Why the M134 Minigun Terrified the Viet Cong

It didn't fire bullets the way anything else on the battlefield fired bullets.

The M134 Minigun was a six-barreled, electrically driven rotary weapon capable of putting out six thousand rounds per minute. Not six thousand rounds in a fight. Six thousand rounds in sixty seconds. At that rate, the sound it produced wasn't a series of shots. It was a single continuous roar, like fabric tearing at a frequency that soldiers on the receiving end described as unlike anything else in the war.

The Viet Cong had survived artillery. They had survived airstrikes. They had built tunnel networks specifically designed to outlast American firepower. Nothing in their experience had prepared them for what happened when a Huey gunship opened up with a minigun at low altitude.

This video covers the full story of the M134 in Vietnam. How it was developed, how it was mounted and deployed, the engagements where it changed the outcome, and why the sound of it spinning up became one of the most feared signals in the entire war.

Видео Why the M134 Minigun Terrified the Viet Cong канала Frontline Stories