Roden 310 1/144 Douglas AC-47D Spooky Gunship

The rapid development of jet aircraft in the immediate post-war years seemed to promise the end of the use of piston-engined aircraft in combat. However, the local conflicts of the first decades of the second half of the 20th Century proved that it was too early to send the veterans into retirement.

The war in Vietnam presented a number of unpleasant surprises to the US military command, one of which was the so-called "Ho Chi Minh Trail" - an extensive network of trails and small roads in southern Vietnam and Laos, through which there was a continuous supply of weapons for the Army of the National Liberation Front. Attempting to attack it from the air using jet aircraft became a fiasco - the small groups of rebels quickly disappeared, long before the approaching aircraft, and therefore the effectiveness of such missions for the US Air Force was near zero. Perhaps the only positive factor was the weakness of the rebel defense, or indeed the complete lack of it.

Initially the old A-26 Invader attack aircraft was used to fight the guerrillas, immediately converted to the B-26K standard. The plane carried effective weapons, but its flight endurance was very limited, even with the use of external fuel tanks. So the idea was born, to equip transport aircraft with weapons to attack ground targets from the air. Transports could stay up in the air for a long time, and their big cargo compartments allowed for the installation of ample armament.

Specification

• Dimensions: 250x160x34 mm (9.8x6.3x1.3 inch)

Contents

• Plastic sprue, Decalsheet (waterslide)