Iconic Planes of Vietnam War - need some ideas...

[RidgeRunner]

6 hours ago, Gmat said:

Added trivia. The old TV series The Lieutenant was about a Camp Pendleton Marine training instructor. One episode had the lieutenant, played by Gary Lockwood,  going TDY to Viet Nam. His helicopter, that was shot down, was the CH-34. This was the final  episode. James Shigeta and Greg Morris also appeared in it. It was created by Gene Roddenberry. Some names might be familiar. 

CH-34 being iconic may depend on who you were looking at. 

 

Grant

 

Hi Grant et al, 

 

If you peruse the various Vietnam documentaries of the likes of the History channel, there are lots of Hueys but there are also many H-34s plucking soldiers out of the jungle en masse. I guess it was a matter of timing, the Choctaw being the forerunner of the Huey as a mass delivery machine?

 

Martin

Edited February 23, 2019 by RidgeRunner

[Gmat]

The CH-34 was exclusively USMC and RVN. The US Army started with CH-21 Shawnees but quickly supplanted and then replaced them with UH-1 Hueys. By the mid-60s the majority of helicopter operations was US Army, which meant Hueys. I also think that airmobile helicopter operations as practiced by the US Army captured the attention of camera crews. The Marines used their helicopters differently.  

The US Army used the CH-34 Choctaw in Europe and CONUS but apparently not in the Far East. Possibly the Mississippi was the dividing line for usage. Others would know more. 

Sorry for going off on a tangent.

Grant

[Air Hockey Propellers]

20 hours ago, Gmat said:

The Marines used their helicopters differently.  

 

Could you please elaborate a little more on this? 

[Gmat]

This is from memory, so some things are fuzzy, but I've read that when the First Air Cav went north towards Khe San and started operations, when they approached VC or NVA, they went to ground but didn't hide, so were easy pickings. I guess the Marines used their choppers as battle taxis, and it wouldn't be until later when they got AH-1s that the tactics would have changed. By this time, the US Army, with more experience with hot LZs, had armed gunships accompanying their transport Hueys. Another innovation would be the Air Cav choppers that actively sought out the enemy using pink teams with scout OH-6s and gunships and blue platoons of armed troops in Hueys. 

Others with more knowledge about helicopter operations in Viet Nam can offer corrections or a more detailed explanation. This is not meant to disparage the Marines, but to point out differences in tactics. 

 

I think that Air Mobile operations as initially started by the First Cav probably captured the imagination of newsmen and the Media back home and from there it never looked back. So the Huey figures prominently in John Q. Public's idea of Viet Nam. We, of course, know better,         I think....

 

Grant

Edited February 24, 2019 by Gmat

[Plastic_parts]

For me the most iconic aircraft from the Vietnam war would have to be the Huey, although strictly speaking it’s a helicopter.

[janneman36]

Well build a AC47 Gunship..or FC47 gunship ...i certainly think this is a iconic one ..

[Giorgio N]

On 2/23/2019 at 9:46 AM, RidgeRunner said:

 

Hi Grant et al, 

 

If you peruse the various Vietnam documentaries of the likes of the History channel, there are lots of Hueys but there are also many H-34s plucking soldiers out of the jungle en masse. I guess it was a matter of timing, the Choctaw being the forerunner of the Huey as a mass delivery machine?

 

Martin

 

As Grant said the H-34 was mainly USMC. The Vietnamese had a number of ex US Army machines and later received former USMC helicopters but my understanding is that their H-34 fleet was plagued by reliability issues and Vietnamese Choctaws had little impact on operations.

In any case, as much as the H-34 was a useful machine for the Marines, the role of the Huey variants was of a different order of magnitude: around 7,000 Hueys served in Vietnam, amassing more than 7 milion flying hours in combat with the loss of over 3,200 helicopters.

 

Regarding films, the most famous appearance of the H-34 was in the abovementioned Full Metal Jacket, but the helicopters appearing in the movie were not really H-34s but Westland Wessex ! IIRC they were civilian Mk.60s formerly used by Bristow

[feifeitim]

On 2/23/2019 at 5:50 AM, Admiral Puff said:

Tsk, tsk! 39 posts and no-one's mentioned the DHC-4 Caribou! Did a lot of work in Funnyland, did the 'Bou ...

I was going to suggest that one Admiral!  We could also throw in the C-46 too!  But I mulled over iconic and came up with the RA-5C Vigilante, which did some amazing missions during the war.  However, for me, the F-4 of all the various marks is the most iconic: I confess that the F-14 would never have made my list and doesn’t hit my Vietnam War collection either.

 

As we seem to have gone to the esoteric how about the YO-3A Quiet Star, an unarmed machine that had zero losses during the campaign, or we could add the various versions of the KA-3B Skywarrior too.

 

Interestingly, one of the pilots with the highest number of war missions (5000+ , yes that is 5000+!) under his belt at his death, Lee Lu, a Meo fighter pilot flew many of them in the T-28.

[PhantomPhreakII]

B-57G (if not mentioned)... Canberra with LLLLLLLLLLTV (or something) nose.. wierdlooking nose....

 

OV-10

OV-1

 

AC-47, AC-119, AC-130

 

Just my 2 piasters...

 

Harald