hueygunship uh1d

Sounds like the Revell UH-1D Huey model.  It is a great kit.  Decals for it can be found at Fireball Modelworks.

A couple notes though.  The US Army never used UH-1Ds as gunships.  Revell got it wrong.  The Revell model is actually a UH-1H as well, which replaced D model Hueys in late '67-'68.  All US Army UH-1Ds and Hs were Slicks (troop transports) armed with M-60D door guns (in the M-23 armament subsystem) only. 

UH-1H in Vietnam

Later model UH-1H (1980s configuration) 

Cobra Company does the M23 Door Gun mounts too.  You would have to scratch the troop seats though.

Good luck with it.

I agree with Arty, the Fireball decals are great and give you 6 options to model. For a difference though, I've seen a pic on page 42 of the Squdron UH-1 Huey in action. It looks like they've mounted the 2 M60's (that come with the Revell kit, but would normally go outside the Helo facing forward) on a converted pintle post mount normally used for single door guns. Ammo is supplied by flexi-chutes from boxes inside the cabin. It looks like something that was developed in the field by the crews, not something that was normally done. It looks good though and is something a little different. There aren't any other pics that I could find and this one is prety small, so I'm not sure how these were fired. Maybe someone could let me know as this will be a future build.

An other option is to get hold of some Aussie Bushranger  decals as they did use these as gunships, although I'm afraid I wouldn't have a clue from where you could get hold of them.

Happy building,  Rich

Hi again,

I knew I'd seen some Aussie decals somwhere. Here's a link http://www.hawkeyemodels.com.au/

Just enter the site and click on RAAF banner on the left and then scroll down the page.

Rich

An Aussie Bushranger would be a cool build.  It had miniguns on the forward stations (just behind the pilots doors) and dual M-60Ds with 7-shot rocket tubes in the doorgunner positions. 

They looked like this.

More on them here.

Hawkeye declas are great.  I have a couple of their other sets. 

If you go for the Australian option you should also know that the ammunition system for the guns was different than the American version. If you go to www.aussiemodeller.com there was a very good discussion recently on the gunship Huey on the discussion board.

Hawkeye models does decals for the Australian Hueys as well as some conversion stuff depending on the variant. Clayton Fiander who owns Hawkeye is a good bloke (ex-Army so he would have to be).

Hi there,

Any chance you could provide a link to this. I've just been back over the discussion board til August and can't find it ( or just haven't noticed it). BTW, that's a great site. I'm amazed I've never come across it before. It's now book marked.

Cheers,  Rich

Unfortunately i'm unable to give a direct link to it but the topic was started on 19 Jun and is currently on Page 22. The title is 'UH-1H Fwd weapons mounts" by Nathan Bradford. There are a number of other smaller topics on the same subject from around the same time frame. HTH

 I'm glad you like the site. We are currently going through a renovation of the site with a redesign of the page layout.

Many thanks for that. There is some interesting info there as well as great pics. Much appreciated.

Rich

I'm using the seats from the MRC Charlie model.

Lee

The aussie Hueys were only retired from army sevice 2 weeks ago, although they stopped using them as gunships around 2004. 40+ years of service and they still looked immaculate. i was lucky enough to be  at Enoggera barracks for the 3 ship farewell and took some good pics. cant work out how to post them though. go to www.defence.gov.au and click on latest images and look for the iroquois farewell and there are some good hires shots there. a great day!

cheers

chris

p.s love the 2 tone camo our ships have!

HeavyArty wrote:

An Aussie Bushranger would be a cool build.  It had miniguns on the forward stations (just behind the pilots doors) and dual M-60Ds with 7-shot rocket tubes in the doorgunner positions.  They looked like this. More on them here. Hawkeye declas are great.  I have a couple of their other sets.

I'm about to start a bushranger is 1/35.