Timberrrrr. Ouch
I originally posted this on Rotorheads in a thread on the Apache.
It caught a lot of flack. let's see what happens here.
I was involved in the initial design of the Apache.
The US Army lied to the pilots of the Apache relative to its’ invulnerability to the ZSU 23-4 weapons system. This was the primary weapon that would be used against the Apache if it were to attack a group of Warsaw Pact tanks.
This weapon was also being supplied to all of the governments that were in league with the Warsaw Pact. The U S Army commissioned a study by a so-called ”Think Tank” to study the effectiveness of the ZSU 23-4 against the Apache. It was their considered opinion that the ZSU 23-4 was inaccurate, It had a low degree of reliability and that if the ZSU 23 did hit the Apache with one round, the pilot would have sufficient time to evade any further hits by dropping below the tree line. The uninitiated reader should understand that the ZSU 23-4 has a rate of fire of 1200 rounds per minute and that if one bullet hit its’ mark, there would be forty or fifty rounds right behind the first round. When I was on contract with Agusta helicopters I took a two-week holiday in Yugoslavia. While there, I watched a T V program, which was describing the weaponry of the Warsaw Pact. One of the weapons demonstrated was the ZSU 23-4. In the demonstration the weapon was pointed on a line parallel to a stand of trees. A helicopter popped up from behind the trees and in an instant the weapon acquired the helicopter and was pointed directly at it. The helicopter then dropped below the treetops and at that time the gun was turned off. The helicopter was allowed to fly away and the gun was turned on. It immediately started to fire and it swept an arc approximately 30 to 45 degrees on either side of center. The trees started to explode. It looked like there were hundreds of chain saw wielding loggers in the tree stand felling trees as fast as they could. It appeared to the writer that if a hail of 23mm bullets didn’t hit the helicopter, a falling tree would destroy it.