The Answer to the Question

In 1967, the Army decided to field a dedicated attack helicopter to replace the venerable Cobra (geez, the AH-1G was almost a full year old by then!) and instituted the Advanced Aerial Fire Support System program.

Think of attack helicopters as agile, highly mobile, speedy (but noisy) artillery with really good-looking crews...

Lockheed, Bell and Sikorsky all entered the competition.

The winner was the Lockheed entry, a rigid-rotor, compound aircraft with a pusher-prop in addition to the tail rotor, armed with enough weaponry to blow up the world and having a turn of speed faster than that of the “pursuit” craft zipping around the sky during the ‘thirties: the Cheyenne.

In 1972, Congress decided that a million bucks was too much to spend on a helicopter and told the Army to shelve it.

The Bell entry was a twin-engined, upgunned version of the existing AH-1G that the design team called the King Cobra. Except for a photo-op mockup, it never got off the drawing board.

However, with some additional upgrades to the armament suite, power train, avionics, fuselage—ummmm, make that a “complete” redesign—the King Cobra was sold to the Marines under the designation AH-1T.

Sikorsky also submitted a rigid-rotor, compound aircraft, a tank-destroyer with sixteen TOW missiles and a neat cannon and the tail rotor swiveled in flight to become a pusher-prop; it set a world speed record during the competition. The Army decided that the swiveling tail rotor was too complicated for field maintenance and dumped the Sikorsky entry faster than you can say “Argghhh!”

Sikorsky called it the Blackhawk.

Soooo, the answer to the question is, Sikorsky designated the UH-60 the Black Hawk because it had already manufactured an “Army” helicopter called the Blackhawk and didn’t want the UH-60 Black Hawk confused with the S-67 Blackhawk.

Heh—like anybody remembered in the first place…

...except John from VA (brag rights assigned).

And, naturally, John from Argghhh (via e-mail), but he's already got more brag rights than a normal human being should be allowed...