Who Owns Bell?

Lawrence Dale Bell founded Bell Aircraft Corporation in Buffalo, New York in 1935. The company built fighter aircraft through World War II, including the P-39 Airacobra, and in 1947 produced the Bell X-1, the first aircraft to break the sound barrier with Chuck Yeager at the controls.

The helicopter era began in the early 1940s under designer Arthur Young, whose model became the Bell 47, the first helicopter certified for civilian use in 1946 and the machine immortalized by the MAS*H television series. When Bell Aircraft's fixed-wing business faded in the 1950s, Textron bought the helicopter operation in 1960, forming Bell Helicopter.

The Bell UH-1 Huey became the defining rotorcraft of the Vietnam era and one of the most-produced helicopters in history. The V-22 Osprey, developed with Boeing from the 1980s and fielded from 2007, made Bell the world leader in tiltrotor technology, aircraft that fly like planes and land like helicopters.

Bell Helicopter shortened its name to Bell in 2018 as part of a technology-focused rebrand. The signature event of the modern era came in December 2022, when the US Army selected the Bell V-280 Valor over a Sikorsky-Boeing bid for the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft program, subsequently designated the MV-75, a multi-billion-dollar franchise intended to succeed the Black Hawk.