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Published: August 8th 2013
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SPOOKY
The best Vietnam movie remains the first one made, it starred John Wayne and is called “The Green Berets”. The real star of that show is not John Wayne though. It is an AC-47 gunship that they called Puff the Magic Dragon. Fifty-three AC-47 gunships came into service during the Vietnam War and all of them collectively were called Puff. Spooky was one of them. The gunships came about in response to a pressing need by troops on the ground for accurately placed concentrated firepower in close air support missions. The project designers came up with the venerable old Douglas C-47 as a stable gun platform. It was a slow moving, sturdy old plane that could stay on station for hours. Three miniguns were mounted in the cargo bay to fire out the door and two windows behind the port side wing. Miniguns were genuine pee bringers. They were developed by General Electric and based on the design of the Vulcan 20mm cannon. They featured six rotating barrels that were electrically driven and fed disintegrating belt ammunition through a cyclic rate of fire of about 4000 rounds per minute. They fired 7.62X51 NATO approved ammo
which made the system a machine gun rather than a cannon. The “mini” part of the name came from the decreased size of the ammo. Three miniguns firing simultaneously could place 12000 rounds per minute onto a target area. A one second burst fired from a 30 degree banked level turn would put one bullet into every 2.4 yards of an area half the size of a football field. In addition to being a stable gun platform the C-47 had the advantage of being able to carry 24000 rounds of ammo and several hundred aerial flares to light up a battleground at night. The gun mounts had to be precise in a system that fired so many bullets so quickly. The mounts were designed and built by Emerson Electric. They make cheap perfectly functional clock radios now, but back then they were the research subsidiary of General Electric. Minute error in the functionality of the gun mount could wipe out half a battalion of friendly ground forces in less than a second. Because that danger was so real in close air support missions the guns were fired remotely by the pilot from a yoke mounted trigger only when the target
area was perfectly defined. When the guns were fired control of the plane went to the copilot because firing the guns required the full attention of the pilot. By necessity the missions were flown at a low altitude which made the slow moving plane an easy target for return ground fire. Nineteen of the 53 planes used were brought down by ground fire. Each round fired by an ordinary machine gun can be distinctly heard, but a minigun burst is a constant roar. If you ever heard it that roar would gladden your heart and chill your blood at the same time. It gladdened your heart because no enemy position could survive that rain of destruction. It chilled your heart with the realization of the imminent peril you were in if you were situated close enough to hear it. Puff was utterly devastating. The aircrews had gunners but their job was to feed the guns, maintain them, and clear any jamming. They also dropped the flares out the door. They were magnesium flares that weighed 23 pounds each. They burn for about 3 minutes and cast a two million candlepower illumination. Timing mechanisms inside the canister would pop open a parachute and ignite the flare. They could be set to burn out just before they reached ground. The loadmaster would set the timers and hand the canister off to the gunner who would toss it out the door at the appropriate moment. Appropriately timed flare patterns could illuminate a battleground bright as day all night long if need be. During the night of February 24, 1969 our base at Long Bihn came under heavy mortar attack. Spooky was sent up to initiate illumination and engage the mortar positions if they could be located. The flare pattern was being dropped in good order when Spooky was struck near the starboard wing root by an 82mm mortar round. The explosion sent shrapnel through the entire rear cargo bay. A1C John L. Levitow was the loadmaster and he had just handed off a set flare canister to the gunner. The explosion knocked both men down and the gunner dropped the live flare inside the plane. If it ignited the plane would explode like firecracker. The plane carried 19000 rounds of ammo, hundreds of flares, and aviation fuel was leaking into the cargo bay. Although wounded by shrapnel at forty places in his back and legs and being stunned by the explosion Levitow managed to pull the gunner away from the door, retrieve the flare and drop it overboard. A few moments later the heavily damaged plane made an emergency landing at Bien Hoa AFB. The plane never flew again, but Sergeant Levitow was awarded the Medal of Honor. He is still the lowest ranking man ever to receive the MOH from the Air Force. Another C-47 has been restored to flying condition that carries the Spooky markings, but it has fake miniguns.
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