Sixteen Buck

This is coolbert:

"one of the better ideas to come out of the Vietnam war"

Indeed - - I'd forgotten about this. Another good idea to come out of the Vietnam War. One of the few good ideas - - and be well advised that there were few!

The American military in Vietnam, organized, trained, and equipped to fight a global thermonuclear war against the Soviet Union, finding that a number of concepts, weapon systems, etc., NOT well suited for the type of combat as experienced in Vietnam. ONLY one instance being those fast mover tactical combat aircraft whose mission was to carry an atomic payload - - never intended to operate in a COIN [counter-insurgency] environment!

Solutions to this problem being sought, a variety of remedies were instituted, ONLY A FEW of them being considered as successes. To include:

* The riverine task force.
* The armored cavalry regiment [ACAV].

The former that combination of US Navy assets and American army infantry deployed as the "brown water" navy. Flotillas using the Mekong river as a "staging ground", ship-borne combat troops able to penetrate denied territory, defeating the North Vietnamese/Viet Cong enemy on their own turf.

[the Mekong river from the mouth of the river inland to Phnom Penh and INTERNATIONAL WATERWAY, especially during the rainy season. The river at times becoming more or less an inland sea!]

The latter [ACAV] that proper regimental sized combination of tanks, APC, infantry, self-propelled artillery, helicopter gunships and engineers able to conduct armor and mechanized operations in jungle terrain. Where the deployment of armor was supposedly not feasible, the ACAV made it so!

This TOO was a success in Vietnam? Unexpected but greatly welcomed!

The AC-47 gunship. Spooky and "Puff the Magic Dragon"! C-47 cargo airplane retro-fitted as a combat aircraft - - three 7.62 mm [NATO round] rapid fire mini-guns aboard, providing close-air-support [CAS] on-call, on-demand! Piloted and manned by the Air Commado!

An extract from the book  "Air commando: fifty years of the USAF Air Commando and Special Operations ... By Philip D. Chinnery" [thanks to Google books]

page 110. "Spooky Arrives."

"By the time the first Douglas AC-47 gunship entered service in 1965, the aging cargo aircraft had already been around for 20 years. The mating of the old, dependable aircraft with the latest technology in machine-guns and the far-from-new concept of sideways-firing weapons was one of the better ideas to come out of the Vietnam war. It had long been known that an aircraft flying a pylon turn around a fixed point on the ground could keep that point in sight all the time. However, not until 1964 was it proved that an aircraft with sideways-firing guns could continuously engage a target on the ground and keep in under fire as it circled the target in a left bank."

"Tests with the new 6,000 rounds per minute 7.62mm General Electric SUU-11A/A Gatling gunpod, fitted to a C-131 [?], produced 25 hits on a 10ft. rubber raft with just a one-second burst. Later rests showed that a burst could cover an area the size of a football pitch and put a round into every square foot. Such a weapon could prove a life-saver to the defenders of the hamlets and forts  in the countryside of Vietnam, and field testing began in Vietnam at the end of 1964."

"The gunship could carry 24,000 rounds of ammunition [3 guns per aircraft] and 45 parachute flares with a burning time of three minutes each. The crew consisted of a pilot/aircraft commander, copilot, navigator, three gunners . . . and a Vietnamese interpreter."

That AC aircraft, able to loiter for an extended period over a target, carry illumination and a prodigious quantity of ammunition, lay waste to an enemy unit almost in an instant. The enemy for the most part HAVING NO COUNTER TO THE GUNSHIP!

An old and out of date and thought to be obsolete aircraft from an original design even before WW2 refurbished and adopted as a counter-insurgency combat warplane with enormous firepower and capability. Able to inflict damage upon the enemy ALMOST AS IF A TACTICAL [special emphasis on tactical] NUCLEAR WEAPON WAS BEING USED!

Numerous were the instances during the Vietnam War of AC gunships providing CAS in the most desperate circumstances to American and South Vietnamese troops, in particular those isolated and very vulnerable Special Forces camps when under attack needing fire support and receiving it from AC aircraft, a wall-of-steel and continual illumination providing the difference between life and death!

"Death from above"!!

And please don't think the AC-47 is now out of action, gone with the end of the Vietnam War. Those warplanes were eventually sold to Columbia and still might be in action, CAS the South American way! Amazing!

coolbert.