helicopters with mini guns are cool!!

[F.M]

What a job flying these helicopter gunships..!

Warning!...This may be too cool for some people..!

www.wackyvids.com/movies/military/4/anotheriraqfootage.html

[Eric Mc]

Depends if you're the giver or the receiver.

[4WD]

Really needs Wagner, The Ride of the Valkyries

[FourWheelDrift]

And it's not Iraq footage (like the title on the video page says) it's just some yanks with an old Huey shooting up some old car wrecks out in a fairly green desert part of the US.

[rich 36]

4WD said:

Really needs Wagner, The Ride of the Valkyries

and 'sitting on up-turned helmets

[R988]

If its the one I'm thinking of then it's not Iraq but some training place in one of the deserty places in america, the one where a bunch of clowns just unload huge amounts of lead into the ground for no particular reason and hitting the odd derelict car.

[JonRB]

Rather a high ratio of tracer rounds too, if you ask me.

[Popzak]

I saw them used in Nam frequently.My friend was a Cobra Gunship Pilot.At night as shown in the video it looked almost like a light with the tracers.I forget it's been a while now,but I beleive every 5th or 6th round was a tracer.They sounded like a buzzsaw when they fired.100 rounds a second,thats alot of lead.Where I was their call sign was "Blue Max",I Loved those Guys,I always felt Safer when they were around

[Eric Mc]

Vietnam was THE gunship war. The tactic was devised and honed to a fine art between 1963 and 1975 and not just using helicopters either. The following aircraft all served in the gunship role in Vietnam -

Douglas AC-47 Puff the Magic Dragon (a converted Douglas DC-3/C-47)
Fairchild AC-119 Packet
Lockheed AC-130A Hercules
Boeing CH-47 Chinook
Bell UH-1 Iroquois (best known as the Huey)
Bell AH-1 Huey Cobra (early versions)

Gunships can only really operate safely in an environment where you have virtually complete air superiority. That is why the notion never really surfaced in WW2. It was only in very rare occasions where the Allies had complete control of the skies and obviously, in that era helicopters were in their very earliest stages of development and not really capable of such roles. They might have been of use in Korea but, again, the limitations of helicopters at the tuime precluded the concept from working.

[Nick P]

rich 36 said:

and 'sitting on up-turned helmets

you may laugh......the first time i flew into basra in a C17, all the crew had body armour on and all we had was our helmets cos we didn't have any armour!!!....so guess what the loady suggested we do?

[sheepy]

Eric Mc said:

Gunships can only really operate safely in an environment where you have virtually complete air superiority.

If you had said "helicopter gunships", I'd agree. Spectre can look after itself rather well (due in part to operating at night when ever possible).

AC-130H "Spectre" armament includes a 105mm howitzer In the "U" variant, this becomes a 105mm cannon "for more rapid fire".

U also has GAU-12 which does 1800 rounds a minute!! Due the ammo mix of the GAU (about one in ten is tracer), then in low light it looks like a solid line of light between the aircraft and the ground.

[Marki]

Ahhh good old Spooky

That vid is surly a visitation from hell if you are on the reciving end ,, the gunner is remarkably accurate

[Eric Mc]

I wouldn't fancy my chances in a C-130 if I was taken on by a MiG-29 or Sukhoi Su-27. To operate effectively all these aircraft need to have skies cleared of enemy fighter aircraft.

[r988]

Eric Mc said:

I wouldn't fancy my chances in a C-130 if I was taken on by a MiG-29 or Sukhoi Su-27. To operate effectively all these aircraft need to have skies cleared of enemy fighter aircraft.

Not too many countries that can challenge the US for air supremacy. SAMs are a bigger, more likely threat.

[Eric Mc]

Of course - that's why they are effective weapons now but weren't even considered in World War 2, although technically they could have been tried in that conflict- there were plenty of C-47s around. The skies were just too dangerous back then.

[Jaglover]

Black Hawk Down shows these helicopters in action.

[r988]

Eric Mc said:

Of course - that's why they are effective weapons now but weren't even considered in World War 2, although technically they could have been tried in that conflict- there were plenty of C-47s around. The skies were just too dangerous back then.

They did use B-26, A-26, B-25, Mosquitos and Beaufighters in a similar role just with massive amounts of firepower facng forward so they could take out as much as possible in the shortest amount of time. Some B-25s even had a 75mm artillery gun firing forward (J model? can't remember) had to be loaded by hand as well, devastating against shipping.

[Eric Mc]

Yes, they were pretty devastating weapons but they had to operate at low level at very high speeds - to avoid enemy fighters and AA fire. The true Gunship concept (as developed in the Vietnam War) has a slow flying aircraft loitering over the target and basically picking out enemy activity on the ground more or less at leisure. That luxury was not really available to WW2 ground attack pilots.

[F.M]

I woudn`t mind having this at the top of the stairs to sort out any burglers.......

www.wackyvids.com/movies/military/7/autoblast.html

[Marki]

i think thats a Phalanx