The only place I’ve ever heard of one happening is in videogames like Battlefield 3 or TV shows and movies (largely terrible ones).
But has one ever happened IRL?
Could one even happen IRL? I suppose if a Blackhawk or Little Bird found itself in the same airspace as an enemy Hind or Havoc the door gunners could blast away at each other or they could try to get lucky with their rockets and chain guns. But my general impression is that they really aren’t designed for that sort of thing.
This war also saw the only confirmed air-to-air helicopter battles in history of warfare with the Iraqi Mi-25s flying against Iranian AH-1 SuperCobra on numerous occasions. The first instance of these helicopter “dogfights” happened when on the starting day of the war (22 September 1980), two Iranian SuperCobras crept up on two Mi-25s and hit them with TOW wire-guided antitank missiles. One Mi-25 went down immediately, the other was badly damaged and crashed before reaching base. The Iranians pulled off a repeat performance on 24 April 1981, destroying two Mi-25s without incurring losses to themselves. According to some unclassified documents, Iranian pilots achieved a 10 to 1 kill ratio over the Iraqi helicopter pilots during these engagements and even engaged Iraqi fixed wing aircraft.
Attack helicopters often carry air-air missiles (the Apache carries Stinger missiles) which can be used to attack other helicopters or attacking aircraft. It isn’t a primary role, though.
You might have a chance with a Hellfire, but not with rocket pods. You might also be able to vector the minigun using tracers, but you will use your ammo pretty quick.
It was fun when playing LHX and Longbow, though.
**chacoguy **beat me to the Iran-Iraq war report, so I will mention one engagement of cat and mouse that could qualify as an encounter, although no bullets or missiles were fired, the result was no less deadly:
And as per the post from chacoguy - to do it with a TOW is pretty cool (I’m assuming the gunner drives the TOW to target).
Correct, the TOW is a wire-guided missile.
The acronym stands for Tube-launced, optically tracked, wire-guided missile.
I guess you guys never saw the documentary series Airwolf back in the 80s? 
LOL - I can’t belive I found another LHX player!
Here is the article that image goes to. Holy smoke, I’ve never heard of this but the Vietnamese attacked a clandestine US base in Laos with 4 biplanes and some dude shot them all down with an AK-47 from an Air America Huey.
If I went back to when I was 15 and wrote the coolest action movie I could possibly think of, it still wouldn’t be that badass.
ETA:
A little more info here. Apparently there were 4 biplanes total and they shot down 2, the other two staying out of the way. The wiki page was a little confusing on that.
That is pretty badass.
Marginal, but I used to have a news clipping on my board of a Gulf War I A-10 pilot posing with one arm draped over his plane’s nose cannon. He had just acquired the first air-to-air kill by an A-10 when his missiles wouldn’t lock onto an Iraqi helicopter, so he just roared up and let his tank-killer shred the thing. A-10s are built for a lot of things, but dogfights ain’t one of 'em.
I know what a TOW missile is, it is the specifics of how the crew in a two-seat attack helicopter divide up the combat tasks that I am unsure about (let alone how a single-seater manages to fly and handle target acquisition/guidance at the same time).
An F-15 took out an Iraqi helicopter in flight with a bomb during the Gulf War too. Both are hard kills but helicopters are fairly easy game for jets. Now if a helicopter took out an F15 or A-10, that would be pretty amazing.
That may be the only air-to-air kill ever recorded by an F-15E. That’s a two-seat, ground attack variant semi-affectionately called the “Mud Hen”. I filmed a lot of test missions chasing that aircraft years ago.
Yeah, it would have been badass if the US beat the Vietnamese in the war.
:Hands Vaevictis some Charmin: :rolleyes:
As Otto said in A Fish Called Wanda: “Shut up. We didn’t lose Vietnam. It was a tie!”
I liked the movie one with David Janson that took place in a hanger.
