Thread: History pictures .: BLU-82 « Daisy Cutter »dropped by Helicopters in the Vietnam war

At the end of the Second World War the US-Army had some heavy bombs in the 10.000-lb-class and higher which were dropped by B-36 Peacemaker.
As the Vietnam war intensified, the AF Systems Command wanted to use a heavy, air-dropped bomb to clear out a landing zone in the jungle for helicopters.

Due to the strategic bombers B-52 Stratofortress of then SAC weren´t designed to carry these big bombs, the US-army had used the Sikorsky CH-54 Tarhe Skytran in the first evaluating phase of these heavy bombs BLU-82/B, well-known under the name
« Daisy Cutter».
In the following pictures we can see a CH-54 Tarhe of US-army´s 1st Cavalry division carrying a BLU-82/B in a bombing mission over the Ho Chi Minh trail.













But finally the choice settled on the Hercules C-130 due to its speed and range over the helicopter CH-54.