Spooky AKA 'Puff the Magic Dragon'

                   AC-130 gunships returning to Iraq

The US Air force has begun moving heavily armed AC-130 airplanes the lethal ``flying gunships'' of the Vietnam war to a base in Iraq as commanders search for new tools to counter the Iraqi resistance, the associated press has learned.

A reporter saw the first of the turboprop-driven aircraft after it landed at the airfield this week. Four are expected.

The Iraq-based special forces command controlling the AC-130s, the combined joint special operations task force, said it would have no comment on the deployment. But the plan's general outline was confirmed by other air force officers, speaking anonymously because of the sensitivity of the subject.

Military officials warned that disclosing the location of the aircraft's new base would violate security provisions of rules governing media access to US installations.

The four-engine gunships, whose home base is Hurlburt field in Florida, have operated over Iraq before, flying from airfields elsewhere in the region. In November 2004, air-to-ground fire from AC-130s supported the US attack that took the western city of Fallujah from insurgents. Basing the planes inside Iraq will cut hours off their transit time to reach suspected targets.   Link

   

   The image you see is an AC - 130 'gunship'. Widely used in Vietnam and nicknamed 'Spooky' or 'Puff the Magic Dragon'. The red streams you see coming out of the night sky are tracer rounds. In between each tracer round is 10 rounds of ammo. When they fired at night, the stream of fire looked like a fluid line of red snaking its way to the target. There were TWO 'miniguns' onboard. Each one could fire 10,000 rounds a minute. Usually, they were dialed in to fire 6000RPM. The slugs are about the size of a bottle of Tobasco. Because it was a cargo plane, Spooky could carry much ammo. It could place a round on every square inch of a football field in one second. I know of no other weapon with its lethality. It was downright scary in its power. Think of it this way, In a 20 second low and slow pass, Spooky could level, and I mean LEVEL, Disneyland. It has other weapons onboard as well. They are also capable of rapid fire and they fire a round the size of long neck Budweiser. Those rounds can be high explosive or incendiary. We start using Spooky in Iraq and those roads from Syria and Iran will become death traps. Spooky was the most feared weapon by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. The insurgents in Iraq will rue the day Spooky flew overhead.

Comments

[KATHLEEN]

MY HUSBAND SAW "PUFF" IN VIETNAM, 1966-1968. THE FIRST TIME, HE ASKED THE GUY NEXT TO HIM WHAT THE "BLACK CLOUD" BELOW PUFF WAS AND THE ANSWER WAS "SHELL CASINGS"! MY HUSBAND DID 2 TOURS, USMC 1st Div. 7th Engineers Battn. and "PUFF", "IGOR" AND "BEELZEBUB" SAVED HIS UNITS MORE THAN ONCE! LETS BUILD MORE AND CARPET EVERY SQ. INCH OF IRAQ! SEMPER FI!
BAGHDAD, HERE WE COME!!!!!!!!!!!