If interested go see the Duke in last movie – The Shootist. Especially when he gives a shooting lesson. Grumpy
Author: Grumpy
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FN 1910 repair
Flying a Cobra gunship is a bit like wearing it. The first time I climbed into the cockpit of an S-model AH-1 Cobra, I was struck by how skinny the thing was. The aircraft just wraps around you. Particularly from the front seat, the view is simply spectacular.
The S-model represented the apex of Cobra evolution in Army service. They were universally referred to as Snakes. The Marines took them to yet more rarefied heights, but the AH-1S was the end of the road for the Army’s first dedicated helicopter gunship. It was an undeniably sexy beast.
There are two broad categories of helicopter rotor systems. The semi-rigid design found on Hueys, Army Cobras, and OH-58s is akin to a teeter-totter. This two-bladed system pivots at its midpoint to compensate for the dissimilar physics experienced by the advancing and retreating blades when the aircraft is in forward flight. By contrast, the fully-articulated systems used on the CH-47, UH-60, and AH-64 are designed such that each individual blade pivots on a hinge attached to the rotor head. The practical differences are fairly significant.
Fully articulated rotors are fairly forgiving of quasi-aerobatic maneuvering, but a semi-rigid rotor system must always remain under a positive G-load. Our maneuvering limits for the UH-1, AH-1, and OH-58 were one-half positive G. Practically speaking, that meant that you had to be careful when clearing a terrain feature at low level and high speed. Pitching the nose down sharply unloads the rotor head and flirts with weightlessness. Be unduly aggressive with this, and the rotors can come apart. Don’t tell anybody, but that didn’t stop me from rolling a Snake inverted once in the high-speed dive box at Fort Rucker. Young men are so terribly stupid.
The semi-rigid rotor produces a stark one-to-one vibration as you power up the aircraft. It’s a weird feeling. Once you get the aircraft up to speed, however, it is a joy to fly. One of my warmest memories as an Army aviator was chasing alligators in a Cobra flying about three feet above some forgotten Alabama river.
Origin Story
In the early 1960’s, the U.S. military first established the doctrine of vertical envelopment and air assault using early combat helicopters. UH-1 Hueys offered unprecedented mobility and shock effect for troops on the battlefield, However, these lightly-armed aircraft were terribly vulnerable, particularly as they approached a contested landing zone. Air Force strike fighters were handy, but they were really too fast to offer the sort of precise fires necessary to support the lift aircraft down in the dirt. The first dedicated helicopter gunship was actually adapted from the piston-driven H-13.
The H-13 was the grasshopper-looking aircraft used on the TV show MASH. However, this spindly machine lacked the payload to be an effective gunship. The first truly effective helicopter gunships were Mike-model Hueys. These modified UH-1 transport helicopters were called Hogs and sported four M-60 machineguns along with a pair of 2.75” rocket pods on side pylons and a 40mm automatic grenade launcher in the nose. Sometimes the four M-60s were replaced by a pair of M-134 miniguns. However, this was a stop-gap solution. The result was the new AH-1G Cobra.
The earliest AH-1G Cobras first saw combat service in Vietnam in the summer of 1967. While the AH-1 and UH-1 were visually quite dissimilar, those early Snakes actually shared a great deal of engineering with their lift brethren. The main rotor, tail rotor and engine were common between the two machines.
As the machinery evolved so did the tactics. In short order, Cobras were being employed as part of Pink Teams consisting of one or two Cobras paired with an OH-6 Loach observation aircraft. The Loach flew low and slow, scouting targets down in the weeds, while the Snake orbited up high, waiting for prey. These two aircrews coordinated their every move via radio. Once targets were identified, the Loach would break clear so the more heavily armed Cobra could roll hot from altitude and bring the pain.
Details
Those early AH-1G Cobras could be equipped with a variety of weapons including pylon-mounted M-61 Vulcan automatic 20mm cannon. However, the most common load-out was four 2.75″ rocket pods under the stubby wings, each carrying either seven or 19 rockets. The rockets fired along the aircraft centerline and were typically managed by the pilot who sat in the rearmost position in the cockpit. The co-pilot/gunner in the front ran the chin turret. The turret typically mounted an M-134 minigun on one side and a 40mm automatic grenade launcher on the other. These mounts were universal, however, so individual aircraft could fit a pair of miniguns or a pair of grenade launchers as the tactical situation demanded.
Once the Vietnam War drew to a close, the Army’s mission evolved. Where previously the enemy was well-entrenched jungle fighters in small groups, in the 1970’s and 80’s, the problem was massed Warsaw Pact armor on the plains of Europe. This demanded a radical rethink of both the design and employment of attack aircraft. The result was the AH-1F and AH-1S Cobras.
The S-model is distinguished from the previous sort at a glance by its flat plate windscreen and tapered rotor tips. For reasons I never fully understood, the tail rotor was moved to the opposite side as well. These Cold War gunships packed a single three-barrel M-197 20mm cannon in the chin turret and the fire control equipment to manage TOW missiles off of the wings.
TOW stands for Tube-launched, Optically-tracked, Wired-guided. These weapons were purpose-designed to kill tanks. They reach out to around three kilometers. A few TOW missiles were used against advancing NVA armor at the end of the Vietnam War, but most of their combat usage from airborne platforms took place in the Middle East. These late-model Snakes still carried 2.75″ rocket pods as well.
Ruminations
I will forever carry a soft spot in my heart for the Cobra gunship. However, once they added applique armor and all the fire control equipment required to manage the TOWs, the resulting aircraft was fairly underpowered. The thing was still fast — its VNE (Velocity never-to-exceed) was 170 knots or nearly 200 miles per hour. However, the Cobra was sluggish with a full load of fuel and ammo. In hot/high conditions, a full combat load would often exceed the aircraft’s performance limitations.
A nicely tuned AH-1S cruised at around 149 knots and had a maximum takeoff weight of 9,500 pounds. Its Lycoming T53-L-703 turboshaft engine put out 1,800 shaft horsepower. As the world’s first truly dedicated helicopter gunship, the Snake laid a foundation for much greater things to come.
Now that is some really great looking wood in my humble opinion! Grumpy
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The Gewehr 43 – Hitler’s Garand of WWII
Things are just different in Australia. Many of their mammals are unique to the continent and sport weird pouches they use to raise their young. Additionally, their snakes seem all to be just super deadly. And then there’s the platypus. What’s that all about?
Apparently, all that intrinsic “Down Under” strangeness extends to their small arms as well. Back during WWII when gun designers were crafting such conventional weapons as the German MP-40, America’s M-3 Grease Gun, the Russian PPSh, and the British Sten, an Aussie named Evelyn Owen crafted an upside-down SMG that ultimately took his name. The Australian Owen was unique among the pantheon of wartime SMGs, as it fed 9mm rounds from the top — among other quirky features.
Origin Story
Evelyn Ernest Owen was born in 1915 in Wollongong, New South Wales. He finished high school, but did not otherwise much take to formal education. He did, however, have certain natural mechanical proclivities. By 1938 he had developed a submachine gun design that fired .22 LR. He approached the ordnance officers at Victoria Barracks in Sidney, but they showed little interest. The Australian Army at the time was operating on the British model and had scant use for submachine guns. Their combat tactics orbited around massed rifle fire and heavy machineguns.
Disappointed, the young Mr. Owen enlisted in the Australian Army. Just before he was to deploy to the Middle East, Owen met Vincent Wardell, the plant manager for a manufacturing concern in Port Kembla called Lysaght’s.
Though they had no experience building weapons, Wardell discussed the project with Essington Lewis, the owner of the company. Intrigued, Lewis used his influence to have Owen temporarily exempted from his military service and seconded to the plant for development of the weapon.
Owen adapted his rimfire design to fire .32 ACP and then .45 ACP before settling on the 9mm. By 1941 with war clouds looming on the horizon, the Australians were warming to the idea of SMGs. However, they were already in the pipeline to receive British Stens. Percy Spender, the Minister for the Australian Army, nonetheless ordered 100 copies of the Owen as a speculative venture.
By the summer of 1941, Owen was formally released from his military obligation so he could work on his gun full-time. The weapon was field-tested alongside the American Thompson, the British Sten and the German Bergmann. In water, mud and sand tests, the Owen was found to be the most reliable of the lot. As a result, that first order was increased from 100 copies to 2,000. Australian industry tooled up to mass produce the weapon soon thereafter.
Details
The Owen was a conventional submachine gun quite unconventionally executed. As Evelyn Owen had little formal schooling and no experience designing weapons, he approached the project without preconceptions. This fresh unspoiled take resulted in a shockingly reliable design.
The most radical aspect of the Owen’s design was that it fed from the top. The gun’s detachable box magazine carried 33 rounds of 9mm ammunition. This unusual orientation allowed for gravity to assist in feeding rounds into the weapon. It also facilitated easier firing from the prone. As a result of the top-mounted magazine, the gun’s sights were offset to the left for access by right-handed shooters. Left-handed people were just screwed, but we should be used to that by now.
The Owen fired from the open bolt by means of a fixed firing pin milled into the bolt face. The drawn tubular steel receiver incorporated a smaller internal tube that helped keep crud away from the bolt and improved reliability. Oddly, the ejector was built into the magazine rather than the weapon itself. This facilitated easy removal of the barrel for disassembly or maintenance. The simple wire buttstock was removable but did not fold or collapse.
Practical Tactical
The Owen gun developed a well-deserved reputation for reliability that made it popular with Allied troops operating in the fetid jungles of the South Pacific. The Aussies affectionately referred to the gun as the “Digger’s Darling,” with “digger” being a slang term for soldiers in Australia. New Zealand troops fighting in Guadalcanal and the Solomons binned their Thompsons in favor of Owens for their improved reliability. General Douglas MacArthur was so impressed with the weapon that he investigated the possibility of sourcing the gun for use by American troops in theater.
The Owen gun required a unique manual of arms, and it was heavy at 9.33 lbs. empty. With a fully-charged 33-round magazine, the gun tipped the scales at a whopping 10.7 pounds. However, this impressive weight combined with the weapon’s 700 rpm rate of fire and modest 9mm chambering made it exceptionally controllable. For the sorts of desperate close range engagements that defined the Pacific theater, the Owen gun was superb.
The Rest of the Story
By war’s end, the Australians had produced some 45,000 Owen guns. The price at the time ranged from $24 to $30 apiece. That would be about $516 today. Production of the Owen wrapped up in 1944.
The Owen remained in service with Australian troops through both the Korea and Vietnam Wars. The weapon was not retired until 1971 when it was supplanted by the Australian F-1 SMG, a subsequent more advanced top-feed 9mm design.
The Owen gun design was patented in 1943, and Evelyn Owen received a small royalty for each gun produced. He eventually sold the patent rights for the weapon to the Australian government. All totaled he made about £10,000 off of the Owen gun design.
Evelyn Owen took the money he made from his eponymous subgun and opened a sawmill near his hometown of Wollogong. With the war over he continued experimenting with firearms, most commonly sporting rifles. However, there was not a happy ending to be found here.
Evelyn Owen liked to drink and is said to have done so in excess. He eventually developed a gastric ulcer that hemorrhaged in April of 1949. Owen subsequently bled out and died at the young age of 33. The gun he designed, however, would be his legacy, helping save his nation from tyranny.