The First Gunship

[MIflyer]

A USAF officer came back from a tour in Vietnam and came up with an idea. He thought an airplane could circle a target and fire at targets on the ground using guns that were mounted to fire sideways.

His boss thought the idea was absurd, so he attempted to promote it by talking to more senior officers. His boss told him to knock it off. Finally he took his boss up in a Piper Cub with a semiauto .22 rifle rigged to fire sideways, under the wing. He put some decoy ducks on a pond in a rural area and circled it as his boss sat in the rear seat. He fired the .22 by pulling on a string and showed that it was indeed possible to hit the water near the ducks. His boss finally decided that the whacky idea was worth trying out.

The first gunship they built at Eglin AFB was based on a T-29. The T-29 was a USAF version of the Convair 240 airliner, designed to be used for training navigators, while the C-131 was the same basic aircraft used for hospital transport.. In the 60's and 70's T-29's were used as transports all over the Air Force; just about every base had a few. Why not a C-47 for the role? Well, the T-29 was available, a lot newer than the C-47, had two far more powerful engines, R-2800's rather than the C-47's R-1830's, and there was a good logistics base for supporting it.

So they tried the T-29 as a gunship. But it did not work out. The T-29 used the more modern design of having integral fuel tanks in the wings, rather than separate fuel cells. And the vibration from the guns caused leaks to appear in the fuel tanks. So they went to the C-47, and the rest is history.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Built that C-47 many times as did my brother who actually saw them in action.

 

[MIflyer]

I guess they came out with an AC-47 version of the Monogram 1/48 C-47, although I never recall seeing one in a store,

A friend of mine was in the USAF as a Public Affairs officer. He wanted to get some pictures of armed A-1's and an AC-47 all lined up, over the Mekong Delta at sunset. He got in the right seat of an A-1E to take the pictures. They got the shots and were flying back to base when they received a call from a firebase under attack. "We think we can give you a hand." was the response.

The A-1 he was riding in went in to attack. At one point there was a flash and all they could see in front of them was trees. "That's it! I'm going home!" said the pilot.

 

[XBe02Drvr]

He thought an airplane could circle a target and fire at targets on the ground using guns that were mounted to fire sideways.

he took his boss up in a Piper Cub with a semiauto .22 rifle rigged to fire sideways, under the wing. He put some decoy ducks on a pond in a rural area and circled it as his boss sat in the rear seat. He fired the .22 by pulling on a string and showed that it was indeed possible to hit the water near the ducks.

These guys had clearly not ever taught ground reference maneuvers to commercial pilot students! The epitome of these exercises is the turn on pylon, a frustrating experience for the average ham handed two hundred hour pilot. The trick is to make your plane into a virtual u-control model circling a designated spot on the ground at the end of imaginary control lines of finite length compensating for crosswinds by climbing and diving while keeping your wingtip on the spot. Sounds easy...until you try it. Totally counterintuitive.
"Why do we have to do this shit, anyway"?
"That's what I used to think, too. Then they invented Puff the Magic Dragon. 'Nuff said."
Commercial pilots have far fewer accidents while circling objects on the ground at low altitude than do private pilots of comparable flying hours, so there must be some practical value to this exercise. Both categories have TOO MANY accidents of this type.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

My brother, who spent a tour and a half in Vietnam (1968/69) and spent a lot of time in the A Shau valley has told me many times he owes his life to "Puffs and Skyraiders."

 

[jetcal1]

These guys had clearly not ever taught ground reference maneuvers to commercial pilot students! The epitome of these exercises is the turn on pylon, a frustrating experience for the average ham handed two hundred hour pilot. The trick is to make your plane into a virtual u-control model circling a designated spot on the ground at the end of imaginary control lines of finite length compensating for crosswinds by climbing and diving while keeping your wingtip on the spot. Sounds easy...until you try it. Totally counterintuitive.
"Why do we have to do this shit, anyway"?
"That's what I used to think, too. Then they invented Puff the Magic Dragon. 'Nuff said."
Commercial pilots have far fewer accidents while circling objects on the ground at low altitude than do private pilots of comparable flying hours. Both categories have TOO MANY accidents of this type.

When the "flour bombs" fly......be in the center of the target.

 

[XBe02Drvr]

My brother, who spent a tour and a half in Vietnam (1968/69) and spent a lot of time in the A Shau valley has told me many times he owes his life to "Puffs and Skyraiders."

Thank him for his service, from all of us.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Thank him for his service, from all of us.

I will Wes, thank you!

 

[GrauGeist]

My Uncle Bruce (USAF) used to tell me about the gunships in Vietnam, including the AC-119, which aparently packed a hellova punch with it's 20mm Vulcans.

 

[XBe02Drvr]

My Uncle Bruce (USAF) used to tell me about the gunships in Vietnam, including the AC-119, which aparently packed a hellova punch with it's 20mm Vulcans.

When I worked at GE, we were building gunpack kits for AC119s and AC130s.

 

[MIflyer]

I think what "turn about a point" exercises are supposed to do is train pilots to fly traffic patterns, which are pretty much the same thing, with other air traffic, snarlly controllers, and people chatting in Spanish on the CTAF frequency as complicating factors.

I read of a bush pilot who came up with a way of making deliveries to customers where there was no suitable place to land. He rigged up a container that enabled him to lower it to the ground from the wingtip while he circled.

But while the gunship concept proved itself in Vietnam, we lost an AC-130 during Operation Desert Shield. When the Iraqis tried moving down the coast into SA, an AC-130 was firing at them in broad daylight. Using an aircraft like that in daylight, against an adversary equipped with supersonic jets, SAMs, plenty of AAA, etc. sounds like insanity to me.

 

[XBe02Drvr]

I think what "turn about a point" exercises are supposed to do is train pilots to fly traffic patterns

Turns about a point are a different animal altogether from turns on pylon, much less challenging, and a private pilot exercise, not a commercial one. And you're right, they're for sharpening a student's skill at wind drift correction in order to fly proper traffic patterns. Turns on pylon, on the other hand, are more about sharpening precise aircraft handling skills and visual judgement. This is the maneuver that would allow the bush pilot to lower his container into the clearing.