George aka;"Puddin" asked the question down the list so to help everyone without offended anyone here is what I saw during my tour. The gunship of choice was the UH-1C with the 540 rotor head equiped with rockets and mini-guns. Close support down in the trees with the slicks. The first Cobras we saw came in Aug. or Sept 1968. Because they no longer had the side crew to cover the ship these pilots were shown different methods in the States to provide cover for us. The first was to fly high over the area and at the first sign of trouble to come barreling in and fire rockets in support of the slicks. Good idea, one problem. The motors of the rockets would stop if laurched from to high an altitude. The result because of the lack of speed on impact, the rockets failed to exploded. Not a good thing to find out while your ship is being shot to hell by an SKS-50 or any other weapon which our little brothers from the North had decided to bring with them.
After several months
new methods were developed and things got better. You have to realize that even during the same time frame in Vietnam different methods had to be used depending on where you were. To compare something in 1965 to what happened in 1968 or 1970 is nuts. The hunter, killer teams worked great. The methods for close support of ground troops improved. I know from experience I would rather have a pair of Charile model with me during an extraction then any other type ship. The thing I never understood was that to improve the cover we enjoyed from a pair of UH-1Cs we would end up with three Cobras. Of course who am I to question this. I was just a dumb crew chief hiding behind my chicken-plate.
If I upset someone with what I said I am sorry. Anybody who walked on that side of the world I respect. I could care less if they wore silver wings or a CIB or worked as a cook or truck driver. Everyone served their own time in that hell. Besides look at all the new hits we took on the site. At least we weren't dead in the water from the lack of something to talk about. Later.