All the Bird Dogs I ever saw in SVN, I always thought were merely lightly armed, because they were specifically for observation and FAC.
This bloke (my photo below) used to patrol Route 2, through Phuoc Tuy Province, every morning on sunrise, trying to surprise VC and NVA mining the road.
Here he is, as I caught him one morning, right at our NDB (later FSB), which was set up right on a bend in Route 2, very close to the Long Khanh border.
There was a bend in Route 2 right at our NDP, and I reckoned his wingtip was only few metres from the road, as he banked for the bend, and whizzed past at - I don't know, maybe 60 or 70 kts?
It was a surprise technique doomed to failure - as the VC and NVA soon woke up, and they waited until 1600HRS one afternoon, to sprint out of the rubber plantation, and bury a 10lb satchel charge in the fresh roadbase - which promptly nailed one of our dump trucks that was dumping roadbase for widening.
The truck driver hit the satchel charge with the passenger side front wheel, and the blast destroyed the truck. The driver survived.
It must have been my lucky week, I rode in the passenger seat of that truck for 3 weeks, and I'd only stopped riding in it, a few days before it was mined.
Looking closely at my pic of the Bird Dog, I think I can see an M60 mounted under the port wing. I never saw or heard it used.
https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/P05242.014
https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/P05242.015
