Ch 4: Guns & Roses
Guns. You guys probably think Winchester, Remington and such. At the point in time I arrived at Rucker my head was elsewhere. General Electric, Heavy Hogs, Heavy Scouts, Hog-Frogs. You know what the Mini looks like, but the configuration evolution of helicopter gunships was in its infancy at that time. The Cobra, or Snake as we called them was but a few short years in service and most of the tactical groundwork and hardware development for the Huey guns was only a little bit older.
Various weapon system monikers included the Light Scout, Heavy Scout, Heavy and light hog and so forth. The Heavy/Light generally referred to the rocket load, while the noun at the end defined nose or waist gun machine gun armament. I have seen everything from quad M-60's on flex turrets to twin minis in the nose turret, twin 40mm's, 20mm nose turret(Marine) and conformal mount, to the extreme of 6 minguns on a single Snake or in one case, 4 x 4-tube Zuni rocket pods on Snake wing stubs and twin minis in the turret. The last one was named by a brigade commander of the 101st Airborne as "W-T-F! Get me that pilot's name and rank!"
If you're curious about what these various beasts looked like, exercise your Google-Foo. Here's a sample:
http://www.myspace.com/p3tris/photos/54617590I digress: Upon arrival to Ft. Rucker we began academics and flight training which would allegedly make us Instructor Killers. First part was Contact IP training and the "MOI" or method of instruction was fairly fresh in our minds. One other fellow named Ralph wound up as my roomy in a singlewide outside the main gate and we also were stick buddies. A few weeks of that and we went into guns. I spent all my time with a quad M-60 bird, and found it to be a bit of a hoot. Takka-takka-takka-yammer-yamma-tacka-tacka-yammer. Guns weren't synchro'd so they went in and out of phase as you shot them. Total ammo supply for that and the birds with minis was 4000 rounds....we got to shoot a lot longer than they did. First lesson I learned....conserve ammo!
First day at the range we hovered up to a bore sight pad to check the flex sight POI. Parked it and as we did one of the light scouts with minis sat beside us. I was in the jump seat watching Ralph...gettin' ready to shoot....the mini guns erupted and about 50 rounds of our ammo went helter skelter, tracers flying in all directions. Me an Ralph both about pizzed our shorts....DAMN, those friggin' things are LOUD! The roar just sorta wanders through your torso, fugs around with your heart and lungs, slaps your liver a few times then goes on to the next victim. Makes your eyes water too. M-60s fire at about 750 rpm and minis had a select rate of 2,000 or 4,000 rpm. So when pedaled hard we were shootin' about 3,000 rpm. Those guys were doing 8,000 rpm....the sound difference was profound. Muzzle flash too. Remember the Predator movie where the guy is carrying a mini with a back pack of ammo? Well, here's a reference check for you....if a Snake has twin minis in the chin turret and they are firing with about a 90* deflection...the A/C cannot roll in for a rocket run against the thrust until the gunner stops shooting.
I went down to Sebring, Fl. that spring with Ralph to meet up with my brother for the 12 hour race. He had an in with the guy running the show for RJ Reynolds (Camel GT Series) and we got to meet Stirling Moss, Mark Donahue and a host of other characters. We also accosted Chris Economaki about 9 PM cause he thought our car was his and he was lookin' kind of suspicious....
There isn't much left to tell about the whole thing at Rucker. Course taken and passed, assignment to RVN in my mitts and a 30 day leave. That's where the roses came along but I won't bother you with pornography. After all, this is a story about strong men and sterling honor. White Knights and violent hangovers. I bade farewell to Ralph and headed for home. The next time I saw Ralph he was falling thru the air amidst the many fragments of a Huey that had exploded after being hit by a 155mm artillery shell.
