Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!att!cbnews!military From: shafer@drynix (Mary Shafer) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: several bullet questions Message-ID: <7951@cbnews.ATT.COM> Date: 5 Jul 89 12:37:27 GMT Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM Lines: 27 Approved: military@att.att.com From: Mary Shafer >From: rbeville%tekig5.pen.tek.com@RELAY.CS.NET > - What was "PUFF, the Magic dragon"?... PUFF the magic dragon was a C-47 gunship (AC-47?) used in Vietnam. Its successor was the C-130 gunship (AC-130?) known as SPOOKY. Michael Herr writes (in "Dispatches") about how beautiful it was when these gunships fired. Every nth (10th?) round was a tracer round and it made a beautiful fountain of fire in the sky. These gunships had a number of Gatling guns (2 for PUFF, 4 for SPOOKY, I think, but it's Sunday and my library is closed so I can't get at the Jane's) with tremendous rates of fire. The a/c would orbit the target area and rain down bullets until everything was demolished. Someone (Herr, I think) wrote that he visited an area that SPOOKY had fired on and there was nothing there bigger than a toothpick, that the devastation was much greater than that resulting from bombing. -- M F Shafer shafer@elxsi.dfrf.nasa.gov NASA Ames Research Center arpa!elxsi.dfrf.nasa.gov!shafer Dryden Flight Research Facility ames!elxsi!shafer Of course I don't speak for NASA DON'T use the drynix address