Lockheed AC-130: The Angel of Death

ladies and gentlemen just before we get started if you're not subscribed to my newest channel explored spot xp lrd well you should be because we explore get it with the title they're very clever lots of interesting topics like what would democracy in north korea look like how did the u.s national security administration steal secrets with the patriot act and so much more including cocaine in diplomatic bags yes check it explored there's a link below and let's get into megaprojects because that's what you're here for [Music] from vietnam to afghanistan and the 50 years between one piece of military hardware has continued to strike fear into those on the ground capable of circling a target ominously for hours on end and disgorging the kind of firepowers that leaves the earth trembling the lockheed ac-130 is the dreaded colossus of the skies you really don't want to see appearing above you this is about as close as you're going to get to a floating fortress it comes armed to the teeth so much so they can't even fire everything at the same time because of the massive recoil of that indeed it has on several occasions saved the lives of those on the ground this is a ferocious ground attack gunship that is often used for close air support for troops on the ground and has battled valiantly in every major conflict since 1968 making it one of the most important aircraft in all of the us military as vietnam war progressed it was clear to the americans that the fighting would be very different from almost every other conflict that they've been involved in so far the tactics used by the vietcong often meant that troops on the ground required close and sustained air support this led to a series of fixed-wing gunships that could provide more firepower than light to medium ground attack aircraft while also remaining in the fight for significantly longer first up was the legendary douglas ac-47 which was technically just a modified c-47 transport aircraft with guns added to fire out of the windows it might sound rudimentary and in many ways it was because nothing like it had ever been used before but the ac-47 went on to excel during the vietnam war and it soon led to calls for purpose-built gunships [Music] now technically speaking gunships weren't new with the boeing yb40 flying fortress and the consolidated xb41 both being used during world war ii as bomber escorts and the modified north american b-25 mitchell often used to attack shipping in the pacific the word gunship essentially just means an aircraft with laterally mounted heavy armaments in layman's terms that translates to big guns that fire from the side whereas traditional bombers or attack aircraft would strafe targets meaning they would pass over them repeatedly in a straight line gunships were usually tasked with circling a target and hitting it again and again now before we get into the ac-130 we really need to start with a c-130 hercules a four-engine turboprop military transport aircraft that was introduced all the way back in 1956. over the last 60-plus years this has become the transport aircraft operating in war zones but also often in humanitarian roles across the globe today is the longest-running continuously produced aircraft in the u.s air force but to link it with our story today when we need to go to dayton ohio in 1967. [Music] with the success of the douglas ac-47 the u.s air force was pretty eager to expand the use of gunships and a program to convert an existing c-130 into an ac-130 got underway at the wright-patterson air force base in dayton ohio and this was known as project gunship 2 creative additions included a direct view night vision telescope an early forward-looking infrared device along with miniguns and rotary cannons fixed at the left-hand side of the aircraft a purpose-built analog fire control computer was devised by an raf wing commander tom pinkerton at the usaf avionics laboratory at wright-patterson afb early testing out was carried out mainly in the eglin air field space in florida with the first ac-130 deemed ready for combat testing in september 1967 and it arrived at natrang air base in south vietnam shortly after those in vienna must have liked what they had seen because seven more conversions took place in 1968 with a further 10 coming in 1970. [Music] as you probably imagine for an aircraft that was converted from another the ac-130 and the c10 hercules share plenty of similarities the 8130 comes with a large crew of 13 five officers and eight enlisted men the officer group includes the pilot co-pilot navigator fire control officer and electronic warfare officer while the enlisted men account for the flight engineer tv operator infrared detection set operator load master and four aerial gunners the aircraft is 29.79 metres long with a wingspan of 40.41 metres and has a maximum takeoff weight of 70 307 kilograms which is about 155 000 pounds which interestingly is almost exactly the same as nasa's space shuttle this is a gunship that has very much been evolving over the last 50 years be a bit weird if it hadn't was the first designated as the ac-130a spectre followed by the ac-130e spectre the ac-130h spectre and the ac-130u spooky all of which are now retired the varieties still in operation are the ac-130w stinger 2 and the ac-130j ghost rider all of these planes have cool names the unit cost of the nearest aircraft is thought to be in the region of 165 million dollars it comes with four engines with the ac-130u version using the allison t56a15 turboprop engine with 4300 shp and the ac-130j variety using the rolls-royce ae2100d3 with its 4700shp both versions come with four blade constant speed reversible propellers giving the ac 130 a top speed of 480 kilometers an hour 300 miles per hour and a maximum range of kilometers or 2500 miles which is roughly the distance from london to cairo [Music] but let's be honest here the ac-130 is best known for the torrent of weaponry on board before we have a look at exactly what kind of firepower the aircraft has it's worth just reiterating the kind of combat it's typically involved in this is a long endurance aircraft capable of launching sustained attacks on a specific point on the ground using what is known as the pylon turn the pylon turn was first used during air races in the early 20th century and essentially calls for an aircraft to circle a fixed point to be considered a true pylon turn the aircraft's wing has to remain pointed at the same spot on the ground this technique can be used to relay messages or deliver supplies to the ground or in the case of the ac-130 deliver sustained hellish fire on whatever that wing is pointed at and it's because of this attack method that the ac-130s main weaponry is located only on the left-hand side of the gunship when the aircraft was first converted in the late 1960s and early 1970s they came with four 7.62 millimeter gau-2a mini-guns and four 20-millimeter m61 vulcan six barrel rotary cannons but these were later updated to include two 20 millimeter m61 vulcan cannons and one 40 millimeter l60 before's cannon and one 105 millimeter m102 howitzer but that's still relatively old-school the two variants still in operation today are the ac-130w stinger 2 and the ac-130j ghost rider both of which come with one 30 millimeter atk gau-23a auto cannon and one 105 millimeter m102 howitzer the gunslinger weapon system which can fire the agm-176 griffin missiles and or gbu-44b viper strike munitions and finally the wing-mounted agm-114 hellfire missiles gpu-39 small diameter bombs and or the gbu-53b sdb2s good lord that paragraph so imagine all of that pouring down from the sky as this air leviathan circles around like an animal stalking its prey it's not hard to see why this gunship has become such an enormous success i mean for the americans at least for everyone else is pretty devastating however its brutal amount of weaponry does come with a few problems first and foremost is the colossal recoil felt when all of those guns are pounding away together the recoil from the 105 millimeter howitzer is so great that it needs to have a protective gauge around it to protect the gunner behind it and to complicate things even more the crew are careful not to fire the 105 millimeter and the 30 millimeter at the same time because of the enormous strength it places on the already strengthened airframe it's also not exactly easy to control when you have all of that firepower pouring out and when you consider that the weaponry is situated on the left-hand side this means that the natural recall of the gun's firing tends to push the nose to the right and out from the pylon turn that the pilot is trying to maintain unlike most of the modern military aircraft the ac-130 relies on visual targeting but it comes with one of the finest sensor suites in the business to help those on board the sensor suite combines a television sensor infrared sensor and radar to pinpoint targets on the ground but also to visually or electronically identify friendly ground forces it also uses the anapq180 as synthetic aperture radar for long-range target detection and identification as well as inertial navigation systems and a global positioning system the combination of technology on board allows the ac-130 to attack two targets simultaneously the ac-130s swept into combat for the first time during the vietnam war at the end of 1967. by this point the u.s had been involved in major combat operations in the country for just over three years and the pressure to get the job done was enormous back home anti-war protests were sweeping the nation as the number of boots on the ground in vietnam rose past five hundred thousand the north vietnamese were proving themselves to be much more tenacious and resilient than perhaps the united states had expected and as u.s casualties rapidly rose and the ho chi minh trail grew in significance the americans had to find an answer and let's find it quickly while the ac-130 was never seen as the panacea to all the us's woes in southeast asia it certainly provided something very different the gunship's ability to provide close and sustained air support proved invaluable to troops on the ground and certainly saved countless lives the major problem with the ac-130s was that they were relatively easy targets for anti-aircraft fire and because of this most close air sport missions took place at night or with air support during the daytime often accompanied by the f4 phantom 2. destroying the ho chi minh trail became an obsession for the united states and well understandably so if you don't know too much about this famed transportation route which sneaked down from north vietnam through lao cambodia and finally into south vietnam then you're in luck because we've actually recently done an entire video on it here on mega projects so check that out but of course after finishing this video first quite simply this was the lifeblood for vietcong attacks in the south and a constant painful thorn in the side for the americans and their allies the problem with the ho chi minh trail was that nobody was exactly sure where it was now that might sound slightly unbelievable considering the full might and technological advantage of the americans but this was often met with pure ingenuity by the north vietnamese as the trail grew and became more sophisticated large sections of it were virtually undetectable from the skies above with carefully placed camouflage hiding the relentless transportation routes below but the americans had a bit of a trick up their sleeve during the war several ac-130s were equipped with a magnetic anomaly detector system called a black crow a highly sensitive passive device with a phased array antenna essentially the black crow system was used to detect deviations in the earth's magnetic field and while this technology was first used to find submerged submarines it seemed equally adept at searching out the unshielded ignition coils located on the trucks traveling along the ho chi minh trail this came to be known as truck hunting and of the six ac-130s that were shot down during the war four were downed while prowling for targets along that trail area the us reported that more than ten thousand trucks were destroyed by ac-130s over the eight years they were in the country for the remainder of the cold war ac-130s took part in operations around the world in panama one gunship was awarded the mckay trophy for the most emeritus flight of the year after destroying the panama defense force headquarters and numerous command and control facilities in 1979 following the storming of the u.s embassy in tehran several ac-130s were deployed to the area as the united states pondered its response retaliatory strikes within iran were briefly considered but gunships instead took part in the debacle that was operation eagle claw the failed u.s rescue attempt which ended in the deaths of eight u.s servicemen throughout the 1990s 81 30s were involved in humanitarian operations across the globe including haiti somalia liberia albania and yugoslavia in 1990 and 1991 they were involved in the gulf war and again proved to be indispensable to those on the ground on the 31st of january 1991 alone ac-130 chose to remain circling above the battlefield to protect the marines below it was eventually downed by a service-to-air missile killing all 14 on board the 9 11 attacks ushered in a new era of conflict as the war on terror began in earnest 81 30s were heavily involved in both operation enduring freedom in afghanistan and operation iraqi freedom they played a key role in the early days of the war in afghanistan and were used to hit taliban targets called in by special forces on the ground in iraq the ac-130s were typically deployed as close air support often above urban areas to combat insurgents on the ground you can imagine what one of these monsters can do when circling above a town or city and their use came in for heavy criticism from human rights groups but the most notorious incident involving an ac-130 came not in iraq but in afghanistan on the 3rd of october 2015 an ac-130 approached a building in kunduz in afghanistan which sources had identified as housing enemy combatant and began unloading on it like only this kind of flying war machine can five times the ac-130 turned its fearsome arsenal on the shattered building below before finally heading home with a seemingly successful mission complete but the building the gunship attacked had not contained any insurgents far from it the smoldering wreck was not at all an enemy target but rather a hospital run by doctors without borders the attack killed 42 people in the hospital with another 30 injured and it remains one of the worst single incidents involving civilians to have occurred in afghanistan a 3 000 page report by the americans set out the astonishing series of mistakes that led to the attack and 16 servicemen were eventually punished for their roles though these were all internal and no criminal investigation was ever launched it was made clear that at no point did those on board the ac-130 or the special forces on the ground know that the building was a hospital and the tragedy was instead based on bad intelligence a rushed pre-flight briefing and an on-board problem with the satellite radio which meant the crew could not upload the database or send and receive other vital emails or information that could have prevented the incident the attack in kunduz was a sobering reminder of just how powerful these ac-130s are and just how bad things can go when their fearsome firepower is misdirected [Music] to get a sense of just how important the ac-130s have been over the years you need only look at their revered status held by those on the ground their role in the vietnam war may not have been enough to tip the conflict in american favor but they unquestionably played their part the success in vietnam has seen their use greatly expanded and now would be unheard of for u.s troops to operate without ac-130s or other gunship varieties these are unique monsters not quite just an aircraft not quite a helicopter their ability to circle for hours above a target while coordinating with troops on the ground makes them some of the most versatile and dependable machines at the u.s air force's disposal so i really hope you enjoyed this video please don't forget to check out that channel i mentioned at the beginning explored spelt xplrd because apparently i hate vowels there is a link below thank you for watching you

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 1,284,090

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Id: c7pLMwkxk9A

Length: 16min 36sec (996 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 14 2021