Tag Archives: M134 Mini Gun

Cue, ‘Fortunate Son’…

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.

Just because it was unauthorized, doesn’t make it any less awesome

In response to rough treatment by the locals along Route 19 in South Vietnam, U.S. Army Transport Corps drivers went to uparmor their vehicles to make it from Point A to Point B without having to be medevaced.

At first, this was just sandbags and M60s. Then came M2s, 1/2″ steel plate, and more handheld weapons such as M79 bloop guns.

Then, needing bigger rides to carry more guns, they stepped up from 2.5-ton to 5-ton trucks with everything from surplus M113 hulls and “borrowed” M134 Mini Guns aboard.

How about that M134 on the back to discourage disreputable merchants and ward off road rage at 6,000 rounds-per-minute?

More on these in my column at Guns.com