Dakota gunship

[Old Wombat]

Having crawled through to the tail turret of a Lancaster as a youngster (pre-teen, I'm pretty sure, but only just) I can't see that happening. Far too cramped for those shenanigans.


There's a reason that most gunships have been cargo aircraft; they have big, open interiors where you can put lots of stuff, like guns & ammunition.

Bombers are designed to carry small (relatively), compact & dense packets of violent death & destruction, they were not designed to have voluminous interiors into which you could jam lots of guns & ammo.

[jcf]

I might stick with my 4 .50 cal Brownings. Maths!

As comrade harps mentioned correctly: for a gunship, it is not so much about the number of guns, it's the ammunition supply that makes the aircraft effective - and it weighs a lot. But an AC-47 style aircraft is supposed to keep the opposition on the ground down, and - ideally - shoot it into bits and pieces, that's why the AC-130's bigger guns came into play. The 75mm gun in the B-25 was a dedicated anti-ship weapon, and that's a totally different mission profile. (Just) Four 0.5" machine guns sound sufficient to me, remember the huge ammo load that will be needed, and maybe add a 20mm Hispano or a single pop pom gun, but that's enough for the airframe.

Some time ago I converted an A-1 into an experimental gunship from the Vietnam era with a three-barrel 20mm turret. With some calculations, the ammunition supply ate up almost all the Skyraider's ordnance capability - and even then it would have only been good for a little more than 1 minute of continuous fire at full RPM, IIRC!

Exactly, and to keep up the required rate of fire you'd either have to be
swapping out barrels on MGs, or use the water-cooled versions. Personally
speaking the big water-cooled .50s would also look the best, having the
closest visual similarity to the mini-guns of the AC-47 and Vulcans of
the later gunships.

Para-frags and/or a battery of 60lb RPs for any heavier softening up needs.
The C-47 could be equipped to carry "Para-Packs" on the belly, evidently
these used a standard bomb-rack, so they could be used to carry the M4
clusters.
https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3367561

[kerick]

You'll need something to drop flares to light up the target at night.

[Captain Canada]

Great idea. That will be a fun build.

[comrade harps]

You'll need something to drop flares to light up the target at night.

.

I've seen photos of AC-47s with a box shaped "flare kicker" filling s window space. Plausibly also located in the cargo doorway?

[scooter]

You'll need something to drop flares to light up the target at night.

.

I've seen photos of AC-47s with a box shaped "flare kicker" filling s window space. Plausibly also located in the cargo doorway?

From John Levitow's wiki:

"As the crew of Spooky 71 manned their aircraft patrolling the area, the pilot Major Kenneth Carpenter had seen muzzle flashes outside Long Binh Army Base. The pilot threw the AC-47 and its eight-man crew into a banked turn to engage the Viet Cong in the Tan Son Nhut Air Base area.[5]

"On the pilot's command, Levitow and the gunner began deploying flares through the open cargo door. Levitow set the timers and handed a flare to the gunner, who held it with his finger through the pull ring attached to the safety pin. Suddenly, Spooky 71 was jarred by a tremendous explosion. A North Vietnamese Army's 82-millimeter mortar shell hit the right wing and exploded inside the structure, raking the fuselage with flying shrapnel. Everyone in the back of Spooky 71 was wounded, including Levitow, who was hit by shrapnel and experienced a concussion that he was quoted as saying 'felt like being hit by a two-by-four.' The blast also jarred the flare from the gunner's hands, pulling the safety pin from the canister as it did so and arming the fuse.[5]"

[comrade harps]

You'll need something to drop flares to light up the target at night.

.

I've seen photos of AC-47s with a box shaped "flare kicker" filling s window space. Plausibly also located in the cargo doorway?

From John Levitow's wiki:

"As the crew of Spooky 71 manned their aircraft patrolling the area, the pilot Major Kenneth Carpenter had seen muzzle flashes outside Long Binh Army Base. The pilot threw the AC-47 and its eight-man crew into a banked turn to engage the Viet Cong in the Tan Son Nhut Air Base area.[5]

"On the pilot's command, Levitow and the gunner began deploying flares through the open cargo door. Levitow set the timers and handed a flare to the gunner, who held it with his finger through the pull ring attached to the safety pin. Suddenly, Spooky 71 was jarred by a tremendous explosion. A North Vietnamese Army's 82-millimeter mortar shell hit the right wing and exploded inside the structure, raking the fuselage with flying shrapnel. Everyone in the back of Spooky 71 was wounded, including Levitow, who was hit by shrapnel and experienced a concussion that he was quoted as saying 'felt like being hit by a two-by-four.' The blast also jarred the flare from the gunner's hands, pulling the safety pin from the canister as it did so and arming the fuse.[5]"

I wasn't aware of that mighty effort. Thanks for sharing.

So, no need to build anything, just leave off the cargo doors. I have seen AC-47 photos like that.

4 x .50 Brownings firing through the rearmost port side windows with the cargo doors left off sounds like a good fit for the job. Maybe have some ammo and flare boxes visible.

[rickshaw]

In 1972 the Australian Government under Gough Whitlam donated several C-47 Dakota transport aircraft to the Cambodian Government upon the withdrawal of the Australian forces from Indochina.  The Cambodians immediately put four .50 cal HMGs on the belly of the aircraft and a similar number .30 cal MMGs firing through the Port fuselage windows.  They used them successfully during the siege of capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh by the Khmer Rouge.   They operated from Thai air strips.

[NARSES2]

The January edition of Airfix Magazine has a build of the Revell 1/48 AC-47 and that comes with some well detailed flare racks to place inside the fuselage. The build also mentions the action Scoot' refers to.

[Sport21ing]

IDK how much have you built (or the timeline set) on the aircraft, but could be possible to add 20mm Oerlikons by post-Okinawa; the USN was removing them from their ships since it don't have the stopping power for the Kamikazes, and the USAAF personnel could have "acquired  " some of those cannons! 

[comrade harps]

IDK how much have you built (or the timeline set) on the aircraft, but could be possible to add 20mm Oerlikons by post-Okinawa; the USN was removing them from their ships since it don't have the stopping power for the Kamikazes, and the USAAF personnel could have "acquired  " some of those cannons! 

I'm seriously considering a USMC invasion of Honshu option, so a 20mm firing through the doorway might make some sense unless weight and recoil are problematic.

[Old Wombat]

You're looking at about 120kg per weapon (without mounts) plus ammo.

Given a muzzle velocity between 820m/s & 1,050m/s with shell weights of approx. 120g; recoil forces would be (roughly) between 40.3kJ & 66.2kJ per round. Not ridiculously large (especially as it would be damped by the mass of the weapon) but would require some strengthening of the aircraft's structure.

[comrade harps]

Been doing some more research and it looks like the Spooky gunships operated by Columbia, Indonesia and El Salvador originally had only 2 or 3 .50 cal Brownings poking out their port windows, so even 4 might be too much.

http://aircraftnut.blogspot.com/2014/05/ac-47-dakota-gunship-spooky-and-puff.html?m=1

https://www.indomiliter.com/ac-47-gunship-tni-au-pesawat-angkut-berkemampuan-serbu/

[Sport21ing]

Theres no such thing as 'too much' for the US military 

[Geoff]

A guy I know from S Africa told me they had Daks with quad .50's in the cargo door during SWA border war.