazine, took up almost an entire issue. His 235-page long senior thesis on existentialism in Hemingway, titled "Heading Out: A Study of the Development of Ernest Hemingway's Thought", was so long, Caro claims, that the university's English department subsequently established a maximum length for senior theses by its students. He graduated cum laude in 1957.

According to a 2012 New York Times Magazine profile, "Caro said he now thinks that Princeton, which he chose because of its parties, was one of his mistakes, and that he should have gone to Harvard. Princeton in the mid-1950s was hardly known for being hospitable towards the Jewish community, and though Caro says he did not personally suffer from anti-Semitism, he saw plenty of students who did." He had a sports column in the Princetonian and also wrote for the Princeton Tiger humor magazine.

Caro began his professional career as a reporter with the New Brunswick Daily Home News, now merged into the Home News Tribune, in New Jersey. He took a brief leave to work as a publicist for the Middlesex County Democratic Party. He left politics after an incident where he was accompanying the party chair to polling places on election day. A police officer reported to the party chair that some African Americans Caro saw being loaded into a police van, under arrest, were poll watchers who "had been giving them some trouble". Caro left politics right there. "I still think about it," he recalled in the 2012 Times Magazine profile. "It wasn't the roughness of the police that made such an impression. It was the – meekness isn't the right word – the acceptance of those people of what was happening."

After briefly enrolling in the English doctoral program at Rutgers University, where he served as a teaching assistant, he spent six years as an investigative reporter with the Long Island newspaper Newsday. An early article, "Anatomy of a $9 Burglary," investigating into the lives of those affected by a theft of $9 from a Long Island home, was held by The New York Times as a strong example of Caro's ceaseless research process to uncover the deep truth behind a story. One of the articles he wrote was a long series about why a proposed bridge across Long Island Sound from Rye to Oyster Bay, championed by Robert Moses, would have been inadvisable, requiring piers so large it would disrupt tidal flows in the sound, amongst other problems. Caro believed that his work had influenced even the state's powerful governor Nelson Rockefeller to reconsider the idea, until he saw the state's Assembly vote overwhelmingly to pass a preliminary measure for the bridge.

"That was one of the transformational moments of my life," Caro said years later. It led him to think about Moses for the first time. "I got in the car and drove home to Long Island, and I kept thinking to myself: 'Everything you've been doing is baloney. You've been writing under the belief that power in a democracy comes from the ballot box. But here's a guy who has never been elected to anything, who has enough power to turn the entire state around, and you don't have the slightest idea how he got it.'"

Caro gave a speech to introduce Senator Ted Kennedy on the second day of the 2004 Democratic National Convention, emphasizing the importance of courage in American leaders.

The Power Broker
Caro spent the academic year of 1965–1966 as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. During a class on urban planning and land use, the experience of watching Moses returned to him.

"They were talking one day about highways and where they got built ... and here were these mathematical formulas about traffic density and population density and so on, and all of a sudden I said to myself: 'This is completely wrong. This isn't why highways get built. Highways get built because Robert Moses wants them built there. If you don't find out and explain to people where Robert Moses gets his power, then everything else you do is going to be dishonest.'"

To do so, Caro began work on a biography of Moses, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, also a study of Caro's favorite theme: the acquisition and use of power. He expected it would take nine months to complete, but instead it took him until 1974. The work was based on extensive research and a total of 522 interviews, including several with Michael Madigan (who worked for Moses for 35 years); numerous interviews with Sidney Shapiro (Moses's general manager for forty years) and seven interviews with Moses himself. Caro also interviewed men who worked for and knew Moses's mentor, New York Governor Al Smith. During the 1967–1968 academic year, Caro worked on the book as a Carnegie Fellow at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

His wife, Ina, functioned as his research assistant. Her master's thesis on the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge stemmed from this work. At one point she sold the family home and took a teaching job so Robert would be financially able to finish the book.

The Power Broker is widely viewed as a seminal work because it combined painstaking historical research with a smoothly flowing narrative writing style. The success of this approach was evident in his chapter on the construction of the Cross-Bronx Expressway, where Caro reported the controversy from all perspectives, including that of neighborhood residents. The result was a work of powerful literary as well as academic interest. Upon its publication, Moses responded to the biography in a 23-page statement repudiating the book.

The Years of Lyndon Johnson
Following The Power Broker, Caro turned his attention to President Lyndon B. Johnson. Caro's editor Robert Gottlieb initially suggested the Johnson project to Caro in preference to the planned follow-up to the Moses volume, a biography of Fiorello LaGuardia. The ex-president had recently died and Caro had already decided, before meeting with Gottlieb on the subject, to undertake his biography; he "wanted to write about power".

Caro retraced Johnson's life by temporarily moving to rural Texas and Washington, D.C., in order to better understand Johnson's upbringing and to interview anyone who had known Johnson. The work, entitled The Years of Lyndon Johnson, was originally intended as a trilogy, but is projected to encompass five volumes:

In November 2011, Caro announced that the full project had expanded to five volumes with the fifth requiring another two to three years to write. It will cover Johnson and Vietnam, the Great Society and civil rights era, his decision not to run in 1968, and eventual retirement. In a 2017 interview, Caro expressed his intent to embark shortly on a research trip to Vietnam. In an interview with The New York Review of Books in January 2018, Caro indicated he did not know when the book would be finished, mentioning anywhere from two to ten years.
 * 1) The Path to Power (1982) covers Johnson's life up to his failed 1941 campaign for the United States Senate.
 * 2) Means of Ascent (1990) commences in the aftermath of that defeat and continues through his election to that office in 1948.
 * 3) Master of the Senate (2002) chronicles Johnson's rapid ascent and rule as Senate Majority Leader.
 * 4) The Passage of Power (2012) details the 1960 election, LBJ's life as vice president, the JFK assassination and his first days as president.
 * 5) One as-of-yet unpublished final volume.

As of January 2020, Caro had completed 600 typed manuscript pages and was working on a section relating to the passage of Medicare in 1965.

Caro's books portray Johnson as a complex and contradictory character: at the same time a scheming opportunist and visionary progressive. Caro argues, for example, that Johnson's victory in the 1948 runoff for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate was only achieved through extensive fraud and ballot box stuffing, although this is set in the practices of the time and in the context of Johnson's previous defeat in his 1941 race for the Senate, the victim of exactly similar chicanery. Caro highlighted some of Johnson's campaign contributions, such as those from the Texas construction firm Brown and Root. In 1962 the company was acquired by another Texas firm, Halliburton, which became a major contractor in the Vietnam War.

Caro argued that Johnson was awarded the Silver Star in World War II for political as well as military reasons, and that he later lied to journalists and the public about the circumstances for which it was awarded. Caro's portrayal of Johnson also notes his struggles on behalf of progressive causes such as the Voting Rights Act, and his consummate skill in getting this enacted in spite of intense opposition from Southern Democrats.

Among sources close to the late president, Johnson's widow Lady Bird Johnson "spoke to [Caro] several times and then abruptly stopped without giving a reason, and Bill Moyers, Johnson's press secretary, has never consented to be interviewed, but most of Johnson's closest friends, including John Connally and George Christian, Johnson's last press secretary, who spoke to Caro practically on his deathbed, have gone on the record".

While writing the books, Caro read the works of the novelist Leo Tolstoy and the historian Edward Gibbon, alternating between the two. "There's almost a view that if it's well written it can't be good history," he told Mark Rozzo of the Los Angeles Times in 2002. "In my view, it's not good history unless it is well written. History is a narrative. History is a story. If you're not telling a story, you're not being faithful to history."

Caro's editors and publishers
Caro's books have been published by Alfred A. Knopf, first under editor-in-chief Robert Gottlieb and then by Sonny Mehta after Gottlieb's temporary departure to The New Yorker in 1987. Gottlieb remained Caro's primary editor throughout. "We have these unbelievable angry exchanges, but it's always worth it to me," Caro said of his relationship with Gottlieb. "Sometimes we can spend two hours discussing whether to combine two paragraphs." Following the deaths of Mehta and Gottlieb, primary editing responsibility fell to his long-time second editor Kathy Hourigan.

A 2022 documentary, Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb, examined Caro and Gottlieb's working relationship.

Future projects
Caro has expressed hope of writing a "full-scale memoir" after completing The Years of Lyndon Johnson. His 2019 book Working has been described as a "semi-memoir" focused on "Caro's selection of observations...on the arts of researching, interviewing and writing".

When asked about other works he would have pursued, Caro replied a biography on Al Smith, commenting "the more you learn about Al Smith, the more you realize he is probably the most forgotten consequential figure in American history."

Writing process
After conducting his years-long research, Caro attempts to "see the whole book right down to the last line," by putting up an outline on a 22-foot corkboard before writing the first manuscript, as a way to prevent writer's block. He writes several successive drafts in longhand on discontinued "legal pads, white with narrow lines," which Caro has mass-ordered and keeps in East Hampton. Subsequently, Caro types his books on Smith Corona Electra 210 typewriters, which The New Republic called "a model practically synonymous with him".

Upon the publication of The Passage of Power in 2012, Caro owned 14 Smith Coronas, which came down to 11 in 2019, one of which, the one used when writing The Power Broker, was on display in the 2021 New-York Historical Society's "Turn Every Page": Inside the Robert A. Caro Archive exhibition. Since production of these was discontinued, Caro uses his reserve to supply parts when these become defective. The typewriters are supplied to him from individuals who, upon knowing his use of the Smith Coronas, send theirs to him. Other individuals have attempted to sell Caro theirs. However, he only answers letters offering them as gifts.

Since Caro retypes several versions of his manuscripts before submitting them for publication, he prefers a bolder text, which he achieves by using cotton ribbon, instead of the now-common nylon. As the former were discontinued, his wife Ina found a supplier that would manufacture them on the condition that Caro order a dozen gross, or 1,728 units. He edits with the use of red 314 Berol Draughting pencils and keeps "a ledger tracking how many words he has written against his stringent 1,000-word daily goal". Though he now works in an office, at one point he wrote "in the woods ... in a shack, a 12×15 ... put on cinderblocks".

Awards and honors
For his biographies of Robert Moses and Lyndon B. Johnson, Caro has won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography twice, the National Book Critics Circle Award for the Best Nonfiction Book of the Year three times, and has won various other major literary honors, including two National Book Awards (one for Lifetime Achievement), the Gold Medal in Biography from the American Academy of Art and Letters, and the Francis Parkman Prize.

In October 2007, Caro was named a "Holtzbrinck Distinguished Visitor" at the American Academy in Berlin, Germany but then was unable to attend.

In 2010, he received the National Humanities Medal from President Obama, the highest award in the humanities given in the United States. Delivering remarks at the end of the ceremony, the President said, "I think about Robert Caro and reading The Power Broker back when I was 22 years old and just being mesmerized, and I'm sure it helped to shape how I think about politics." In 2011, Robert Caro was the recipient of the 2011 BIO Award given each year by members of Biographers International "to a colleague who had made a major contribution in the advancement of the art and craft of real life depiction".

 * 1964 – The Society of Silurians Award for outstanding achievement in the field of Public Service History for a series entitled "Misery Acres," exposing fraudulent real estate sales by mail
 * 1964 – The Deadline Club for outstanding newspaper reporting
 * 1965 – The Deadline Club for outstanding newspaper reporting
 * 1965–1966 – Nieman Fellowship from Harvard University Nieman Foundation
 * 1975 – Washington Monthly American Political Book Award (The Power Broker)
 * 1975 – The Francis Parkman Prize awarded by the Society of American Historians to the book that best "exemplifies the union of the historian and the artist" (The Power Broker)
 * 1975 – The Pulitzer Prize for Biography (The Power Broker)
 * 1975 – American Institute of Architects (AIA) Special Citation
 * 1982 – The National Book Critics Circle Award for Best Nonfiction Book of the Year (The Path to Power)
 * 1983 – The Blue Pencil Award from the Columbia Daily Spectator
 * 1983 – American Academy of Arts and Letters Award
 * 1983 – The Carr P. Collins Award from the Texas Institute of Letters (The Path to Power)
 * 1983 – The Mencken Award for the best book of 1982 (The Path to Power)
 * 1986 – The Gold Medal in Biography from the American Academy of Art and Letters
 * 1990 – The National Book Critics Circle Award for Best Nonfiction Book of the Year (Means of Ascent)
 * 1991 – Washington Monthly American Political Book Award (Means of Ascent)
 * 2002 – The Power Broker chosen by the Modern Library as one of the 100 greatest non-fiction books of the twentieth century
 * 2002 – The National Book Award (Master of the Senate)
 * 2003 – The Los Angeles Times Book Award in Non-Fiction (Master of the Senate)
 * 2003 – The Carl Sandburg Award in Literature (Master of the Senate)
 * 2003 – The John Steinbeck Award in literature (Master of the Senate)
 * 2003 – The Pulitzer Prize for Biography (Master of the Senate)
 * 2008 – Elected into the American Academy of Arts and Letters
 * 2009 – Elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
 * 2010 – Inducted into the New York Writers Hall of Fame
 * 2010 – The National Humanities Medal
 * 2011 – The BIO Award from Biographers International Organization for advancing the art and craft of biography.
 * 2012 – National Book Award (Nonfiction), finalist, The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
 * 2012 – National Book Critics Circle Award (Biography), finalist, The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
 * 2012 – The Los Angeles Times Book Award in Non-Fiction (The Passage of Power)
 * 2012 – The New York Historical Society American History Book Prize (The Passage of Power)
 * 2012 – The Mark Lynton History Prize (The Passage of Power)
 * 2012 – Norman Mailer Prize, Biography.
 * 2016 – The National Book Award (Lifetime Achievement)

Family
After graduation from Princeton, Caro married Ina Joan Sloshberg, who was then still a student at Connecticut College. The Caros have a son, Chase Arthur, and three grandchildren, who live in White Plains.

Caro has described his wife as "the whole team" on all five of his books. She sold their house and took a job teaching school to fund work on The Power Broker and is the only other person who conducted research for his books.

Ina is the author of The Road from the Past: Traveling Through History in France (1996), a book which Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. called, at the presentation of her honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from The City University of New York in 2011, "the essential traveling companion ... for all who love France and its history". Newsweek reviewer Peter Prescott commented, "I'd rather go to France with Ina Caro than with Henry Adams or Henry James. The unique premise of her intelligent and discerning book is so startling that it's a wonder no one has thought of it before." Ina frequently writes about her travels through France in her blog, Paris to the Past. In June 2011, W. W. Norton published her second book, Paris to the Past: Traveling Through French History by Train.

Robert Caro had a younger sibling, Michael, a retired real estate manager, who died in 2018.

Caro's son, Chase, plead guilty to second-degree grand larceny in 2007 for stealing over $750,000 from three former clients in the course of real estate transactions. In April 2008, he was sentenced to $2 1/2$–$7 1/2$ years in prison after admitting to stealing $310,000 meant for his grandparents' trust fund. Chase agreed to pay restitution of $1.1 million, which includes funds from a third theft. All his sentences ran concurrently. , Chase works in information technology.

Legacy
Due to Caro's work ethic and voluminous work several authors have been compared to him and labelled as "Caro-esque", "Caro-like" or "in the Caro mold" for their own extensive research. These include Renata Adler, Taylor Branch, David Garrow, Garrett Graff, Gerard Henderson, Jason Horowitz, Francis Jennings, Robert G. Kaiser, David Paul Kuhn, Roland Lazenby, David Maraniss, David McCullough, Charles Moore, Edmund Morris, Roger Morris, David Nasaw,  Richard Neustadt, Les and Tamara Payne, Steven Pressfield, Michael Shnayerson, Lytton Strachey, Julia E. Sweig, William T. Vollmann, Mark Lewisohn, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's Research Department.

In 2011, his alma mater, Horace Mann School, began awarding the Robert Caro '53 Prize for Literary Excellence in the Writing of History, at a ceremony held annually at the head of school's home. In 2017, the school named a classroom at Tillinghast Hall, the "Robert A. Caro '53 History Classroom", to which Caro reacted by stating that it would be "hard for [him] to think of anything that would make [him] happier".

Motherless Brooklyn, the 2019 film directed by Edward Norton, loosely based on the 1999 novel of the same name by Jonathan Lethem, was inspired by Caro's biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker. León Krauze wrote in Slate comparing Norton's character in that film to Caro himself.

In January 2020, the New-York Historical Society acquired Caro's complete archive, consisting of "200 linear feet of material", part of which will be digitized and made wholly available to researchers in a Robert A. Caro Study Space. A permanent exhibition, named Robert Caro Working, after his 2019 book Working, will be set up at the Society's library. Caro stated that he was "just plain delighted" since his "favorite aunt often took" him there, as well as having spoken there and "been a recipient of its awards".

An exhibition called "Turn Every Page": Inside the Robert A. Caro Archive opened on October 22, 2021, becoming "the first permanent public exhibition of an archive devoted to a living author in the country". The title comes from advice that then-editor of Newsday, Alan Hathway, gave to Caro as a young reporter on Caro's first investigative assignment. According to Caro, Hathway "looked at me for what I remember as a very long time … 'Just remember,' he said. 'Turn every page. Never assume anything. Turn every goddamn page.'" The advice is the title of the 2022 documentary on Caro and editor Robert Gottlieb's collaborations, directed by the latter's daughter, Lizzie Gottlieb.

Books

 * Caro, Robert A., The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power. 1982. Alfred A. Knopf Inc., New York. ISBN 0-394-49973-5. xxiii + 882 p. + 48 p. of plates: illus.
 * Caro, Robert A., The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent. 1990. Alfred A. Knopf Inc., New York. ISBN 0-394-52835-2. xxxiv + 506 pp.
 * Caro, Robert A., The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate. 2002. Alfred A. Knopf Inc, New York. ISBN 0-394-52836-0. xxiv + 1167 pp.
 * Caro, Robert A., The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power. 2012. Alfred A. Knopf Inc, New York. ISBN 978-0-679-40507-8. 752 pp.
 * Zinsser, William Knowlton (ed.), Extraordinary Lives: The Art and Craft of American Biography. 2016. Houghton Mifflin, ISBN 0-395-48617-3
 * Caro, Robert A., Working. April 2019. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, New York. ISBN 978-0-525-65635-7. 240 pp.
 * Caro, Robert A., Working. April 2019. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, New York. ISBN 978-0-525-65635-7. 240 pp.

Audiobooks

 * Caro, Robert A., On Power, 2017, Audible. ISBN 978-1978664968. 1 hr and 42 mins.

Articles

 * Caro, Robert A. (February 3, 1991). "My Search for Coke Stevenson". The New York Times. . Retrieved July 29, 2020.
 * Caro, Robert A and Vonnegut, Kurt. "The Round Table: Fiction, Biography and the Use of Power". Hampton shorts. 4 : fiction plus poetry plus drama plus interviews from the Hamptons & the East End. 1999. Hamptons Literary Publications, Water Mill, N.Y.
 * Caro, Robert A. (August 27, 2008). "Opinion | Johnson's Dream, Obama's Speech". The New York Times. . Retrieved July 29, 2020.

title: Robert Caro


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Unique Art

Unique Art Manufacturing Company was an American toy company, founded in 1916, based in Newark, New Jersey that made inexpensive toys, including wind-up mechanical toys, out of lithographed tin. One of its early products was a wind-up toy featuring two tin boxers.

The company scored a hit in the 1940s when it acquired the rights to a popular comic strip and released the Li'l Abner Dogpatch Band for Christmas 1945. The windup toy featured Abner dancing, Pappy on drums, Mammy with a drum stick, and Daisy Mae playing piano. Unique followed with a Howdy Doody band several years later.

Unique's president, Samuel Berger, was a good friend of toy magnate Louis Marx, and the two men's companies at times cooperated, with Marx providing tooling to Unique and sometimes acting as a distributor for Unique's products.

In 1949, Unique began producing lithographed tin O gauge toy trains, using tooling of its own design along with some recycled tooling from the defunct Dorfan Company. Unique sold its trains inexpensively, in boxed sets like Marx and also produced a circus set that was distributed on a car-by-car basis by the Jewel Tea Company. Marx saw this as a betrayal and responded with a new line similar in size to Unique's, but with lithographed rolling stock that looked more realistic. Unique found itself unable to compete, and withdrew its trains from the marketplace by 1951.

Although Unique only captured a small portion of the toy train craze of the early 1950s, a tin typewriter toy introduced during the same time frame did take market share away from Marx, who produced a similar toy. Marx responded by moving production of its typewriter toy to Japan in order to undercut Unique's price.

The circumstances surrounding Unique Art's eventual demise is unclear, but the company appears to have disappeared in 1952, when it was picked up in a corporate merger by the Jerry O'Mahony Diner Company, with some evidence of Marx picking up parts of the line.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Unique Art


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Battle of Assaye

The Battle of Assaye was a major battle of the Second Anglo-Maratha War fought between the Maratha Confederacy and the British East India Company. It occurred on 23 September 1803 near Assaye in western India. An outnumbered Indian and British force, under the command of Major General Arthur Wellesley (who later became the Duke of Wellington), defeated the combined Maratha army of Daulatrao Scindia and the Bhonsle Raja of Berar. The battle was Wellesley's first major victory and the one he later described as his finest accomplishment on the battlefield, even more so than his more famous victories in the Peninsular War, and his defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo.

From August 1803, Wellesley's army and a separate force under the command of his subordinate, Colonel James Stevenson, pursued the Maratha cavalry-based army, which had threatened to raid south into Hyderabad. After several weeks of pursuit and countermarching, Scindia reinforced the combined Maratha army with his modernized infantry and artillery as the British forces closed in on his position. Wellesley received intelligence indicating the location of the Maratha encampment on 21 September and devised a plan whereby his two armies would converge on the Maratha position three days later. Wellesley's force, however, encountered the Maratha Army, under the command of Colonel Anthony Pohlmann, a German formerly in British service, 6 mi farther south than he anticipated. Although outnumbered, Wellesley resolved to attack at once, believing that the Maratha army would soon move off. Both sides suffered heavily in the ensuing battle; Maratha artillery inflicted large numbers of casualties among Wellesley's troops, but the vast numbers of Maratha cavalry proved largely ineffective. A combination of bayonet and cavalry charges eventually forced the Maratha army to retreat, with the loss of most of their guns, but Wellesley's army was too battered and exhausted to pursue.

Wellesley's victory at Assaye, preceded by the capture of Ahmednagar and followed by victories at Argaon and Gawilghur, resulted in the defeat of Scindia and Berar's armies in the Deccan. Wellesley's progress in the Deccan was matched by Lieutenant General Gerard Lake's successful campaigns in northern India and led to the British becoming the dominant power in the heartland of India.

Background
Feuding between the two dominant powers within the Maratha Empire, Yashwant Rao Holkar and Daulat Rao Scindia, led to civil war at the turn of the 19th century. The hostilities culminated in the Battle of Poona in October 1802 where Holkar defeated a combined army of Scindia and Baji Rao II – the Peshwa and nominal overlord of the Maratha Empire. Scindia retreated into his dominions to the north, but Baji Rao was driven from his territory and sought refuge with the East India Company at Bassein. He appealed to the company for assistance, offering to accept its authority if he were restored to his principality at Poona. Lord Mornington, the ambitious Governor-General of British India, seized on the opportunity to extend Company influence into the Maratha Empire which he perceived as the final obstacle to Britain being the dominant force in the Indian subcontinent. The Treaty of Bassein was signed in December whereby the Company agreed to restore Baji Rao in return for control over his foreign affairs and a garrison of 6,000 Company troops permanently stationed in Poona. The restoration was commanded by Lord Mornington's younger brother, Major General Arthur Wellesley, who in March 1803 marched on Poona from Mysore with 15,000 Company troops and 9,000 Hyderabad allies. Wellesley entered Poona without opposition on 20 April, and Baji Rao was formally restored to his throne on 13 May.

The treaty gave offence to the other Maratha leaders, who deemed that the system of subsidiary alliances with the British was an unwarranted interference into their affairs and fatal to the independent Maratha states. The Maratha leaders refused to submit to the Peshwa's authority and tensions were raised further when Holkar raided into Hyderabad in May, claiming that the Nizam of Hyderabad (a British ally) owed him money. Mornington consequently engaged the various Maratha chieftains in negotiations. Lieutenant Colonel John Collins was sent to Scindia's camp to discuss his objections and propose a defensive alliance. However, Scindia had formed a military alliance with the Rajah of Berar with a view to bringing the Maratha leaders into a coalition against the British, and had begun to mass his forces on the Nizam's border. Wellesley, who had been given control over the company's military and political affairs in central India in June, demanded Scindia declare his intentions and withdraw his forces or face the prospect of war. After a protracted period of negotiations, Collins reported to Wellesley on 3 August that Scindia refused to give an answer and would not withdraw his troops. Wellesley's response was to declare war on Scindia and Berar "in order to secure the interests of the British government and its allies".

Prelude
The East India Company attacked the two principal Maratha forces of Scindia and the Raja of Berar from the north and the south. Of the other Maratha leaders, Holkar was hesitant to enter the war in cooperation with his rival, Scindia, and remained aloof from the hostilities, and the Gaekwad of Baroda placed himself under British protection. Operations in the north were directed by Lieutenant General Gerard Lake who entered Maratha territory from Cawnpore to face Scindia's main army which was commanded by the French mercenary Pierre Perron. A second British force, under the command of Major General Wellesley, confronted a combined army of Scindia and Berar in the Deccan. Wellesley was determined to gain the initiative through offensive action and told his senior subordinate, Colonel James Stevenson, that "a long defensive war would ruin us and will answer no purpose whatever".

The Maratha army in the Deccan was largely composed of fast-moving cavalry able to live off the land. Consequently, Wellesley planned to work in conjunction with a separate force under Colonel Stevenson to enable his slower troops to outmanoeuvre the Maratha army and force it into a position where it could not avoid a pitched battle. Stevenson was despatched from Hyderabad with an army of some 10,000 men to Jafarabad to deny Scindia and Berar the chance to raid east into the Nizam's territory. In the meantime, Wellesley moved north from his camp near the Godavari River on 8 August with some 13,500 troops and headed towards Scindia's nearest stronghold – the walled town and fort at Ahmednagar. The bulk of his forces were Company troops from Mysore: five sepoy infantry battalions of the Madras Native Infantry and three squadrons of Madras Native Cavalry. The core contingent of British Army regulars included cavalry from the 19th Light Dragoons and two battalions of Scottish infantry from the 74th and 78th Regiment of Foot. Irregular light cavalry were also provided by the company's Mysore and Maratha allies.

Wellesley reached Ahmednagar later the same day after a 7 mi march and immediately ordered an escalade assault on the town rather than enter into a time-consuming siege. The walled town, which was garrisoned by 1,000 Arab mercenaries, upwards of 60 cannon and one of Scindia's infantry battalions under the command of French officers, was captured with minimal losses after a brief action. The adjacent fort's defenders capitulated four days later once the walls were breached by British artillery. With the fortification providing a base for future operations into Maratha territory, Wellesley installed a garrison and headed north towards the Nizam's city of Aurangabad. Along the way he captured Scindia's other possessions south of the Godavari and established a series of guarded bridges and ferries along the river to maintain his communication and supply lines.

Maratha reinforcements
The Marathas slipped past Stevenson and advanced on Hyderabad. After receiving reports of their movement on 30 August, Wellesley hurried east down to the Godavari to intercept. Stevenson, meanwhile, marched westwards to the Maratha city of Jalna, which he took by storm. Scindia learned of Wellesley's intentions and returned to a position north of Jalna. Unable to make a clean break from the pursuing British, he abandoned plans to raid into Hyderabad and instead assembled his infantry and artillery. The combined Maratha army was around 50,000 strong, the core of which was 10,800 well-equipped regular infantry organised into three brigades, trained and commanded by European adventurer and mercenary officers. Colonel Anthony Pohlmann, a Hanoverian and former East India Company sergeant, commanded the largest brigade with eight battalions. A further brigade with five battalions was provided by Begum Samru, and was commanded on her behalf by a Frenchman, Colonel Jean Saleur. The third brigade had four battalions and was commanded by Dutchman Major John James Dupont. In addition, the Maratha force included 10,000–20,000 of Berar's irregular infantry, some 30,000–40,000 irregular light cavalry and over 100 guns ranging in size from one to 18-pounders.

After several weeks of chasing down the Maratha army, Wellesley and Stevenson met at Budnapoor on 21 September and received intelligence that the Maratha army was at Borkardan, around 30 mi to the north. They agreed on a plan by which their two armies – moving separately along either side of a range of hills with Wellesley to the east and Stevenson to the west – would converge on Borkardan on 24 September. Wellesley's force reached Paugy on the afternoon of 22 September and departed camp before dawn. By noon, the army had marched 14 mi to Naulniah, a small town 12 mi south of Borkardan, where they intended to rest before joining Stevenson to attack the Maratha army the next day. At this point, Wellesley received further intelligence that, rather than being at Borkardan, the Maratha army was camped just 5 mi north, but their cavalry had moved off and the infantry were about to follow.

At about 13:00, Wellesley went forward with a cavalry escort to reconnoitre the Maratha position. The rest of his army followed closely behind, apart from a battalion of sepoys left at Naulniah to guard the baggage. In all, Wellesley had 4,500 troops at his disposal, plus 5,000 Mysore and Maratha horse and 17 cannon. Aware that the British were nearby, the Maratha chiefs had positioned their army in a strong defensive position along a tongue of land stretching east from Borkardan between the Kailna River and its tributary the Juah. However, Scindia and Berar did not believe Wellesley would attack with his small force and had moved away from the area in the morning. Command of their army was given to Pohlmann, who had positioned his infantry to the east of the Maratha camp in the plains around the village of Assaye on the southern bank of the Juah.

To his surprise, Wellesley found the entire combined army before him. Nevertheless, he resolved to attack at once, believing that if he waited for Stevenson, the Marathas would have the chance to slip away and force the pursuit to drag on. Wellesley was also eager to forge a reputation for himself, and despite his numerical disadvantage, he was confident that the Maratha's irregular forces would be swept aside by his disciplined troops, and only Scindia's regular infantry could be expected to stand and fight.

Initial manoeuvres
Pohlmann struck camp and deployed his infantry battalions in a line facing southwards behind the steep banks of the Kailna with his cannon arrayed directly in front. The great mass of Maratha cavalry was kept on the right flank and Berar's irregular infantry garrisoned Assaye to the rear. The only observable crossing point over the river was a small ford directly ahead of the Maratha position. Pohlmann's strategy was to funnel the British and Madras troops across the ford into the mouth of his cannon, and then on to the massed infantry and cavalry behind. Wellesley's local guides assured him that no other ford existed nearby, but he quickly discarded the option of a frontal assault as suicide. While reconnoitring he had noticed two unguarded villages, Peepulgaon and Waroor, one on each bank of the Kaitna beyond the Maratha left. On the assumption that a ford must exist between the two villages, Wellesley ordered the area to be further reconnoitred by his Chief Engineer, Captain John Johnson, who reported that there was indeed a ford at that spot. Thus Wellesley led his army east to the crossing in an attempt to launch an attack on Pohlmann's left flank.

At around 15:00, the British crossed to the northern bank of the Kaitna unopposed apart from a distant harassing fire from the Maratha cannon which was largely inaccurate but succeeded in decapitating Wellesley's dragoon orderly. Once across, Wellesley ordered his six infantry battalions to form into two lines, with his cavalry as a reserve in a third. His allied Maratha and Mysore cavalry were ordered to remain south of the Kaitna to keep in check a large body of Maratha cavalry which hovered around the British rear. Pohlmann soon recognised Wellesley's intentions and swung his infantry and guns through 90 degrees to establish a new line spread approximately 1 mi across the isthmus with their right flank on the Kaitna and the left on Assaye. Although the new position secured the Maratha flanks, it restricted Pohlmann from bringing his superior numbers into action.

The Maratha redeployment was swifter and more efficient than Wellesley had anticipated and he immediately reacted by extending his front to deny Pohlmann the opportunity to outflank him. A battalion of pickets and the 74th Highlanders, which formed the right of the first and second lines, were ordered to move obliquely to the right. This allowed the 78th to anchor the left flank and Madras infantry battalions (the 1/10th, 1/8th, 1/4th and 2/12th) to form the centre of the British line. Wellesley's intention was to force back the Marathas from their guns and then – operating by his left to avoid the heavily defended Assaye – throw them back on the Juah and complete their destruction with his cavalry.

British infantry attack
The Maratha cannonade intensified as the British redeployed. Although British artillery was brought forward to counter, it was ineffective against the mass firepower of the Maratha guns and quickly disabled through the weight of shot directed against it. British casualties mounted as the Maratha guns turned their attention to the infantry and subjected them to a barrage of canister, grape and round shot. Wellesley decided that his only option to neutralise the artillery and get his men out of the killing field was to advance directly into the mouth of the Maratha artillery. He ordered his cannon to be abandoned and gave the command for his infantry to march forward with bayonets fixed.

The Maratha cannonade punched holes in the British line, but the infantry maintained a steady pace, closing up the gaps in their ranks as they advanced. The 78th Highlanders were the first to reach the enemy in the southern sector next to the River Kailna. They paused 50 yd from the Maratha gunners and unleashed a volley of musket fire before launching into a bayonet charge. The four battalions of Madras infantry to the right of the 78th, accompanied by the Madras Pioneers, reached Pohlmann's line shortly afterwards and attacked in the same fashion. The gunners stood by their cannon but were no match for the bayonets of the British and Madras troops who swiftly pressed on towards the Maratha infantry. However, instead of meeting the charge, the Maratha right broke and fled northwards towards the Juah, causing the rest of the southern half of the line to follow. The officers of the Madras battalions temporarily lost control as the sepoys, encouraged by their success, pushed too far in pursuit. Maratha cavalry momentarily threatened to charge, but were checked by the 78th, who remained in order and re-formed to face the danger.

In the northern sector of the battlefield however, Wellesley's right flank was in turmoil. The commander of the pickets, Lieutenant Colonel William Orrock, had mistaken his orders and continued his oblique path directly towards Assaye. Major Samuel Swinton of the 74th Regiment was ordered to support the pickets and followed close behind. This created a large gap in the centre of the British line and brought the two battalions under a barrage of cannonade from the artillery around the village and the Maratha left. The two battalions began to fall back in disarray, and Pohlmann ordered his remaining infantry and cavalry forward to attack. The Marathas gave no quarter; the pickets were virtually annihilated, but the remnants of the 74th were able to form a rough square behind hastily piled bodies of dead. Realising that the destruction of his right would leave his army exposed and outflanked, Wellesley ordered a detachment of British cavalry under Colonel Patrick Maxwell, consisting of the 19th Light Dragoons and elements of the 4th and 5th Madras Native Cavalry, into action. From their position at the rear, the cavalry dashed directly towards the 74th's square, crashed into the swarming attackers and routed them. Maxwell pressed his advantage and continued his charge into the Maratha infantry and guns on the right, driving them backwards and across the Juah "with great slaughter".

Culmination
A number of Maratha gunners who had feigned death when the British advanced over their position re-manned their guns and began to pour cannon fire into the rear of the 74th and Madras infantry. Wellesley ordered his four sepoy battalions to re-form and ward off any threat from the Maratha infantry and cavalry while the 78th were sent back to retake the Maratha gun line. Wellesley, meanwhile, galloped back to 7th Madras Native Cavalry, which had been held back in reserve to the east, and led a cavalry charge from the opposite direction. The gunners again stood their ground but were eventually driven from their guns and this time it was ensured that all those who remained were dead.

While Wellesley was preoccupied with re-taking the gun line, Pohlmann rallied his infantry and redeployed them into a semicircle with their backs to the Juah; their right flank across the river and their left in Assaye. However, most of the Maratha cannon, which had inflicted heavy losses on Wellesley's infantry, had been captured or lay abandoned on the battlefield. Reluctant to join the fray, the Maratha cavalry lingered in the distance to the west. Most were Pindarries: loosely organised and lightly armed horsemen whose traditional role was to cut down fleeing enemy troops, harass convoy lines and carry out raids into enemy territory. They were not trained to attack well-formed infantry or heavily armed European cavalry, and did not play a further part in the battle.

With the remanned Maratha artillery silenced, Wellesley turned his attention to Pohlmann's reformed infantry. Although Maxwell had suffered heavy losses, he had rallied his cavalry and returned to the field of battle. Wellesley ordered him to charge the Maratha left flank, while the infantry moved forward as a single line to meet the centre and right. The cavalry spurred forward but were met with a volley of canister shot which struck Maxwell, killing him instantly. Their momentum lost, the cavalry did not complete their charge, but veered away from the Maratha line at the last moment. The British and Madras infantry marched on against the Maratha position. Pohlmann's men, their morale low, did not wait for the attack and instead retreated northwards across the Juah. Maratha sources claim the line marched away from the battlefield in an orderly manner on Pohlmann's orders, but British accounts claim the Maratha infantry fled in an uncontrolled panic. Berar's irregulars inside Assaye, now leaderless and having witnessed the fate of the regular infantry, abandoned the village and marched off northwards at around 18:00, followed shortly afterwards by the Maratha cavalry. Wellesley's troops were exhausted and in no condition to pursue, and the native allied cavalry which had remained on the south bank of the Kailna and had not been engaged, refused to pursue without the support of the British and Madras cavalry.

Aftermath
The East India Company and British Army casualties amounted to 428 killed, 1,138 wounded and 18 missing; a total of 1,584 – over a third of the force engaged in combat. The 74th and the picket battalion were decimated; from a strength of about 500, the 74th lost ten officers killed and seven wounded, and 124 other ranks killed and 270 wounded. The pickets lost all their officers except their commander, Lieutenant Colonel William Orrock, and had only about 75 men remaining. Of the ten officers forming the general's staff, eight were wounded or had their horses killed. Wellesley himself lost two horses; the first was shot from underneath him and the second was speared as he led the charge to re-capture the Maratha gun line.

The number of Maratha casualties is more difficult to ascertain. Despatches from British officers give a figure of 1,200 dead and many more wounded but some modern historians have estimated a total of 6,000 dead and wounded. The Marathas also surrendered seven stands of colours, large amounts of stores and ammunition and 98 cannon – most of which were later taken into service by the East India Company. Although Scindia and Berar's army was not finished as a fighting force, several of Scindia's regular infantry battalions and artillery crews had been destroyed. Their command structure had also been damaged: many of their European officers, including Colonel Pohlmann and Major Dupont, surrendered to the Company – which had offered amnesty to Europeans in the service of the Maratha armies – or deserted and sought employment with other native chieftains.

The sound of the guns at Assaye was heard by Stevenson who immediately broke up his camp 10 mi to the west in an attempt to join the battle. However, he was misled by his guide and marched first on Borkardan before he reached the battlefield on the evening of 24 September. Suspecting that his guide had intentionally led him astray, Stevenson later had him hanged. He remained with Wellesley to assist with the wounded – troops were still being carried from the battlefield four days after the engagement – until ordered to recommence the pursuit of the Maratha army on 26 September. Wellesley remained to the south while he established a hospital at Ajanta and awaited reinforcements from Poona. Two months later, he combined with Stevenson to rout Scindia and Berar's demoralised and weakened army at Argaon, and shortly afterwards stormed Berar's fortress at Gawilghur. These victories, coupled with Lieutenant General Lake's successful campaign in the north, induced the two Maratha chiefs to sue for peace.

Wellesley later told Stevenson that "I should not like to see again such a loss as I sustained on the 23rd September, even if attended by such a gain", and in later life he referred to Assaye as "the bloodiest for the numbers that I ever saw". Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Munro, the Company's district collector at Mysore, was critical of the high proportion of casualties and questioned Wellesley's decision not to wait for Stevenson. He wrote to Wellesley: "I am tempted to think that you did it with a view of sharing the glory with the smallest numbers". In response, Wellesley politely rebuffed Munro's accusations and defended his action as necessary because he had received and acted upon incorrect intelligence regarding the Maratha position. Assaye was 34-year-old Wellesley's first major success and despite his anguish over the heavy losses, it was a battle he always held in the highest estimation. After his retirement from active military service, the Duke of Wellington (as he later became known) considered Assaye the finest thing he ever did in the way of fighting even when compared to his later military career.

Lord Mornington and his Council lauded the battle as a "most brilliant and important victory", and presented each of the Madras units and British regiments involved in the engagement with a set of honorary colours. The British regiments and native units were also awarded the Assaye battle honour and most were later given permission to adopt an Assaye elephant as part of their insignia. A public monument was also erected by the East India Company at Fort William, Calcutta to commemorate the victory. The 74th Regiment of foot later became known as the Assaye regiment due to their stand at the battle and their modern-day successors, the Royal Highland Fusiliers (2 SCOTS), still celebrate the anniversary of the battle each year. Of the native infantry battalions, only the Madras Sappers survive in their original form in the Indian Army but they no longer celebrate Assaye as it has been declared a repugnant battle honour by the Government of India.

In fiction

 * Bernard Cornwell's fictional character Richard Sharpe earned his battlefield promotion to officer's rank by saving Wellesley's life at the Battle of Assaye. The novel Sharpe's Triumph (HarperCollins, 1998, ISBN 0-00-225630-4) depicts the campaign and the battle in detail. Both men's memories of Assaye are mentioned several more times throughout the series as Sharpe and Wellington's careers progress. The television adaptation differs and depicts Sharpe saving Wellesley's life from French soldiers in Spain during the later Peninsular War.

title: Battle of Assaye


text:
AgustaWestland AW101

The AgustaWestland AW101 is a medium-lift helicopter in military and civil use. First flown in 1987, it was developed by a joint venture between Westland Helicopters in the United Kingdom and Agusta in Italy in response to national requirements for a modern naval utility helicopter. Several operators, including the armed forces of Britain, Denmark, and Portugal, use the name Merlin for their AW101 aircraft. It is manufactured at factories in Yeovil, England, and Vergiate, Italy. Licensed assembly work has also taken place in Japan and the United States.

Prior to 2007, the aircraft had been marketed under the designation EH101. The original designation was EHI 01, from the name given to the Anglo-Italian joint venture—European Helicopter Industries—but a transcription error changed this to EH101. In 2000, Westland Helicopters and Agusta merged to form AgustaWestland, leading to the type's current designation.

The AW101 entered into service in 1999 and has since replaced several older helicopter types, such as the Sikorsky SH-3 Sea King, performing roles such as medium-sized transport, anti-submarine warfare, search and rescue, and ship-based utility operations. The Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) operates the CH-149 Cormorant variant for air-sea rescue. Another variant, the Lockheed Martin VH-71 Kestrel, was produced to serve in the United States presidential transport fleet before the program was cancelled and the aircraft sold off to Canada for parts. Civil operators use the AW101 for passenger and VIP transportation. The type has been deployed to active combat theatres, such as in support of coalition forces during the Iraq War and the War in Afghanistan.

Origins
In 1977, the UK Ministry of Defence issued a requirement for an anti-submarine warfare (ASW) helicopter to replace the Royal Navy's Westland Sea Kings, which were becoming inadequate in the face of advances in Soviet submarine technology. Westland Helicopters put together a proposal, designated WG.34, for a three-engined helicopter of similar dimensions to the Sea King; the WG.34 was to feature more autonomy and a greater range than its predecessor. At the same time, the Italian Navy (Marina Militare) was also considering the replacement of its fleet of Sea Kings, which had been built by the Italian company Agusta; Westland and Agusta soon began talks regarding the joint development of a successor helicopter.

Agusta and Westland finalised an agreement to work on the project together, and formed a jointly owned new company, EH Industries Limited (EHI), to pursue the development and marketing of the new helicopter to potential operators. On 12 June 1981, the UK government confirmed its participation in the project, allocated an initial budget of £20 million to develop nine pre-series examples. A major agreement, which secured funding for the majority of the EH101's development program, was signed by both the British and Italian governments in 1984. At the 1985 Paris Air Show, Agusta showed a mock-up of a utility version of the new helicopter, leading to a more generalised design that could be customised to meet the needs of various civilian or military customers. The first prototype flew on 9 October 1987.

In 1987, Canada selected the EH101 to replace their Sea Kings in the anti-submarine warfare and search and rescue roles. The EH101's third engine and increased range compared favourably with rival aircraft, such as the Sikorsky Seahawk. The range and de-icing capability were also seen as vital for North Atlantic operations. The fledgling EH101, of which up to 50 were on order to replace the Canadian Armed Forces's (CAF) Sea Kings, found itself subject to a wider political battle between the Conservative and Liberal parties, the latter viewing the aircraft as too costly. Critics attacked the EH101 purchase as excessive and unnecessary after the Cold War's end in the early 1990s. Wide-ranging cost estimates were presented by both proponents and opponents of the EH101 procurement, with opponents backing life extensions of Sikorsky CH-124 Sea King and Boeing Vertol CH-113 Labrador helicopter fleets. The EH101 controversy was seen as a factor in the 1993 Canadian federal election. The order was cancelled by the new Liberal government in 1993 resulting in a $470 million cancellation fee.

Into production
Several pre-production aircraft were assembled during the late 1980s and early 1990s. The first pre-production aircraft had its first flight powered by General Electric CT7-2A engines on 9 October 1987. Flight tests were suspended for six months following the crash of the second pre-production aircraft on 21 January 1993. On 6 June 1993, the first EH101 took its maiden flight with the Rolls-Royce Turbomeca RTM322 turboshaft engine. Nine prototypes were built to explore military and civil applications, including a "heliliner" configuration. In February 1995, Britain formally placed its first order for a total of 22 EH101s; this was quickly followed by Italy's order for 16 EH101s in October 1995. The EH101 order was not without controversy, the RAF had declared its preference for an all-Chinook fleet; also, Boeing allegedly offered cheaper terms for the Chinook. RAF deliveries began in 1997; RN deliveries started the following year.

Following the merger of Westland and Agusta to form AgustaWestland in 2000, there was no need for the separate EHI entity; the EH101 was formally re-branded as the AW101 in 2007. By April 2009, more than 180 AW101s had been sold worldwide; the combined operational fleet had also accumulated a total of 170,000 flying hours.

Further developments
In November 2007, Algeria signed a contract for 6 AW101 helicopters. In August 2012, it was reported that Algeria had signed an agreement with AgustaWestland for the provision of up to 80 helicopters, 42 of which were to be AW101s. Under the terms of this arrangement, early aircraft were to be manufactured by AgustaWestland, while Algeria was to commence the assembly of some AW101s later on.

By September 2013, AgustaWestland was in the process of acquiring civil certification for the AW101, prospective customers include offshore oil platform operators and VIP clients. As of February 2014, AgustaWestland was considering adapting the AW101 as a heavyweight unmanned aerial vehicle, it is proposed that in this configuration an AW101 could be optionally manned.

On 7 June 2010, it was announced that Boeing had acquired a manufacturing license and the rights from AgustaWestland for US production of a localised AW101 variant, designated as the Boeing 101. In October 2012, the AW101 was submitted in a U.S. Air Force competition to replace the HH-60 Pave Hawk; however, the bid was dropped three months later.

Overview
The AW101 Merlin follows a conventional design layout, but makes use of advanced technologies, such as the design of the rotor blades, avionics systems, and extensive use of composite materials. The fuselage structure is modular and comprises an aluminium–lithium alloy, designed to be both light and damage-resistant. The AW101 is designed for operating in extreme weather conditions; it is fitted with a de-icing system and rated to operate in temperatures ranging between −45 and +50 °C. The aircraft's control systems allow the AW101 to maintain a stable hover in 40 kn crosswinds.

An active vibration control system, known as the active control of structural response system, reduces airframe vibration by up to 80%, increasing crew comfort and minimising buildup of stress on the airframe. The cockpit is fitted with armoured seats for the crew, and can withstand an impact velocity of over 10 m/s. Dual flight controls are provided, though the AW101 can be flown by a single person. The pilots' instrument displays include six full-colour high-definition screens and an optional mission display; a digital map or forward looking infrared (FLIR) display can also be installed.

Powerplant
The AW101 is powered by three turboshaft engines. Initially the Rolls-Royce Turbomeca RTM322 producing 2,035 to 2,160 shp and the General Electric CT7 producing 1960 to 2329 shp were the two available engine types, but by 2020 new aircraft were only being sold with the CT7-8E. The RTM322 powerplant was specifically developed for the AW101; it was subsequently adopted on the AgustaWestland WAH-64 Apache and the NHIndustries NH90 helicopters. According to Rolls-Royce, about 80% of AW101s use the RTM322

The engines power an 18.59 m diameter five-bladed main rotor. The rotor blades are constructed from carbon/glass with nomex honeycomb and rohacell foam, edged with titanium alloy in a sandwich construction. The shaping of the main rotor blades is derived from the BERP rotor blades first used on the Westland Lynx. This blade design improves aerodynamic efficiency at the blade tip and reduces the acoustic signature. Improved BERP IV rotors have since been developed; when installed this increases the AW101's maximum take-off weight.

Each engine is supplied by a separate 1,074 L fuel tank using dual booster pumps. Optional fourth and fifth tanks can be added to act as a reservoir supply, topping up the main tanks during flight, increasing range or endurance. The AW101 can also be fitted with a probe for aerial refuelling. Self-sealing fuel tanks are an optional item to be selected by the customer. An inlet particle separator system can be installed, protecting the engine when operating in sandy environments.

Armament and defensive systems

Most variants of the AW101 are equipped with self-defence systems, such as chaff and flare dispensers, directed infrared countermeasures (infrared jammers), ESM (electronic support measures in the form of RF heads), and a laser detection and warning system. British Merlins have been outfitted with protective armour against small-arms fire. A side-mounted forward looking infrared (FLIR) imaging sensor has been fitted to some variants.

Two hardpoints are present in the underside of the airframe on which the HM1 model can carry four Sting Ray torpedoes or Mk 11 Mod 3 depth charges. Some customers have chosen to deploy the Marte anti-ship missile on the AW101; as of 2011, the Royal Navy is considering equipping their Merlin fleet with an anti-surface missile. The Mk1, Mk3 and Mk3A variants can mount general purpose machine guns in up to five locations in the main cabin, aimed out of both door and window apertures. AgustaWestland has examined the integration of rockets and additional ground-attack weapons.

Avionics
Westland and IBM formed a consortium in 1991 to perform the helicopter's complex systems integration. The AW101 features a network of helicopter management and mission systems designed to reduce pilot workload and enable the helicopter to undertake a wide variety of missions. A digital automatic flight control system (AFCS) is employed by the AW101. The AFCS allows the operation of a four-axis (pitch, roll, yaw and collective) autopilot and the automatic stabilisation system, and is linked in with the aircraft's flight management systems. The AFCS, manufactured by Smiths Aerospace, is a dual-duplex system using two flight computers to provide redundancy and fault-tolerance.

The AW101's navigation system includes a GPS receiver and inertial navigation system, VHF omnidirectional radio range (VOR), instrument landing system (ILS), TACAN, and automatic direction finding. The Mk1 and Mk3 are equipped with a Doppler velocity system (DVS) which provides relative ground velocities; the DVS is also linked into the AFCS as part of the autostabilisation system. For safety, the aircraft is equipped with obstacle and terrain avoidance warning systems, traffic collision avoidance system (TCAS), and both voice and flight data recorders.

The AW101 was initially equipped with the Ferranti Blue Kestrel search and detection radar which is capable of 360 degree scanning and can detect small targets as far as 25 nautical miles. As part of the Royal Navy's Merlin HM2 upgrade program, Lockheed Martin implemented a series of improvements to the radar, notably allowing it to track 40 times the number of targets previously capable. Danish EH101s are fitted with the RDR-1600 search and weather radar. Mk 2 Royal Navy Merlins are equipped with the AQS901 anti-submarine system for processing sonographic data from sonobuoys to detect and target submerged submarines. The AQS901 was derived from the system on the earlier Hawker Siddeley Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft.

Crew and cargo
The AW101 is typically operated by a crew of three: a pilot, an observer, and a crewman/operator. The pilot is able to fly for the majority of a mission in a hands-off mode, enabled by the sophisticated autopilot. All crew members have individual access to management computers and tactical information.

The fuselage has a volume of 31.91 m3 and the cargo compartment is 6.5 m in length, 2.3 m wide and 1.91 m high. The military version of the AW101 can accommodate up to 24 seated or 45 standing combat troops and their equipment. Alternative loads include a medical team and 16 stretchers, and cargo pallets.

The ramp, 1.91 x, can take a 3050 kg load, allowing it to carry vehicles such as Land Rovers. The ramp and cabin floor are fitted with flush tie-down points. A cargo hook under the fuselage can carry external loads of 5440 kg via the use of a semi-automatic cargo release unit (SACRU). A rescue hoist and a hover trim controller are fitted at the cargo door. An optional cargo winch can be installed near to the rear ramp.

Royal Navy
The British Royal Navy's final order was for 44 ASW aircraft, originally designated Merlin HAS.1 (Helicopter, Anti-Submarine Mark 1) but soon changed to Merlin HM1 (Helicopter, Maritime Mark 1). The first fully operational Merlin was delivered on 17 May 1997, entering service on 2 June 2000. All aircraft were delivered by the end of 2002, and are operated by 3 Fleet Air Arm squadrons: 814 NAS, 820 NAS, 824 NAS and 829 NAS (now disbanded and merged with 814 NAS), all based at RNAS Culdrose in Cornwall. 700 NAS was the Merlin Operational Evaluation Unit from 2000 to 2008. In March 2004, Navy Merlins were temporarily grounded following an incident at RNAS Culdrose in which a tail rotor failed due to a manufacturing defect. An improved tail rotor was designed and adopted on most AW101s which significantly reduced associated maintenance.

In 1995, it was announced that the Navy's Westland Lynx helicopters would be retired in favour of an all-Merlin fleet. However, the subsequent Strategic Defence and Security Review 2010 stated that the future naval helicopters would be the Merlin and the Wildcat, a derivative of the Lynx. Royal Navy Merlins have seen action in the Caribbean, on counter-narcotics and hurricane support duties, as well as maritime security duties in the Persian Gulf. Merlins have also seen active duty in Iraq, providing support to British and coalition forces based in the region.

The Merlin HM1 has been cleared to operate from the Royal Navy's aircraft carriers, amphibious assault ships, Type 23 frigates, Type 45 destroyer and several Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) vessels including the Fort Victoria-class replenishment oiler. 30 aircraft have been upgraded to Merlin HM2 standard under the £750m Merlin Capability Sustainment Programme; Lockheed Martin UK delivered the final HM2 on 11 July 2016. The HM2 has a new mission system, digital cockpit, electro-optical camera and multi-static sonar processing. The HM2 achieved IOC on 30 June 2014 after flying 480 hours from Illustrious during Exercise Deep Blue earlier that month. It was also reported that some of the eight airframes not scheduled to be upgraded for financial reasons may be updated. Five HM2s are in maintenance at a time, leaving 25 available, of which 14 were theoretically to be assigned to the Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier. However, in practice with just 30 Merlin HM2s in service, it may be impossible to deploy 14 aircraft on a single operational carrier on a full time basis. During the 2021 carrier strike group deployment to the Pacific, for instance, 7 Merlins were embarked with the task group.

In addition to its ASW role, the HM2 will be able to carry an airborne early warning (AEW) pod known as the Crowsnest, replacing the Sea King ASaC7. In September 2011, Thales UK proposed re-using Sea King ASaC7 equipment, such as the Searchwater 2000, on the Merlin; Lockheed Martin has proposed developing a new multi-functional sensor for both the AW101 and other aircraft. Lockheed originally planned to use a derivative of the F-35's APG-81 radar; however, a rival Elta system and the Thales system both commenced flight trials in 2014. On 22 May 2015, the MOD and prime contractor Lockheed Martin UK selected Thales to provide the radar and mission system for the Crowsnest. Initial operating capability of the system was significantly delayed. While Crowsnest was deployed with the U.K. carrier strike group in 2021, it experienced operating challenges and revised plans meant that Crowsnest achieved initial operating capability in July 2023. Full operating capability is expected in 2024/25. It has been reported that initially only five Merlins will be equipped with Crowsnest, three of these being normally assigned to the "high readiness" aircraft carrier.

Problems with Merlin/Crowsnest have caused the Royal Navy to look for a replacement. As of 2023 the system, which is still to achieve full operating capability, has a planned retirement date of 2029. In 2021, the UK’s Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) announced that options would be examined and might draw on the already existing Project Vixen, researching the utility of a naval unmanned system that could encompass strike, AEW, and air-to-air refuelling components. If implemented, the replacement of Merlin/Crowsnest by another system would permit all Merlin helicopters to focus on ASW operations for the remainder of their service lives.

On 15 December 2009, plans were announced to transfer RAF Merlin HC3s and HC3As to the Royal Navy's Commando Helicopter Force to replace retiring Sea King HC4 helicopters. The Sea King was set to retire in 2016, leaving the Navy operating a combination of the Wildcat and Merlin. 846 NAS reformed with ex-RAF Merlin HC3s on 30 September 2014; 845 NAS followed on 9 July 2015. On 25 May 2018, the first of 25 converted Royal Marines Commando Merlin Mk4/4A were delivered to Royal Naval Air Station (RNAS) Yeovilton. In July 2020, the Merlin HM2 and HC4/4A helicopters were planned to be in service until 2029 and 2030, respectively. On 11 June 2021, it was confirmed that their Out of Service Date (OSD) had been moved to 2040. By the end of 2022, all HC helicopters were upgraded to the HC4/4A Commando Merlin standard.

Royal Air Force

The RAF ordered 22 Merlin HC3 for transport missions, the first of which entered service in January 2001 with No. 28 Squadron RAF based at RAF Benson. The type is equipped with extended-range fuel tanks and is capable of air-to-air refuelling. The Merlin is frequently utilised for troop transport duties and for the transport of bulky objects, either internally or underslung, including vehicles and artillery. The Merlin Depth Maintenance Facility at RNAS Culdrose performed most tasks upon the Merlin HC3.

The Merlin's first operational deployment was to the Balkans region in 2003. RAF Merlins were first deployed to Iraq as part of Operation Telic in 2004, supporting coalition forces and were operated as the main medevac asset in southern Iraq; both Flight Lieutenant Kev Harris and Flight Lieutenant Michelle Goodman were awarded the DFC during this period. Merlins routinely operated around Basra until Britain's withdrawal in June 2009.

In 2002, Westland made an unsuccessful unsolicited offer to the British Ministry of Defence, proposing an enhanced Merlin variant intended to satisfy the demand for additional lift capacity. An alternative measure was the acquisition of six AW101s from Denmark in 2007; designated Merlin HC3A, these were assigned to the RAF, allowing Merlins to be deployed in Afghanistan. The HC3A is used for training and not for frontline operations due to various configuration differences. In December 2007, a second Merlin squadron, No. 78 Squadron was formed at RAF Benson.

In 2009, five Merlin Mk3s were operating in Afghanistan, transporting troops and supplies. The deployment to Afghanistan was criticised as the aircraft reportedly lacked protective Kevlar armour. By July 2010, the Merlin fleet was fully fitted with ballistic armour. The deployment of Merlins to Afghanistan allowed the detachment of Sea Kings to be withdrawn from the region in October 2011. As part of the UK drawdown in Afghanistan, Merlins were withdrawn from theatre in June 2013.

In 2012, the RAF's Merlin HC3/3A fleet began to be transferred to the Royal Navy for use by the Commando Helicopter Force. Royal Navy personnel worked alongside RAF crew at Benson to build experience during the transition. The £454m Merlin Life Sustainment Programme resulted in 25 HC3/3A airframes being fitted with the cockpit electronics of the HM2, folding tails and main rotor heads, strengthened landing gear, deck lashing mounting points, obsolescence updates, fast-roping points and a common emergency egress system. The first HC4 is to begin flight trials in September 2017, with an IOC in mid-2018; an interim folding main rotor head will be fitted to some HC3 for shipborne operations prior to the HC4 upgrade.

Command of the UK Merlin HC3/3A fleet was formally transferred from the RAF to the Royal Navy during a ceremony at RAF Benson on 30 September 2014. As part of the same ceremony, the RAF's 78 Sqn was disbanded and the Royal Navy's 846 Naval Air Squadron stood-up with the Merlin. The RAF's 28(AC) continued to operate as part of the Commando Helicopter Force until July 2015, when 28(AC) Sqn stood down and 845 Naval Air Squadron stood-up. 846 NAS relocated from RAF Benson to RNAS Yeovilton in March 2015, with 845 NAS following in June 2016.

Italian Navy

In 1997, the Italian government ordered 16 AW101 helicopters for the Italian Navy, with options for four more. These AW101 included eight of the anti-surface/submarine (ASuW/ASW) version, four airborne early warning (AEW), four amphibious support helicopters (ASH). The government then exercised its option for four additional ASH helicopters, which were delivered by 2006. The same year the government ordered two more AW101 ASH helicopters in a slightly modified version.

The first Italian Navy production helicopter (MM81480) flew on 4 October 1999 and was officially presented to the press on 6 December 1999. Italy accepted delivery of the 21st AW101, configured for anti-submarine warfare, on 4 August 2009. In total 22 AW101 helicopters have been delivered to the Italian Navy.

Italian AW101s have operated from a variety of ships and have seen service overseas; in 2009 the Italian Navy used its AW101 fleet as executive transports for visiting heads of state and officials during the 35th G8 summit. In 2010, the Italian Navy deployed three AW101s to Afghanistan, where they were flown in both the transport and utility roles. In 2011, it was reported that the Italian contingent in Afghanistan, consisting of AW101s, had been providing coverage of a wide area of the country.

Italian Air Force
In June 2011 the AW101 was chosen by the Italian Air Force to replace its ageing Sea King HH-3F helicopters in the combat search and rescue role. A total of 15 helicopters in the HH-101A variant were ordered and delivered between 2016 and 2020.

Royal Canadian Air Force

In 1997, in light of the declining condition of its helicopter fleet, Canada launched the Canadian Search and Rescue Helicopter competition. It was won by the EH101, which was designated CH-149 Cormorant in Canadian service.

In 2004, the EH101 was entered into a Canadian competition to replace the shipboard Sea King fleet, but the Sikorsky CH-148 Cyclone was selected. In 2013, following difficulties with the CH-148 procurement, the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) was reported to be seriously considering cancelling the contract with Sikorsky and was investigating the possibility of procuring the AW101 instead. However, an initial batch of six Cyclones was delivered to the RCAF in June 2015.

In December 2022, Canada's Department of National Defence announced a C$1.24-billion contract for procurement of three additional aircraft and upgrades to the existing fleet to current configuration of the helicopter; this will increase the fleet to 16 aircraft. The RCAF also acquired its own advanced training simulator configured to the new modernized cockpit.

Royal Danish Air Force
In 2001, the Royal Danish Air Force (RDAF) announced the purchase of eight EH101s for SAR duties and six tactical troop transports for 722 Squadron. The last of the 14 AW101s was delivered in March 2007 and the first SAR AW101s became operational out of Karup Airport in April 2007. In 2007, the six troop transport AW101s were transferred to the British MOD; in exchange, the British government ordered six new-build AW101s as replacements for the RDAF.

Danish AW101s have a higher gross weight capacity of 15,600 kg and were, as delivered, coated in a paint designed to reduce the aircraft's infrared signature. In the SAR role, RDAF AW101s have a crew of six and were initially painted yellow to distinguish themselves from AW101 allocated to military duties, but were later painted green, and all 14 AW101s are used for SAR and troop transport.

On 28 January 2008, the drive shaft of a Danish AW101 broke, leading to an emergency landing at Billund Airport. Following the incident, the Danish fleet was grounded as a precaution and the AW101's future was publicly debated. In the first six months of 2008, the RDAF reported an operational availability of roughly 50%, well below the target of 80%, partly due to an inadequate maintenance organisation and staff shortages.

In January 2011, the Danish Ministry of Defence reportedly could not afford the retrofitting of the AW101 fleet for Afghanistan operations, against earlier reports of a deployment in 2012. In February 2013, Aviation Week reported that earlier reliability problems had been resolved and that a full upgrade package would be applied to Danish AW101s; these included the addition of electronic warfare pods and a new electro-optical system, in advance of a deployment in Afghanistan in 2014. In September 2013, Danish AW101s were to receive L-3 Wescam MX-15 electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensors; SAR aircraft already carry the FLIR Systems Star Safire II EO/IR sensor.

Royal Norwegian Air Force
On 25 October 2007, a project started that had the intent to replace all Westland Sea King search and rescue helicopters with new rescue helicopters by 2020. On 19 December 2013, a contract was signed between AgustaWestland and the government, for the purchase of 16 AW101 helicopters. The agreement came about after fierce competition between different manufacturers to satisfy the Norwegian requirements. Participants were AgustaWestland, Eurocopter, NHIndustries, Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation and Boeing. The government considered that AgustaWestland AW101 met the requirements and specifications in the best possible way.

On 12 June 2017, Per-Willy Amundsen, Minister of Justice and Public Security, announced the opening of Leonardo's AW101 Norway Training Centre at Stavanger Sola Air Station. The training centre includes an AW101 Full Flight Simulator (FFS), jointly developed by Leonardo and CAE to Level D, which is a CAE Series 3000 device, along with an AW101 SAR console training system linked to the FFS to provide rear crew training. The first training course at the centre started prior to delivery of the first rotorcraft. The training centre will be used by both Norwegian and foreign AW101 customers.

The first AW101 was delivered in November 2017. The Norwegian AW101s officially started operating in the rescue role on 1 September 2020. The Sea King was phased out in December 2023, after 47 years of service as rescue helicopter in the Royal Norwegian Air force, and replaced with the AW101. The AW101 is named SAR Queen in Norwegian service.

Portuguese Air Force

The Portuguese Air Force had purchased 12 Merlins under a €446 million contract, the first of which was delivered on 22 December 2004. The type has been used to conduct transport, search and rescue, and maritime surveillance missions, progressively replacing the Aérospatiale Puma previously tasked with these missions. The main role of Portuguese AW101s is to perform search and rescue missions within Portugal's maritime zone. They are operated by 751 Squadron and are kept on constant alert at three bases: Montijo near Lisbon, Lajes Field on the Azores, and Porto Santo Island.

Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force

The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) ordered 14 aircraft in 2003 to use in both the airborne mine countermeasures (AMCM) and transport roles. The AW101 was modified by Kawasaki Heavy Industries, and the Japan Defense Agency designated the model MCH-101. Special features include the automated folding of the rotor and tail. For the mine-hunting role, the MCH-101 has been outfitted with Northrop Grumman's AQS-24A airborne mine-hunting system and AN/AES-1 Airborne Laser Mine Detection System (ALMDS) for a complete surface-to-bottom mine detection capability, as well as Mk-104 acoustic mine sweeping gear.

In 2002, AgustaWestland, Kawasaki and Marubeni entered a general agreement for cooperation; Kawasaki began the assembly of both the CH-101 and the MCH-101 in 2003. Kawasaki also began licensed production of the RTM322 engines in 2005. In a separate agreement between Marubeni and AgustaWestland, a supply depot was established in Japan to support the MCH-101 and CH-101 fleets. The first MCH-101 was delivered to the JMSDF on 3 March 2006.

The MCH-101 will replace the MH-53E (S-80-M-1) in the AMCM role. The CH-101 will operate in the transport/support role for Antarctic expeditions, replacing the Sikorsky S-61A, and will be working in coordination with the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.

After a whistle-blower alleged that the MSDF's preference had been improperly changed an investigation was launched. On 16 December 2016 the Japanese Ministry of Defense (the Defense Agency having been upgraded to a ministry in 2007) stated that it had not confirmed lobbying efforts but the ministry admonished Tomohisa Takei, the JMSDF chief of staff, for mentioning the MCH-101 by name during the procurement process to his subordinates. This had come after MSDF officials had reported that the Mitsubishi-built SH helicopters may be best.

VIP and other usage

AgustaWestland developed a specialised luxury variant, the AW101 VVIP (Very Very Important Person, i.e. a head of state), aimed at business and VIP customers. As of April 2009, 15% of all AW101s sold were for VIP purposes. By September 2013, customers operating the VIP variant included Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Nigeria and Turkmenistan.

The AW101 was being acquired by the United States Marine Corps under the VXX program as a replacement for the Presidential Marine One helicopters. Designated VH-71 Kestrel, the variant was heavily customised and equipped with various self-defence systems. However the programme encountered significant cost overruns and political opposition, which led to the procurement being scrapped in June 2009. After the cancellation, the delivered helicopters were sold to Canada for $164 million, where they were used as source of spare parts for its fleet of Agusta Westland CH-149 Cormorant search-and-rescue helicopters. Separately, the Marine Corps had also conducted studies into the adoption of the EH101 as a fall-back option to the Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey tiltrotor during the 1990s.

In April 2009, India ordered 12 AW101 to serve as executive transport helicopters for the Indian President and Prime Minister. The selection followed field trial assessments between the AW101 and the Sikorsky S-92 held in 2008. However, the procurement was put on hold and subsequently cancelled due to the 2013 Indian helicopter bribery scandal, in which Finmeccanica, AgustaWestland's parent company, were accused of using bribery to win the contract. The three helicopters delivered as part of the contract may be returned to the manufacturer as part of the arbitration process.

Variants

 * Pre-production
 * PP1 – Westland-built basic air vehicle prototype, first flown 9 October 1987.
 * PP2 – Agusta-built Italian basic air vehicle prototype first flown on 26 November 1987 and used for deck trials but was destroyed on 21 January 1993 following a rotor brake malfunction.
 * PP3 – Westland-built and the first civil configured Heliliner, used for engine vibration tests and icing trials in Canada.
 * PP4 – Westland-built British naval prototype, lost in an accident on 7 April 1995 after a drive train control rod failure.
 * PP5 – Westland-built Merlin development aircraft eventually equipped with Merlin avionics.
 * PP6 – Agusta-built development aircraft for Italian Navy variant first flown 26 April 1989.
 * PP7 – Agusta-built military utility aircraft with rear-loading ramp.
 * PP8 – Westland-built civil prototype.
 * PP9 – Agusta-built military utility prototype with rear-loading ramp.
 * Model 110
 * Italian Navy ASW/ASuW variant, eight built. Powered by T-700-GE-T6A1 engines. Fitted with Eliradar APS-784 radar and Honeywell HELRAS dipping sonar. Armed with torpedoes or Marte anti-ship missiles.

 * Model 111
 * Royal Navy ASW/ASuW variant, designated Merlin HM1 by customer. Powered by RTM322 engines and fitted with Blue Kestrel radar, Thomson Marconi FLASH dipping sonar and Orange Reaper ESM. 44 built.

 * Model 112
 * Italian Navy early warning variant with same airframe as Model 110 but with Eliradar HEW-784 radar in large underfuselage radome. Four built.

 * Series 200
 * Proposed military utility version with no rear-loading ramp.

 * Series 300 Heliliner
 * Proposed civil transport with no ramp. In 2000, British International Helicopters conducted service trials using PP8; these did not lead to a commercial service.

 * Series 310
 * Proposed version of Heliliner with full airline avionics for operation from oil platforms. No production.

 * Model 410
 * Italian Navy transport variant with folding rotors and tail boom. Four built.

 * Model 411
 * Royal Air Force transport variant, designated Merlin HC3 by customer, 22 built.

 * Model 413
 * Italian Navy special forces and amphibious assault transport with more advanced avionics.

 * Model 500
 * Proposed civil utility variant with rear-ramp.

 * Model 510
 * Civil utility variant with rear ramp, two built. One used for Tokyo Metropolitan Police Agency and one used to support US101 bid.

 * Model 511
 * Canadian military search and rescue variant, designated CH-149 Cormorant by customer.

 * Model 512
 * Merlin Joint Supporter for Royal Danish Air Force. Eight acquired for search and rescue (512 SAR) and six for tactical troop transport (512 TTT). The six transports were sold to RAF (as Merlin HC3As) and replaced by six new-build Merlins.

 * Model 514
 * Portuguese Air Force search and rescue variant, six built.

 * Model 515
 * Portuguese Air Force fisheries protection variant, two built.

 * Model 516
 * Portuguese Air Force combat search and rescue variant, four built.

 * Model 518
 * Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force mine countermeasures and transport variant, two built.

 * Model 519
 * Presidential Transport variant for the United States Marine Corps as the VH-71 Kestrel, four test vehicles and five pilot production aircraft built.

 * Model 610
 * Algerian Naval variant. 6 delivered.

 * Model 611
 * Italian Air Force Combat Search and Rescue variant, powered by CT7-8E engines. 15 on order.

 * Model 612 (SAR Queen)
 * Norwegian search and rescue variant, operated by the Air Force. 16 ordered with option for 6 more.

 * Model 614
 * Polish ASW/CSAR "convertible" variant, operated by the Polish Navy, 4 delivered.

 * Model 615
 * Canadian military search and rescue variant, upgraded -511 variant, again designated the CH-149 Cormorant. 16 to be delivered.

 * Model 640
 * Saudi Arabian VVIP variant, operated by the Air Force. 2 delivered.

 * Model 641
 * Indian VVIP variant. (See 2013 Indian helicopter bribery scandal). Latterly delivered to Nigerian and Azerbaijani Air Forces.

 * Model 642
 * Algerian VVIP variant, 2 delivered.

 * Model 643
 * Turkmenistani VVIP variant, operated by the Air Force. 2 delivered..

 * Merlin HM1
 * Royal Navy designation for the Model 111.

 * Merlin HM2
 * Avionics retrofit of 30 HM1s for the Royal Navy.

 * Merlin HC3
 * Royal Air Force designation for the Model 411.

 * Merlin HC3A
 * Royal Air Force designation for six former Royal Danish Air Force Model 512s modified to UK standards.

 * Merlin HC3i
 * Royal Navy will fit seven HC3 with folding rotor heads as an interim (3i) measure until the full HC4 upgrade is available.

 * Merlin HC4/4A
 * The conversion of 25 RAF HC3/3A (19 HC3 and 6 HC3A) for RN use in hand with the first flight taking place in November 2016. HM2 cockpit, folding tail/blades and other adaptations for naval use.

 * CH-148 Petrel
 * Ship-based anti-submarine helicopter for Canada. 35 originally ordered by the Canadian Forces, reduced to 28 and cancelled in 1993.

 * CH-149 Chimo
 * Search and rescue helicopter for Canada. 15 ordered by the Canadian forces, but later cancelled.

 * CH-149 Cormorant
 * Search and rescue helicopter for Canada, 15 ordered and delivered.

 * Lockheed Martin VH-71 Kestrel
 * Cancelled USMC variant that was intended to serve as the US Presidential helicopter.

 * SH-101A
 * Italian Navy designation for the MP variant.

 * EH-101A
 * Italian Navy designation for the AEW variant.

 * MH-101A
 * Italian Navy designation for the Amphibious Support Helicopter (ASH) variant.

 * HH-101A
 * Italian Air Force designation for the CSAR variant.

 * Kawasaki Heavy Industries MCH-101
 * Japan Defense Agency designation of Model 518

Government

 * Algerian Air Force
 * Algerian Navy
 * Royal Canadian Air Force (see CH-149 Cormorant)
 * Royal Danish Air Force
 * Indonesian Air Force
 * Italian Air Force
 * Royal Danish Air Force
 * Indonesian Air Force
 * Italian Air Force
 * Italian Air Force
 * Italian Air Force
 * Italian Navy
 * Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force - 10
 * Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department (formerly, retired its only heli in 2018)
 * Nigerian Air Force
 * Royal Norwegian Air Force
 * Polish Navy (4 delivered)
 * Polish Land Forces (22 ordered)
 * Portuguese Air Force
 * Polish Navy (4 delivered)
 * Polish Land Forces (22 ordered)
 * Portuguese Air Force
 * Portuguese Air Force
 * Portuguese Air Force
 * Royal Saudi Air Force
 * Turkmen Air Force
 * Royal Navy
 * Royal Navy
 * Royal Navy

Former operators

 * Royal Air Force
 * Royal Air Force

title: AgustaWestland AW101