Armed Pedro

Not a common sight. Would like to see the picture so I could build one and not get beat up at a local show by those who revel in accuracy.

 I fly CASEVAC with the USMC and am the Navy liaison instructor at the Army Flight Medic Course. With the USMC we are considered combatant aircraft and do CASEVAC from the frontlines as a "dedicated" platform, not a "designated" air ambulance. That puts us into a lift of opportunity or CSAR status and we can carry weapons (.50 Cal.).

As I am sure you know, the rules for U.S. Army designated air ambulances are no weapons if they are identified as such with a red cross. No good deed goes unpunished......Good old Geneva Convention!

 

Our Pedros were used for a variety of reasons, Aircaft crashes, supporting local villages, emergency med evac, recon of the local area looking for gun runners and so on.  One night we actually go tinto a light fight with someone on the ground who had a powerful hand held spotlight.

I wish I had the picture.  I can enter my Pedro into a local or regional without too much trouble but we may be having the nationals in a year or two and I wouldn't dare put it in.  Not with the way some of those judges look at entries. 

ikar01.......

I searched my references and the net, but the only photo showing an armed Pedro was on this site:

http://www.talkingproud.us/Military020105C.html

Since it was not "officially" allowed to be armed, there may not be any official photos.  Any arming was probably done locally, and only individuals actually involved would have any photos.

T.Young  

Can you give us a rough sketch, sounds like and interesting idea to add to a build

Our 43 was your typical camoflaged model with the added floation devices on the side.  We had the cargo netting across the back and loud speakers mounted on the front.  The M-60 was a standard model from our armory and mounted near the mechanic's seat at the side door on a verticle post supported by a horizontal one.  an 1,100 round ammo can was normally carried by all our vehicles for every M-60 with a 200 assault pack on the weapon.  The assault pack was a roughly square grey rubberized pouch with a folding lid that clipped onto the left side of the weapon.  The sides were soft with several uneven indentations and rounded corners.  Simetimes when they were emptied the K-9 guys would grab some to attach to their web belts and carry things for their dog in them.

Thanks, may add one when I get around to building the one in my stash(the old Testor's kit)

Question, could it be rotated out of the way if needed?

As I remember it wasn't much more than a couple pipes stuck together with an M-60 mount in the top hole.  That's the way we made them for most of our vehicles.  The bottom of the mounting pintle went into the top of the pipe.  A very simple system.

Thanks for your reply, sounds similar to the early door-mounts for .30cal mg's used on CH-21

As you can imagine, it didn't last long.  The copter crew wasn't allowed to use the weapon.  I was told that it was removed a few days later because they didn't trust us to fire in he relatively small area between the rotor blade and the bottom of the aircraft.