Armament of an AC-47 Spooky gunship.
The AC-47 "Spooky" was the U.S. Air Force's first fixed-wing gunship, developed during the Vietnam War from the C-47 Skytrain (the military DC-3). Its armament was the whole point of the aircraft.
The core weapons were three General Electric MXU-470 7.62mm minigun modules. These were electrically driven, six-barrel Gatling-style guns mounted to fire out the left (port) side of the fuselage through the rear window openings and the open cargo door. Each minigun fired at a selectable rate, typically around 3,000 rounds per minute, giving a combined output that could reach thousands of rounds per minute across all three guns.
The tactic was the famous "pylon turn." The pilot put the aircraft into a continuous left-hand bank, orbiting a fixed point on the ground. Because the guns were aligned to fire perpendicular to the fuselage and angled down, this turn kept all three pointed at the same target area. Firing from around 3,000 feet, the concentrated fire was devastating. It was said that in a few seconds a gun could put a round into every square yard of a football-field-sized area.
A typical ammunition load was around 24,000 rounds of 7.62×51mm NATO. The aircraft also carried Mk 24 magnesium flares, usually around 45 of them, each producing roughly two million candlepower and burning for several minutes, to illuminate targets during night operations. Night defense of isolated outposts and hamlets was a major part of Spooky's mission set.
A note on the guns: early test aircraft were fitted with .30 caliber Browning machine guns or a mix, but the production gunship standardized on the three SUU-11A/A gun pods or the MXU-470 minigun modules.
The "Spooky" call sign, along with the related "Puff the Magic Dragon" nickname inspired by the streams of tracer fire pouring from the side, made the AC-47 one of the most recognizable aircraft of the early Vietnam air war. Want me to go deeper on the fire-control setup, the pylon-turn geometry, or how Spooky led to later gunships like the AC-130?
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