An interesting “warbird” in attendance at the Avalon Airshow this week in Australia is a civil registered…… ex RAAF C-47 …..painted up as a USAF AC-47D Spooky Gunship of the Vietnam era 1965-1970 period when these slow but effective machines protected the many bases and also did work over the “Trail”.
It is not known if the aircraft be “armed” with MXU-470A miniguns or the like…. A similar Spooky is flying in the US warbird circut i recall.
A friend of mine flew the bigger AC-119G/K models Stinger and Shadow gunships in early 1970s over SVN.
By: grizzly - 1st March 2013 at 20:48
there is a picture of it at Avalon at this link
http://www.warbirdz.net/forum/showpost.php?p=17074&postcount=85
By: Jesper - 1st March 2013 at 12:26
If my memory serves me correctly, the book ‘Shadow and Stinger: Developing the AC-119G/K Gunships in the Vietnam War’ (P. Head) states that the USAF initially wanted to designate the C-47 gunships FC-47, the ‘F’ for fighter (!)
But changed it to AC-47 after strong objections from the fighter community. The term ‘fighter’ in context with a ungainly WWII cargo plane was simply too much for the fighter jocks to bear 😀
(The book is by the way a ‘must read’ for every one interested in the development of gunships)
By: Cherry Ripe - 28th February 2013 at 22:33
Interesting, thanks Daniel.
Your post led to start thinking over supper. According to my old Jane’s Infantry Weapons an M134 minigun required 260A or current to spin-up and up to 130A during operation ( depending on rate of fire ).
How on Earth were such huge currents supplied on a gunship with three or more such guns? An immense battery replenished from extra engine generators?
I would assume that the guns also span-up in sequence, instead of all simultaneously.
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February 28, 2013 at 11:19 am