B Sousa, you are right, the XM-23 mounts were used in a configuration we dubbed the "Mod 21". As for the miniguns:
Rocket pods were not bad but Mini-guns. I still get a nosebleed from the noise of the guns behind my ears.
Wash your mouth out sir. That noise is WHY we fly gunships!! Soft Kocks can always put the little front door window up, but then you can hear the loadmaster/doorgunner laughing at your fall of shot.
Seriously though, the little sliding window makes a hell of a difference to the beautiful sound of the minis, but I would imagine that the original configuration you yanks had with the minis mounted at the rear on the rocket pods would cause far more noise. In ours, the muzzles are almost in front of our ears, so the noise is likely to be considerably less.
And how about those Rocket Wires? When firing rockets, the loadmaster/gunner would often complain of being burnt (but few cared!
), and the windscreen would be burn marked. The common theory was that the red hot rockets wires would fly into the cabin and settle onto the guys in the back, but after some slow motion film of extensive test firing done at ARDU in 1997/8 showed that in fact it was burning clumps of rocket propellant!!
Noise and hot rocket propellant. Thats why we flew them.
But I am always grateful that I only flew them on a one way range!
