Editorial Note: During , From Balloons to Drones is running a series of articles looking at various aspects of the air war over Vietnam from the French-Indochina War through to the end of the Vietnam War.
If you would like to contribute to the series, then please email our editor, Dr Ross Mahoney, at airpowerstudies gmail. The official call for papers is here. In Vietnam, the US Army utilised helicopters according to its thinking about conventional warfare during the previous decade. The US Army appropriated helicopters to fight the war it wanted in Vietnam, one of attrition.
In comparison, Marines employed rotary craft to fight the war they got. He found this unacceptable. As such, this article explores foundational thinking surrounding the decision to weaponise helicopters in both the US Army and the USMC.
Each initially conceptualised weaponising helicopters to wage a conventional war, whether as weapons platforms to combat tanks or to facilitate amphibious landings. This resulted in experimentation in ways to arm helicopters to deliver indiscriminate firepower. While the US Army remained on this path, the USMC deviated from it, based on their observations of the French effort to quell insurgents in Algeria and their own early experience in Vietnam.
The USMC then decided to weaponise helicopters in Vietnam because they perceived them better able to deliver discriminate firepower than fixed-wing craft. This view found widespread acceptance. In Korea, this resulted in a deadlock. This proved prescient. There exists good cause, however, to explore the centrality of helicopters critically in the execution of counterinsurgency operations.
