Tag Archives: 30mm cannon

Cue, ‘Fortunate Son’…

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I recently hit the road in southwest Alabama and visited the U.S. Army Aviation Museum, one of the largest military helicopter collections in the world.

Located at Fort Novosel (formerly Fort Rucker, aka “Mother Rucker”), the sprawling 60,000-acre complex has been home to all Army helicopter training since 1959 and all aviation training since 1973. 

The Museum has over 250 aircraft in its inventory – some incredibly rare.

The post earlier this year was named in honor of Army CWO Michael J. Novosel, a UH-1 medevac pilot who evacuated an amazing 5,589 wounded personnel while in Vietnam, earning a well-deserved Medal of Honor.

While I have a full 15-minute video and lots of images over in my column at GDC, these two struck me as appropriate for today.

In a sobering display, a downed Huey is shown in the center of the museum’s main gallery.

The Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association estimates over 3,300 UH-1 models were lost either due to combat or accidents during the war.

The Avenger 30mm Cannon

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I generally talk about small arms, and small arms accessories. However let’s take a break and check out some extremely heavy firepower– the GAU-8 Avenger cannon.

Since the US Army took an experimental Lewis machinegun up on a canvas and bamboo biplane in 1912, there has been a move to arm aircraft. After those tests in which an officer asked, “Why would anyone want to put a gun on an airplane?” ordnance has gotten bigger and more effective.

The US military spent most of the time period between 1948 and 1989 obsessed with a plain in central Germany known as the Fulda Gap. The Fulda Gap was the most obvious route for a hypothetical Soviet tank attack upon West Germany (and NATO) from Eastern Europe. It was envisioned that thousands of Soviet and Warsaw Pact tanks would swarm into the Fulda. If the US could stop them there, World War III could be won. If not, we’d all be speaking Russian today.

Enter the Avenger.

The rest in my column at Firearms Talk.