David Halpert

David Halpert was an inventor of various chemical patents in the 1950s and 1960s relating to surface plating of titanium, aluminum and aluminum base alloys critical for the successful development of the Chinook Helicopter, under the auspices of Vertol Aircraft Corporation, formerly Piasecki Helicopter Corporation, subsequently Boeing Vertol, then Boeing Helicopters, and currently Boeing Rotorcraft Systems, a US aircraft manufacturer, now part of Boeing Defense, Space & Security. Although Boeing is a known name in the large commercial aircraft industry and defense aircraft manufacturing, its most widely recognized helicopter product has historically been the easily identifiable tandem rotor heavy-lift Boeing Vertol CH-47 Chinook helicopter – one of the few aircraft from the 1950s–1960s still in production, most recently in international news for the 2011 Chinook shootdown in Afghanistan which killed 38 people, including 17 Navy SEALs.