https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R_483zeVF8

Jim Kurtz, my old operations officer sent me this. That helicopter probably had CW-2 Graham's (Captain America) name under the door. He had his name on a shark's tooth painted one. He also wore an "Easy Rider" painted SPH-4 helmet. We actually didn't have personally assigned helicopters in the Army. I expect I flew that helicopter in 1970.

The evidence is the yellow Cav patch on the tail, the yellow crossed sabers on the transmission cowling, and the yellow triangle under the pilots. The 1st Cav didn't subdue that stuff. We wanted Charlie to know he was up against the best. Alpha (Apache) Troop had the yellow triangle, Bravo Troop the yellow square, Charlie (Cavalier) Troop the yellow circle, Delta Troop was ground cav, and by Echo (Lobo) Troop and Foxtrot (Funny) Troop, the Cav had run out of geometric symbols.

Nice.....I sent Dad a screen shot of that commercial.

don't know if you've seen this, but I dug this up in a search a while back.

http://www.1stavnbde.com/Artcles/7_1art1.html

Bill

Good article Bill.

After the Air Cav concept was proven in Vietnam, every Division in Vietnam got an Air Cav unit. 1/9th ran hunter-killer like 1/7th with the two bubble Bell 47 scouts until we got the OH6-A (loach) and AH1-G Cobra. Then the hunter-killer team became the Pink Team with a loach scout from the White Platoon and a cobra gunship from the Red Platoon. When the Blues, infantrymen of the Blue Platoon, were inserted by the lift Hueys, it became a Purple Team. The C&C Huey might not be up unless more than one team was out. Cpt., later Lt. Gen, Paul Funk flew his own loach quite a bit as C&C, but usually it was the operations officer in a Huey.

Jim Kurtz sent me a still as well, of the cobra in the ad, but I'm not a good enough computer user to forward that.

Jim

I'm just guessing here as I reviewed it, but didn't you guys use rocket pods then? It strikes me that the footage may be an RC helicopter or CGI created rather than being a real AH-1 Cobra.

Appears the front canopy/windscreen frame is wrong, and the teeth around the gun turret is uncommon?

Just a thought.

pb

Edit : Here are some screenshots. Found one flying cobra that may have been used as the base image - Has the proper insignia, teeth, and "venom". But the canopy frame still shows differently and the crossed sabers look badly displayed.

pb,

You're right about the windscreen. I took another look at the still picture Jim Kurtz sent with the video. It is the flat screen of later than G models and not the bubble screen.

We had nineteen round rocket pods with seventeen pounders inboard and seven round rocket pods with nails (flechette rockets) outboard. The Cobra in the video has much larger rockets on the wing store without any rocket pods. Our rockets were 2.5 inch folding fin aerial rockets. Warheads were ten pound high explosive, seventeen pound high explosive, anti-tank heat, or flechette with many small nails that deployed at 1200 feet slant range from the Cobra. Our orbit around the loach was at 1200 feet AGL.

The sharks teeth were not always the same design but I flew one just like that. It is probably a model, as you mentioned, but my war story is better.

Jim

I missed the chain gun in the nose. Really great gun but I never got to fire it. We had the turret with chunker and mini-gun.

Contact,
Having been around the military the greater portion of my life, I enjoy the war stories better also! A little fact mixed with a little fiction make the stories that much better! "There I was............" LOL

Vet Pics 053.jpg jpg READY Ready (133 KB) ×
Snaggletooth.jpg

Here are a couple of Cobras from my unit in Vietnam. I hope the jpgs work.

contactflying wrote:Vet Pics 053.jpg jpg READY Ready (133 KB) ×
Snaggletooth.jpg

Here are a couple of Cobras from my unit in Vietnam. I hope the jpgs work.

No dice, Jim. If you want to email them to me I'll post them for you.

Wilco.

Here you go!