Hughes Helicopters
former military vehicle company
Hughes Helicopters was a major manufacturer of military and civilian helicopters from the 1950s to the 1980s.
The company began in 1947, as a unit of Hughes Aircraft, then was part of the Hughes Tool Company after 1955. It became the Hughes Helicopter Division, Summa Corporation in 1972, and was reformed as Hughes Helicopters, Inc. in 1981. However, throughout its history, the company was informally known as "Hughes Helicopters". It was sold to McDonnell Douglas in 1984 and made a subsidiary under the name McDonnell Douglas Helicopter Systems, which was later renamed MD Helicopters when McDonnell Douglas merged with Boeing.
History
In 1947, Howard Hughes redirected the Hughes Aircraft Company's efforts from airplanes to helicopters. The effort began in earnest in 1948, when helicopter manufacturer Kellett Autogiro Corporation sold their latest design to Hughes for production. The XH-17 "Sky Crane" first flew in October 1952, but was commercially unsuccessful. In 1955 the company began building light helicopters when Howard Hughes split the helicopter production unit from the Hughes Aircraft Co., and reconstituted it with the Hughes Tool Co.
The public source identifies “Hughes Helicopters” as former military vehicle company. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Hughes, Helicopters and former.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2411424. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1947, 1955, 1972 and 1981.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hughes Helicopters” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.