Early U.S. Army armed helos

[thatguy96]

Originally Posted by Suhiir

Not sure I'd call it "luxury".
The USMC efforts at developing armed helicopters were hampered mostly by equipment (early helos had a pretty poor lift capacity and range) and budget.
From what I've gathered one of the main hindrances to the US Armys efforts was the US Air Force

That's why I said relative heh. The USMC more or less had the same type of helicopters available to them as the Army did. The Army pressed ahead because of constant Air Force resistance to its attempts to develop a fixed wing close air support capability.

The draft TOEs for the 11th Air Assault Division in the early 1960s called for a very large number of armed OV-1 Mohawks to support operations. The deployment of the 23rd Special Warfare Aviation Company to Vietnam in the early 1960s was supposed to test this capability. In the end, all it did was cause the Air Force to create such a ruckus that the Army eventually had to cede one fixed wing component of its planned Air Assault/Airmobile Division (the CV-2) and reduce the roles of the other (OV-1).