Ray,
Good to see the M16/19-shooters combo too; I only have the M21/M200 photos that I already posted, but I am allways on the lookout for unusual/non-standard Huey configurations. So, if I find some more heavy M21 or M16 Huey photos I will certainly post them :) And as things are going here we might even come to see M21/M5 or M16/M5 armed Hueys :)
I got some new stuff for You guys though. The first set of images is of a UH-1B 63-08673 of the 117th Aviation Company (Air Mobile Light) from 1964/65. This bird was armed with the XM14 .50 cal gun pods. Each pod housed the M3 .50 cal MG with 750 rounds and a rate of fire of 1100-1250 rpm! Though the XM14 was a standardised piece of equipment it only saw limited use in Vietnam. In fact, I have only ever seen pictures of this particular UH-1B armed with XM14. I just love the early 117th tiger stripe camouflage! This Huey went under three different names: KARIN (painted on the nose), Cigar 6 (crossed cigars and 6 on both pilots doors) and Woody (don't know how this name came about).
The nose art included a small figure of a soldier in tiger stripe fatigues peeing red tracer fire on both door posts and what was supposed to be a stylized ''angry'' Huey on both XM14 pods.
Note that this Huey had a mkVIII sight mounted on the co-pilots side too and didn't have the armored seats yet, but early style armored panels.
The next image shows a UH-1B of the 68th Aviation Company (Armed Helicopter) (ex UTTHCO) at Soc Trang prior to a POW camp raid around Rach Gia in 1965. Note the door gunner is wearing a gas mask and the unusual XM3 system. This was a XM3 modified to dispense grenades; they could load 8 smoke, WP or CS grenades per tube. I remember reading about this grenade dispensing XM3 somewhere and it was initialy designed for laying smoke screens, but this is the only photo of it I've ever seen. Obviously the system is loaded with CS grenades in this photo. Does anybody have any additional info on this unusual system?
This is a Marine UH-1E TV29 of the HML-167 at Marble mountain in late 1970 armed with CBU-55 FAE cluster bombs. As far as I know only the Marines used this awesome weapon on helicopters operationaly (navy HA(L)-3 used a couple of UH-1L/HH-1K Hueys that had the capacity to carry CBU-55s, but for reasons unknown to me never used this weapons operationaly. They even installed specialized bomb sights in the chin bubbles, but...). CBU-55 was a 500-pound weapon containing three BLU-73 FAE submunitions and was used primarily against bunker and tunnel complexes. I believe there are a couple more images of CBU-55 armed UH-1Es on the ''popasmoke'' website.
I saw that You guys were discussing the mk115 mod 0 Helicopter Trap Weapon some time ago. Well, in case somebody decides to build a HTW armed UH-1E I dug a couple of drawings of the mk115 mod 0 with dimensions. mk115 was a modified mk63 60-pound 5-inch Zuni warhead. What they did is, they took the thin outer casing of the warhead, replaced the fragmentation cube liner with two layers of rectangular steel rods that were welded at alternate ends and attached the parachute and suspension lugs.
Marko