80 How much battle damage could you handle? (United States Air Force Gunships in the Vietnam)
Description
This article is from the Vietnam FAQ, by Brian Ross, John R. Tegtmeier, Edwin E. Moise, Frank Vaughan, John Tegtmeier with numerous contributions by others.
80 How much battle damage could you handle? (United States Air Force Gunships in the Vietnam)
The AC-130E could take a tremendous pounding. One took a direct hit
from a SA-7 and made it home. Other birds coming come were hit by
single or multiple rounds of 23mm, 37mm and 57mm.
"The AC-119 was much less resilient, but several took and
survived hits up to 37mm. What my colleague didn't mention
is that, in spite of the above reference, there was an SA-7
kill of an AC-130 up in I Corps during the early part of the
Easter Offensive (I think). Got nailed while flying at 9500
AGL, two survivors." [RH]
We believed that we lost 3 AC-130s in all to the SA-7. The loss of the
first one, will all hands lost, was initially believe to have been the
result of flying into a flack trap, but later we all realized that it
must have been one of the first SA-7s, and we just didn't know about
them at the time. We then had the bird hit in the ass, with no loss of
life, and were finally able to "prove" to PACAF that there were, in
fact, SA7's on the trail.
We lost the other two shortly thereafter, with the entire crew
recovered on one, and all of the back half, but none of the flight
deck on the other. Shortly thereafter, we started carrying a dozen or
so loaded very pistols on the back, and when the word SAM came over
the intercom, we gunners dropped what we were doing and began pumping
out star shells, which probably scared the hell out of the guys
manning the AAA sites. Later, the very pistols were mounted around the
waist of the A/C and were fired by pulling on a set of lanyards.
Continue to:
My Books
