The Air Cavalry was formed on 16 June 1965, when the U.S. Army
received Department of Defense authorization to organize the First Cavalry
Division (Airmobile). The First Cavalry was designed to increase troop mobility
and included more than four times the number of aircraft in a standard army
division. Although the intensifying war in Vietnam provided the immediate
impetus, the army had been contemplating such a division for several years. Army
planners believed the military could have fought more effectively during the
Korean War if American technology had been better exploited to provide superior
mobility. Moreover, lack of mobility had been fatal to the French at
Dien Bien Phu in 1954. In Vietnam the landscape and climate impeded American
ground mobility, yet the army needed to move swiftly to offset the enemy's
initiative and familiarity with the country.
The air mobility concept involved airborne
maneuvers during an engagement, long-distance moves, airborne logistical and
medical support, flexible and informed command through aerial command posts, and
superior
firepower. In a theater such as Vietnam, where American control of the air
afforded protection from enemy fighter aircraft, helicopter and propeller-driven
gunships could offer ground troops the sustained
gunnery support that jet-powered airplanes could not. Transports bearing
side-firing weapons could circle a ground target while maintaining extended fire
at a constant altitude and range. By The spring of 1966 the C-47, the military
version of the Douglas DC-3 transport, was armed with three 7.62 mm miniguns,
electrically powered versions of the
Gatling gun, each capable of firing six thousand rounds per minute. The
appearance of its tracers earned this
gunship the
moniker "Puff the Magic Dragon." Other types of gunships were progressively
more heavily armed.
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The usual gunship, however, was a helicopter. During the American ground
buildup in Vietnam, the standard helicopter gunship was a heavily armed
version of the UH-1B Huey carrying fourteen rockets and door-mounted M60, 7.62
mm machine guns. Later, the AH-1G Cobra helicopter gunship appeared, carrying
seventy-six air-to-ground rockets, a 7.62 mm minigun, and a 40 mm
grenade launcher capable of firing four hundred rounds a minute. With this
weaponry the Cobra gunship in the early 1970s figured heavily in army tests of
the First Cavalry Division. Later reorganized, the unit added tank battalions to
challenge Soviet armored superiority in Europe.
The airmobile concept proved to be one of the more successful American
military innovations of the Vietnam War. In late 1965 the First Cavalry Division
entered the Ia Drang Valley in a campaign to destroy North Vietnamese troops in
the Central Highlands, who threatened to cut South Vietnam in two. In the battle
of Plei Me, units of the division,
uplifted to new positions at least forty times, helped drive Vietnamese
soldiers into Cambodia. Thereafter, the army increasingly sought enough
helicopters to give all infantry units air mobility whenever operations made it
desirable. The success of American airpower in Vietnam opened a new era in the
history of land warfare, as evidenced in U.S. tactics in subsequent conflicts,
such as the Persian Gulf War of 1991 and the
Kosovo Bombing in 1999.
Bibliography
Johnson, Lawrence W., III. Winged Sabers. Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole
Books, 1990.
Krohn, Charles A. The Lost Battalion. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1993.
Moore, Harold G., and Joseph L. Galloway. We Were Soldiers Once—and Young.
New York: Random House, 1992.
Young, Marilyn B. The Vietnam Wars 1945–1990. New York: Harper
Collins, 1991.
THE AIR CAV IN IRAQ - My troop video from our OIF tour!
As an air cavalry soldier, this will be one of my personal favorite pages.
I have gathered lots of information and pictures for the air cavalry section,
soon to be completed!
