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5 Experts disagree as to the origins of fixed-wing gunships. Some argue that the concept originated with mail or supply deliveries in the Australian Outback or Amazon jungles, where remote settlers or missionaries were delivered their mail and provisions by small, usually open-cockpit, aircraft. Rather than land and take off dozens of times a day or risk remote landings, pilots buzzed the home or settlement to make sure someone was there, by rope lowered a mail sack or bucket with supplies to near the ground, then initiated a shallow orbit overhead. If the flyer could affect a perfect orbit, the sack or bucket would stay still in the center of the orbit for those on the ground to safely approach it, remove their letters or supplies, and insert their outgoing mail or requests for more provisions.1 The first real application of the notion of a military sidefiring , fixed-wing gunship surfaced in the Royal Air Force (RAF) in early 1926. Other European nations soon followed suit. The first American venture into this new kind of aircraft came later in the same year, when 1st Lt. Fred Nelson conducted experiments with a de Havilland DH-4 at Brooks Field, Texas. He mounted a .30-caliber Lewis gun on the wing and flew pylon turns, constantly focusing his line of fire on a single ground target. While the tests were successful, and more tests were conducted, the overall program remained experimental throughout the 1930s and 1940s.2 As Ron Terry, who would become America’s primary gunship expert, notes, “Most combat planners felt that ‘military aircraft should dive at the ground, drop bombs and shoot guns. They don’t fly in circles.’” And so the concept remained in hibernation in the United States.3 In the meantime, during the summer of 1932, French Air 1 The Origins of the US Fixed-Wing Gunships in Vietnam 6 | CHAPTER 1 Service designers installed a side-firing Schneider P.D. 12.75mm cannon on a Bordelaise A.B. 22 four-engine bomber for use in their far-flung colonies of Southeast Asia and Africa. As Col. Walter Boyne writes in one of his articles on gunships, “One [of these colonies], ironically enough, would become the venue for US gunships—Indochina.”4 It is also important to recall that the technical views that held dominance at the time believed that bigger bombers that could carry more bombs and wipe out whole cities were the wave of the future. In the late 1920s and early 1930s most bombers were, in fact, as fast as, if not faster than, open-cockpit fighters. It was the German, Italian, Japanese, and British aircraft manufacturers who, by the mid-1930s, began to change this relationship. The advent of the Me-109, Spitfire, and Mitsubishi Zero meant that fighters could fly at 350 to 400 mph and fight in sharp turns and fast dives that made bombers such as the B-17 appear to be standing still.5 Within the languishing US military of the 1930s there was a growing intraand interservice rivalry between its ground officers and its air officers and between the Army and the Navy air arms for single control of the air component . With US military leaders squabbling among themselves and military airmen having a much different vision of air combat, the concept of orbiting gun platforms was anathema to them. It simply did not fit into their plans, and it did not advance the aviators’ vision of separating themselves from their ground brethren. Indeed, the airmen believed gunships would be primarily a ground support function that might very well help keep them under the traditional Army structure and prevent the evolution to a separate service. Ten years later, US airmen resurrected the concept to deal with German submarines lurking off the US coast. In April 1942, 1st Lt. Gilmour Craig MacDonald of the 95th Coast Artillery advocated fixing a side-firing machine gun to a Piper Cub for use in antisubmarine operations. While senior officers embraced the idea, it soon faded away as the Allies used other weapons, such as blimps and long-range bombers, to win the Battle of the North Atlantic. However, MacDonald clung to his belief in the gunship, and as a lieutenant colonel in the 1960s he and others would revive the concept.6 Why Use the C-47 Airframe? While later versions of the fixed-wing gunship played a major role in US air war, the original version introduced...

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