CAR-15 and the Old Warbird

The first picture shows the CAR-15, I carried in Vietnam and mentioned on Aaron's blog. Carried is too strong a word. I slung it over my seat in the Chopper. It was originally designed for Special Operations Forces (Green Berets), and the Air Force adopted it for it's Special Ops people, with a few mods. Note the 30 round magazine, not used much in Vietnam except for SOF.

The other picture shows the Huey N Model in full war gear. Note the gunner standing in the slipstream. He is not grandstanding. That was his battle position, ready to "rock and roll", or "Hose" as we called it. We called what the Mini did "hosing" because the tracers (every 5th round) looked like a red stream of water coming from the gun. The gunner could fire at 2000rpm or 4000 rpm depending on the situation. And could bring fire to bear within 3 meters of friendlies in a close fire fight.

He wore a "chicken plate", front and back and an armored helmet. He could aim and fire the Minigun in a 179 degree arc. A gunner was on each side of the chopper.

The 2 pilots sat in armored seats with a "chicken plate" on their torsos, and an armored helmet. The plate could stop an armor piercing AK-47 round.

Look below the gunner's feet at the round canister laying horizontally. It held 2.75 inch rockets used to soften up an enemy that was closing on our SOF Team. Most rounds were HE, but up North we used fleshette rounds for the first 4 we shot. This rocket round had 15,000 little nails about 2 inches long. When fired the rocket went out about 1 Klick then exploded sending the nails in a large cloud into the target. The jungle was so dense and the holes where a chopper could land were so few that the VC had all the holes manned with ambush teams. So before we inserted a team we "nailed the hole". That took care of any ambushers waiting for our team. We found a few VC that got "nailed", so to speak.