In early 1969, the dense jungles of Vietnam trembled under the dominion of the AC-47 gunship, affectionately known as Puff, the Magic Dragon. Its aged engines roared like a living beast of the air while its trio of miniguns promised swift justice from above, while its flares made an artificial day out of even the darkest of nights.
This airborne guardian typically reigned supreme, its maneuvers cloaked in the night, rendering it nearly invincible.
The Douglas AC-47 (“Puff, the Magic Dragon”) was the first in a series of fixed-wing gunships developed by the United States Air Force during the Vietnam War. It was designed to provide more firepower than light and medium ground-attack aircraft in certain situations when ground forces called for close air support.
Design and Development
The AC-47 was a United States Air Force (USAF) C-47 (the military version of the DC-3) that had been modified by mounting three 7.62 mm General Electric miniguns to fire through two rear window openings and the side cargo door, all on the left (pilot’s) side of the aircraft, to provide close air support for ground troops. Other armament configurations could also be found on similar C-47-based aircraft around the world. The guns were actuated by a control on the pilot’s yoke. The guns to be active for firing would be selected by an aerial gunner on a control panel on the right side of the cargo bay.
MXU-470/A minigun modules in an AC-47
Normally, two aerial gunners would be part of a normal crew. They would load the guns, clear malfunctions, and do inflight repair as well as select which gun(s) were online for the pilot to fire. It could orbit the target for hours, providing suppressing fire over an elliptical area about 52 yd (47.5 m) in diameter, placing a round every 2.4 yd (2.2 m) during a three-second burst. The aircraft also carried MK-24 Mod 3 parachute flares it could drop to illuminate the battleground.
The AC-47 had no previous design to gauge how successful it would be, because it was the first of its kind. The USAF found itself in a precarious situation when requests for additional gunships began to come in because it simply lacked miniguns to fit additional aircraft after the first two conversions. The next four aircraft were equipped with ten .30 caliber AN/M2 machine guns.
These weapons, using World War II and Korean War ammunition stocks, were quickly discovered to jam easily, produce large amounts of gases from firing, and, even in ten-gun groups, provide the density of fire of only a single minigun. All four of these aircraft were retrofitted to the standard armament configuration when additional miniguns arrived.
The AC-47 initially used SUU-11/A gun pods that were installed on locally fabricated mounts for the gunship application. General Electric eventually developed the MXU-470/A to replace the gun pods, which were also used on later gunships.
Top Photo: An AC-47 from Topeka, Kansas, and an AC-130J Ghostrider from the 4th Special Operations Squadron at Hurlburt Field, Fla., conduct a gunship legacy flight during EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2021, around Wittman Regional Airport, Wis., July 30, 2021.
Sources: YouTube; Wikipedia