Shadow and Stinger: Developing the AC-119G/K Gunships in the Vietnam War

Introduction: Necessity Is the Mother of Invention

introduction Necessity Is the Mother of Invention i N tHE Early 1960s, the United States was drawn ever deeper into the Southeast asian conflict, also known as the Second Indochina War but more popularly referred to as the Vietnam War. air force leadership soon realized that the frontline Cold War force of highflying intercontinental bombers and supersonic fighters they had built to counter the Soviet Union’s strategic nuclear force were often not well suited for combat against insurgency forces and the tactics of this unconventional warfare in Southeast asia. as a result, allied forces needed new and more effective, sometimes even unconventional, aerial weapon systems to counteract the evergrowing numbers of antigovernment forces in South Vietnam, who employed guerilla tactics and were supplied by the constant and expanding flow of soldiers and war materials from North Vietnam along infiltration routes through “neutral” laos and Cambodia. this network of roadways and footpaths, which began along the border of North Vietnam, emanated from four passes—Nape, Ban Karai, Ban raving, and Mu Gia—into laos. the footpaths widened into roads and waterways that ran south for two hundred miles and entered South Vietnam at route 9 out of tchepone and other entry points. From there they continued south into the central highlands and down into Cambodia. as the war grew, the enemy even constructed pipelines  Shadow and Stinger that ran out of China to the north and into South Vietnam. all of this added to the need for an aerial weapon capable of denying the enemy the cover of darkness and triple-canopy jungles. these unusual circumstances required an aerial platform that could loiter for hours over a target to provide close air support (CaS) for friendly ground troops and interdict enemy supply routes. Ultimately, engineers and officials decided that the solution rested in the development of a fixedwing , side-firing gunship.1 the first manifestation of this new aircraft came in 1965 with the employment of an attack cargo gunship, the aC-47, an armed version of the venerable 1930s’ vintage Douglas C-47 transport designated the Skytrain. In spite of its initial effectiveness, by 1967 U.S. air Force officials had begun to consider the possibility of developing gunships built on an airframe that was larger and newer than that of the aC-47. they planned to provide these weapon systems with more lethal firepower, better targeting devices, state-of-the-art night sensors, and extended loiter time. as early as November 1965, U.S. leaders had begun to realize that the enemy was rapidly expanding the scope of the war in South Vietnam. What had slowly begun as an insurgency conflict in the late 1950s led by the indigenous National liberation Front (NlF/Viet Cong) was gradually being taken over by northern forces such as the People’s army of Vietnam (PaVN), also known as the North Vietnamese army (NVa). this was made abundantly clear when two NVa divisions fought elements of the U.S. army air Cavalry in the Ia Drang Valley in November 1965. From this point until the tet offensive of 1968, officials came to realize that the trickle of men and supplies being sent south prior to 1965 had turned into a torrent. No longer was the enemy using porters on foot or riding bicycles along footpaths. By 1965 and maybe even earlier, they were expanding the infiltration routes commonly known as the Ho Chi Minh trail and employing an increasing number of trucks imported from the Soviet Union and other Eastern bloc nations. If there was any doubt about the magnitude of this process, the 1968 tet offensive ended those notions and ushered in a new phase of the war. among the innovative tactics and weapons deployed to fight the enemy during the late 1960s were the aC-119 and aC-130 gunships. In addition, McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom fighter aircraft also played an increasingly important role in the air war by attacking antiaircraft artillery and enemy truck parks day and night, gradually introduCtion  making greater use of precision-guided munitions (PGMs). From 1968 to 1972, especially during seven Commando Hunt operations, the Fairchild-Hiller aC-119 “truck killers,” along with their lockheed aC-130 cousins and Boeing B-52s Stratofortress long-range strategic nuclear-capable bombers, became the weapons of choice in the United States’ desperate effort to stem the mounting flow of enemy troops, supplies, and equipment, including...