Cameras were used in place of guns, and SSgt. No guns or sights were fitted, but Simons was able to validate the concept by marking the canopy with a grease pencil and flying the pattern. Nonetheless Simons persisted, “bootlegging” missions in a North American T-28. There was also doctrinal concern that use of a fixed-wing gunship was playing into the hands of the Army, which was becoming ever more dependent upon the helicopter gunship. Simons encountered opposition many people believed that a side-firing aircraft, particularly the C-47, would be far too vulnerable to enemy fire. Preliminary tests of the concept were conducted at Air Force Systems Command’s Aeronautical Systems Division at WrightPatterson AFB, Ohio, by Capt. The requirement for additional firepower in Southeast Asia gave impetus to the side-firing idea. Flexman reasoned that the straight line of the rope would translate into a straight line of gun fire at a single point on Earth if the gunship were flown in a similar pylon turn. The pouch remained stationary over a point on Earth at the end of a long rope as he flew pylon turns around the point. Flexman, an assistant chief engineer at Bell Aerosystems, who was intrigued by the challenge of limited war and counterinsurgency actions and was drawing inspiration from an unusual source.įlexman had heard stories of a missionary named Nate Saint who had been able to air-deliver mail and supplies to remote villages by lowering them in a weighted pouch. MacDonald’s gunship idea was passed over, but he resurrected it in 1961 when, as a lieutenant colonel, he advocated transverse firing of rockets and machine guns by liaison aircraft.
MacDonald of the 95th Coast Artillery proposed fitting a Piper Cub with a side-firing machine gun for anti-submarine operations. 22 was intended for use in France’s colonial possessions, one of which, ironically enough, would become the venue for US gunships-Indochina. 12 75 mm cannon in a four-engine Bordelaise A.B. In 1932, French military designers installed a fixed side-firing Schneider P.D. The United States did not have a monopoly on the idea. 30-caliber Lewis machine gun on the wing and flew “pylon turns” to keep the gun on target, thus demonstrating the very essence of the concept almost 40 years before it appeared on the battlefield. Fred Nelson experimented with a de Havilland DH-4 at Brooks Field, Texas. Putting a fixed side-firing weapon on an aircraft was first proposed in 1926, when 1st Lt. Whether they were Puffs, Spookys, Spectres, Shadows, or Stingers, the gunships brought intense, lethally accurate fire to the enemy’s doorstep, busting trucks and saving the lives of countless friendly personnel.
History, requirements, resources, and-most of all-personalities, all came together at a critical moment to create a piece of side-firing airborne artillery, a weapon North Vietnam considered one of the most important of the war. In warfare, timing is critical, and few weapons have had better timing than the gunship, the epitome of on-scene firepower in the Vietnam War.
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