随便
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作者：随便 在 罕见奇谈 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org
The AC-130 Spectre Gunship
Who needs turbochargers when you've got a howitzer and two Gatling Guns?
August 23, 2000
"What do the guys say when you ask them [why they do it]?
They say 'Because we get to blow shit up'".
---From G.I. Jane, courtesy Ed Snyder , AKA, "General Malcontent"
Maybe it's just the recent battles in traffic court, but I seem to find myself in a perpetual black groove lately. I find my mind occupied by a host of extremely violent fantasies, the bulk of which involve the City of Lambertville, New Jersey, hordes of Norman warriors, and a flight of black helicopters cruising above the skyline, napalming the landscape to bright cherry while "Ride of the Valkyries" blasts through a 10,000 Watt Apline stereo system. I love the smell of napalm in the morning.
Maybe, I'm taking things a little too seriously. I'll tell you about it in greater detail once I've calmed down a bit. In the meantime, I thought I'd put my destructive fantasies to good use and do up a little piece on one of my two favorite air-borne ground-pounders, a most ungentle airborne beast known to those who love her as the AC-130 Spectre Gunship. Anyway, it's about time we blew something up.
Indeed, one could even classify the Spectre as a sort of combat-oriented hot rod, thus loosely qualifying it for this page. Or one could simply marvel at its ingenuity. After all, AC-130 began life as the hulking but humble C-130 Hercules transport. When christenend in 1954, the C-130 was intended to serve Unioted States mobile forces as an all-weather transport and reconnaissance aircraft, not a prop-powered incarnation of The Book of Revelations. The original idea was to build a whale-bellied, fixed wing cargo plane that could safely lift off and land from roughed up, hastily constructed airstrips. The Hercules/Spectre just under 98 feet from nose to tail, with a wingspan of 132 feet, 7 inches. Propulsion consists of four big Allison turboprops chunking out 4,050-bhp. With a fully-loaded weight over 62 tons, every one of the stallions is needed. The Hercules/Spectre's Top speed peaks at a respectable 380-mph. Unfortunately, quarter-mile and 0-60 times are unavailable at this time.
The Spectre can cruise 2,500 miles of a single tank of fuel, which is good on many accounts. The Spectre doesn't exactly take kindly to regular unleaded, so a quick pit stop at the local Amoco is completely out of the question. Also, with that kind of range, the gunship's pilot has sufficient uninterrupted time to meditate on the vast complexity of the brand new cultures he's about to blow to flinders with his flying boom box's awesome weapons array. The original C-130 was designed to carry 45,000 pounds of cargo or 92 troops. The AC-130 does away with goods and men and instead carries four 7.62-mm mini-guns, two 20-mm cannons, one 40-mm cannon, and a 105-mm howitzer, a boomer with the girth of a typical World War II destroyer guns. A sophisticated communications and digital targeting array fill up a good chunk of the remaining free space.
Interestingly, all that red hot Yankee firepower mounts on the port flank of the AC-130. The Spectre, you see, is reasonable agile for a flying rail gun, but you wouldn't exactly call it liquid-quick. Form calls for the Spectre's pilot to circle Jaws-like round the killing field whilst his gunners rain doom on any manner of hapless ground targets. Everything up to and including light armor can generally be re-classified as "meat" once the AC-130 begins to boogie. especially useful in the Gulf War, where wide expanses of empty desert, a reluctant enemy, and a dearth of anti-aircraft support left ground forces particularly vulnerable. Not what you'd call a fair fight.
Then again, there is absolutely nothing fair about the Spectre's military applications. The gunship's recent service record includes stints in Grenada, Panama, The Gulf War, Bosnia, and Somalia. Due to its immense girth and sluggish top end (do generals use terms like "top end" when referring to warplanes?), the AC-130 is something of a sitting duck in even-up combat conditions. The Spectre's spectacular destructive capabilities are usually limited to mop-up work, ground support, and air-base defense. It's a finisher, not a starter. Spectre crews wait by the bullpen phone eating EZ-Cheez while USAF F-15, F-16, and F-117A wings take out every trace of a weapon that might be able to knock out a big plane. Once the coast is clear, the AC-130 crew gets the call. Now it's Miller Time.
If you're partial to metaphors, you might think of the Spectre as that big left hook that drops a fighter after the champ stuns him with a flurry of jabs. It's the Coup de Gras, the exclamation point at the end of the sentence, the closer with the wicked high heat. Those of you who are more literal-minded can just think of it as a big friggin' prop plane loaded down with a level of heavy ordinance usually found on warships, tanks, and in the fallout shelters of certain Midwestern survivalist groups.
Graham Strouse eagerly awaits the day a fully loaded Spectre pops up on eBay. Until then, Lambertville residents don't have too much to worry about. Honest.
作者：随便 在 罕见奇谈 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org |
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美军动用AC-130巨型攻击机攻打费卢杰游击队
