The airplane designed to carry a Chinook's payload on land

Countries & Cities · Published 14 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: In the early 1960s, the U.S. Army wanted a fixed-wing aircraft that could haul as much weight as a heavy-lift helicopter while still performing short takes and landings. They found it in an oversized, turboprop-powered evolution of a piston plane: the de Havilland Canada DHC-5 Buffalo.

The Buffalo was born from a 1962 U.S. Army requirement for a STOL (short takeoff and landing) transport capable of matching the CH-47A Chinook helicopter's payload. To meet this, de Havilland Canada took their existing DHC-4 Caribou—already in large-scale service—and enlarged it. They swapped out the original Pratt & Whitney R-2000 piston engines for General Electric T64 turboprops, a transition they first tested on a modified Caribou in September 1961.

The DHC-5 won the competition in early 1963, with four aircraft ordered. While it delivered nearly twice the payload of its predecessor, inter-service politics eventually stalled U.S. orders. By 1967, large fixed-wing transports were being shifted to the Air Force, who preferred the Fairchild C-123 Provider. Despite this, the Buffalo became a staple for several nations, including Brazil, Peru, and Egypt, and served the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) as the CC-115.

Beyond its role as a workhorse, the Buffalo served as a versatile laboratory for aerospace innovation. It was modified into an augmentor wing jet-flap research aircraft in 1972 to test powered lift systems with Rolls-Royce Spey engines. Other experimental versions explored air cushion landing systems and quiet short-haul flight using four Avco Lycoming turbofans to exploit the Coandă effect. Though it was officially retired by the RCAF in early 2022, its legacy of extreme STOL performance remains a benchmark in aviation history.

The aircraft's capabilities were formidable: the DHC-5A model could take off over a 15-meter obstacle in just 369 meters while carrying 18,597 kg. During operations for the UN in the Middle East, its history is marked by a 1974 disaster where Syrian surface-to-air missiles struck a Canadian Buffalo; this event caused the highest number of fatalities ever suffered by Canadians during a UN assignment.

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