Army Aviation Without Vietnam

Delta Force

Banned
The Vietnam War involved the most intensive use of helicopters (and probably army aviation in general) of any conflict in history. Helicopters were used for medical evacuation, troop transport, close air attack, resupply, and a variety of other tasks. It's claimed that without their contributions, up to four times as many soldiers would have been required to fight and defend supply lines in Vietnam. However, the needs of the Vietnam War and interservice politics led to many ideas of the time failing to see further development for army aviation, such as S/VTOL transport and combat aircraft, fixed wing army aviation, etc.

Would the United States have used such a massive army aviation effort in any conflict of the time, or were Army reformers able to take advantage of the conflict to implement their plans on a larger scale? How would army aviation have developed without Vietnam?
 
But they had already begun to set up test units- ie literally the Test Division which became 1st Aircav and ended up being sent to Nam, more or less to prove the concept. None of the helicopters were designed for Vietnam at all (except maybe just maybe the UH1B gun/rocket bus and ACH47). What would be interesting to see is if the USA got Kestrels instead of (or even in addition to)say Mohawks? Keeps it Caribous and so on. While the US Army had its couple/several thousand aircraft the UK AAC had 16 (a whole 16!) Alouette II, 160 plus Westland built OH1s Sioux (such a modern design that...), plus over 100 Westland Scouts, oh and some Beaver liaison aircraft. The RAF had its 30 plus Bristol Belvederes and some 50 odd Wessex (again such a modern design-the S58). So there you can have a bigger challenge back at you, make UK helicopter operations more effective.
 
The Vietnam War involved the most intensive use of helicopters (and probably army aviation in general) of any conflict in history. Helicopters were used for medical evacuation, troop transport, close air attack, resupply, and a variety of other tasks. It's claimed that without their contributions, up to four times as many soldiers would have been required to fight and defend supply lines in Vietnam. However, the needs of the Vietnam War and interservice politics led to many ideas of the time failing to see further development for army aviation, such as S/VTOL transport and combat aircraft, fixed wing army aviation, etc.

Would the United States have used such a massive army aviation effort in any conflict of the time, or were Army reformers able to take advantage of the conflict to implement their plans on a larger scale? How would army aviation have developed without Vietnam?

Helicopters was a thing in the Army before Ike sent the first advisers.

No Vietnam?

Draft stays in place
 

Archibald

Banned
It seems to me that the first mass use of helicopters was in Algeria by the French.

I second that opinion. For the record the Algerian war started in November 1954. Choppers were used in numbers from 1956 to 1962 (Piaseki flying bananas, Sikorsky piston-engined helicopter of which I can't remember the name, and French types)
 
the US Army spent the late 1950s and early 1960s developing helicopter gunships, as they couldn't depend on the USAF for tactical air support (a problem in Korea), and saw helicopters with rockets as a solution to the Soviet tank threat. So likely we see the AH56 Cheyenne as a dedicated tank killer as the Army doesn't have to spend money replacing wrecked UH1 gunships and AH1 gunships during Vietnam.

As for vertical envelopment, the Army saw the mass parachute drop as a dead end even before the end of of World War II but still wanted the ability to place infantry behind enemy lines and the glider was even a worse option. The UH1 was developed to meet that goal. So my guess, not much change other than really big heavy gunship (similar to the Soviet Hind in a lot of ways).

The Army saw the helicopter as a return to cavalry and embraced it as such.

Although fiction, the WEB Griffin "Brotherhood of War" novels tell the tale in an excellent way, as of course does the nonfiction "We were Soldiers Once and Young"

this is a cool little site on the subject

http://www.armyaviationmuseum.org/
 

Archibald

Banned
The AH-56 Cheyenne is one of my favourite aviation whatif. That was one hell of a flying machine, cool looking, fast, armed to the teeth.

More generally, there were all kind of sexy attack helicopter prototypes flying at the same time - Sikorsky S-67 (the first and "true" Blackhawk); YAH-63 and YAH-64; AH-56: AH-1 variants including twin-engines. And of course the YA-9 and YA-10 attack planes.
 
But they had already begun to set up test units- ie literally the Test Division which became 1st Aircav and ended up being sent to Nam, more or less to prove the concept. None of the helicopters were designed for Vietnam at all (except maybe just maybe the UH1B gun/rocket bus and ACH47). What would be interesting to see is if the USA got Kestrels instead of (or even in addition to)say Mohawks? Keeps it Caribous and so on. While the US Army had its couple/several thousand aircraft the UK AAC had 16 (a whole 16!) Alouette II, 160 plus Westland built OH1s Sioux (such a modern design that...), plus over 100 Westland Scouts, oh and some Beaver liaison aircraft. The RAF had its 30 plus Bristol Belvederes and some 50 odd Wessex (again such a modern design-the S58). So there you can have a bigger challenge back at you, make UK helicopter operations more effective.

The Test Division was the 11 Air Assault Division (using the division patch of the WWII 11 Airborne Div) before it became 1st Cav. If you want the U.S. Army to get Kestrel/Harriers or to arm its OV-1 Mohawks you will have to rework the 'Key West Agreement' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_West_Agreement which did not allow the Army to operate armed fixed wing aircraft. (I believe no one thought at the time that armed rotary winged aircraft would be a realistic alternative for CAS. The U.S. Army had been very active in the 50s in trying to figure out how to integrate helicopters into the battlefield. There were small 'air assault' operations tried in Korea.
 
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