MBB Bo 105 Bo 105CBS-5 Super Five

The Bo 105CBS-5 closes the evolution of the Bo 105 C series. Eurocopter, which had inherited the programme when MBB's helicopter division was merged into it, built this modernised version of the CBS in 1994; the German Wikipedia dates the introduction of its new rotor blades and its 2,500 kg take-off weight, one hundred kilograms above the CBS's 2,400 kg, to 1993 and records the EC Super-Five trade name under which it was offered. The English Wikipedia lists it twice, as the EC-Super Five (a high-performance version of the Bo 105CBS) and as the CBS-5 or Superfive, with increased lifting capability similar to that of the LS A3 Superlifter; the Spanish Wikipedia additionally describes it as a search and rescue version of the CBS.

The key to the Super Five lies in the transfer of technology from the military to the civil programme. Besides the 25 cm cabin stretch common to the whole CBS line, the CBS-5 received an optimised main rotor that had come out of the Bundeswehr's upgrade programme: the PAH-1A1 modernisation of the anti-tank helicopter had introduced blades with roughly 10% more performance, recognisable by their rounded tips. It also received the FS 110 main gearbox, initially installed in the military Bo 105M and Bo 105P; FS stands for Flugsondergetriebe and the 110 refers to its 2 x 55 kpm input rating. This gearbox transmits power from the turbines to the main rotor, the tail rotor and the accessories, reduces the speed for each drive and absorbs the rotor forces and moments. The powerplant remained the pair of 313 kW Allison 250-C20Bs of the CB series.

The CBS-5 formed the basis of two armed export programmes. In South Korea the Bo 105 KLH was licence-produced, a combat version of the CBS-5 custom-fitted with a Korean mission equipment package comprising communication, navigation, electronic warfare and target acquisition systems to meet the Republic of Korea Army's requirements; the KLH also has greatly improved rotor blades and transmission, and twelve are in service. The Mexican Navy, for its part, modernised its Bo 105s to CBS-5 standard with gun and rocket armament, FLIR, night vision equipment and a search radar with a 300 km range. In Germany the DRF rescue organisation operated a CBS-5, D-HNNN (s/n 662), repaired in 1994 with parts from the sole Bo 106, and the CBS-5 name also appears among the Canadian (CDN-BS-5) and British (DBS-5) certifications.

Bo 105 production in Germany continued until 2001 and the last example built was bought in 2009 by the Canadian EMS operator Dam Helicopters. The direct successors were the Bo 108, which became the EC 135 with its composite cabin and Fenestron tail rotor, and the BK 117 developed with Kawasaki; yet in 2017, fifty years after the first flight, Airbus Helicopters still counted some 400 Bo 105s in service, many of them to Super Five standard. According to the manufacturer, since the first delivery in 1970 more than 300 customers around the world had purchased a total of some 1,400 aircraft, operated in air rescue, as police and military helicopters and for VIP, passenger and cargo transport; the Super Five was the last civil expression of that two-tonne family, the first helicopter to feature a rigid, hingeless rotor head made of titanium and glass-fibre-reinforced rotor blades.