Puff the magic dragon gunship
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Vietnam: From the “Puff the Magic Dragon” Plane to the Lockheed AC-130
By Ron Sanders
Off in the distance came the faint drone of a large propeller-driven aircraft. The sound got steadily louder, when suddenly a curtain of red fire erupted from the sky and rained down on the rice paddies in front of us. Puff! Puff The Magic Dragon plane was predecessor to the Lockheed AC-130. When Puff unleashed that first six-second burst every man knew instantly what it was. The sound was indescribable, a deep guttural roar that anyone who has ever heard and lived, will always remember.
Puff the Magic Dragon flew back and forth over the battlefield that night in 1967, dropping huge two million-candle-power parachute flares and occasionally lighting up the sky with his fiery red breath. When daylight began Puff’s work was done. The drone of his huge engines faded into the distance and a deathly silence lingered over the battlefield. Nothing moved in the eerie glare of the last fl
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Unleashing horrifying firepower and raining death and destruction on to the communist forces in Vietnam from the dark skies above, the AC-47 fixed-wing gunship was the first of its kind.
Creating a Monster
Giving cargo aircraft a new mission, the gunship conversions created during the Vietnam War provided close air ground support to troops on the ground, in order to protect villages and outposts from being overwhelmed bygd mass attacks from the VC (Viet Cong). The idea grew out of experiments in 1964 during project “Tailchaser,” led bygd U.S. Air Force Captain John Simons and involving a Convair C-131B cargo aircraft carrying cameras to record target tracking while keeping the aircraft in a steady banked turn.
Unleashing horrifying firepower and raining death and destruction on to the communist forces in Vietnam from the dark skies above, the AC-47 fixed-wing gunship was the first of its kind.Creating a MonsterA Fire-Breathing DragonCall Sign “Spooky”Tally of TerrorNewer GunshipsA G
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“Puff the Magic Dragon.”
The majority of Viet Cong and NVA attacks against bases took place at night and the Air Force responded by converting the Second World War vintage transport planes into flying gun platforms. The AC-47s were armed with three 7.62 miniguns, each capable of firing up to 6,000 rounds per minute, in one side of the fuselage; several tons of ammunition were also loaded on board. The planes could circle a base when it was under attack, illuminating the target area with 2-million candlepower flares. It would stay overhead until the base’s own helicopters were in the air and able to take over. They were known as Spooky, but the GIs christened it Puff the Magic Dragon after a well-known song because the thousands of tracer bullets made it look like the plane was breathing fire.
The AC-119 Shadow and AC-119 Stinger were introduced at a later date. The Stinger was also armed with two 20mm multi-barrel guns capable of firing up to 2,500 high explosive incendiar