Puff the Magic Dragon

[James A. Landau]

Not the song.  The warplane.

When the AC130 gunships went into action in Afghanistan earlier this week, I
saw a couple of news reports that referred to them as "Special Forces planes".

I know it's difficult at this time to get reliable news out of Afghanistan,
but could the media at least get the jargon straight?

The AC130 and other models of gunships should not be described as "special
forces".  First, they belong to the US Air Force and the Special Forces
("Green Berets") are part of the US Army.  Second, while they have been used
to support Green Berets and other guerilla-type units, they have also been
used in conventional war situations.

M-W 10th Collegiate has "gunship:  a helicopter or cargo aircraft armed with
rockets and machine guns" with a date of 1966.  Why a cargo aircraft?
Because it takes a good-sized plane with powerful engines to overcome the
recoil of those machine guns.

Someone observing an attack by a gunship circa 1966 gave the following
description of a gunship attack: "it went 'puff' like a magic dragon.."  The
name "Puff the Magic Dragon" (after a Peter Paul and Mary song that had been
a Top 40 hit in the early 1960's) stuck.  Sometimes the plane was referred to
a little less exotically as a "dragon ship" (a reference to Viking ships?).
I suppose "gunship" was invented by someone who wanted a more adult name for
this type of plane.

OED2 has no entry for "gunship" or for "magic dragon".

A military history note: gunships were used in World War II, starting with
the Battle of the Bismark Sea.  These were not cargo planes but modified B-25
bombers, referred to as "skip bombers" because of their unique method of
dropping bombs.

I wonder about a possible relationship between "gunship" and the earlier
naval term "gunboat."

If one were determined to be cute, one could refer to the present US actions
in Afghanistan as "gunship diplomacy."

Airplanes are rarely referred to as "ships".  There is the word "airship" but
it has the very specific meaning of "an engine-driven lighter-than-air
aircraft that can be steered" (quoted from Federal Aviation Regulations
section 1.1).

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Back to my original complaint.  What is happening is that the end of the
portion of the fighting in Indochina referred to as the "Vietnam War" ended
26 years ago.  A war correspondent who is 30 years old in 2001 was not yet
reading in 1975.  While his/her political opinions on Vietnam may or may not
be politically correct, s/he has no first-hand experience with news of the
Vietnam War and hence lacks feeling for the jargon of those days.  As time
goes on more and more writing about the Vietnam War will be done by people
who may understand the politics of those days but who don't understand the
vocabulary.

And maybe not understand the politics either.  Earlier this week there was a
news article that referred to the Vietnam War as "the attempt by the United
States to reunite the two halves of Vietnam."  This report can only be
described as "non-politically incorrect."

A non-military comparison---it won't be too long before we'll be suffering
through reporting about Nixon and Watergate by reporters who don't know what
an "18 1/2 minute gap" or an "unindicted co-conspirator" is.

       - Jim Landau