187th AHC Organization

The flight platoons were assigned 20 UH-1D aircraft in two lift platoons, 10 per platoon. These were called “slicks” because they had less hanging on the side then the gunships. They were the workhorses, doing combat assaults, resupply, command and control and what ever else anyone could think of. D models were the first aircraft used as slicks, they were longer then previous B models and had room on each side of the transmission housing for a doorgunner station. The aircraft had seating for 11 passengers and two pilots, but carrying troops with combat loads, this was unrealistic so the seats were pulled except for the doorgunner seats and the troops sat on the floor. There was realistically only room for 6-8 troops. The heat and humidity caused severe degradation of the aircraft’s power and as the engines wore out, a load of three fully equipped soldiers was sometimes all they could carry. The power problem was resolved by mid 1968 when the UH-1H began to arrive. It had 200 additional horsepower making all the difference in the world. The only armor carried was the pilots seats. Typical armament was two M-60’s with 600 rounds per gun. These were typically hard mounted and had spade handles with triggers in the handle grips.

The company had a platoon of 8 gunships, UH-1C models.  The platoon was equipped with a variety of weapon systems, C models were armed with miniguns, the six barrelled 7.62 version, capable of firing 6,000 rounds per minute. These systems were fired by the co-pilot using a drop down electric sight. The problem with the miniguns was that the aircraft only carried 7,200 rounds total so you could conceivably shoot up your entire ammo load in 40 seconds. The solution was to slow the guns down to about 2,000 rounds per minute and set a timer on them to only allow a 3 second burst. At this rate a ship could deliver about 600 rounds from each gun in a burst. Five of the platoon aircraft were armed this way. Two aircraft were armed with a 40 mm grenade launcher mounted on the nose, with a cyclic rate of fire of 180 rounds per minute. When the system first came out it only had a 40 round magazine. Units in the field built a magazine that held 120 rounds or more. Another 30 rounds were held in the ammo chute that ran from the magazine in back out beside the pilot console through the nose to the gun. The round was the same 40 mm grenade used in the M-79 except that it had more propellant and could fly farther, a range of 800 meters. The round had a metal band around it so it could be linked and also to keep some genius from loading it into an M-79. All of these systems carried seven rocket tubes on each side that could be fired singly or in pairs by the pilot aiming the aircraft. The last aircraft was called a “hog” and carried 24 rockets to a side. Although the systems provided the punch, the real teeth of the gunships was the doorguns. These were M-60’s suspended in the door on bungee cords. A doorgunner usually had about 2,000 rounds of straight tracer minimum for his M-60 and might carry anything else his little heart desired. We carried smoke and WP grenades, (no frag), rifles, pistols, submachine guns and knives. More experienced doorgunners were assigned to the gunships because with the free hanging M-60 you could literally shoot anywhere you wanted to, sometimes making pilots nervous. C model gunships were seriously overloaded and could only carry about 1,000 lbs of fuel, enough for about an hour and a half in the air. In mid 68 the first AH-1G Cobras arrived. This aircraft was incredible, four hardpoints on the stub wings plus either two miniguns or a minigun and 40mm grenade launcher in the nose, but it had problems. It had no air conditioning and the first platoon of pilots lost weight to the point of deydration. The old “2-100” airconditioning of the C models wasn’t there (2 doors open and 100 miles an hour)

The 29th ship in the company was a slick assigned to the maintenance platoon. Sometimes there was a 30th ship, a slick assigned to headquarters, but we were usually short one or two aircraft.