AH-1F
Contents
| This page is about the American attack helicopter AH-1F. For other uses, see AH-1 (Family). |
Description
The AH-1F is a rank VI American attack helicopter
with a battle rating of 9.7 (AB/RB/SB). This helicopter was introduced in Update 1.81 "The Valkyries".
General info
Flight Performance
Describe how the aircraft behaves in the air. Maximum speed, manoeuvrability, speed and allowable loads - these are the most important characteristics of the vehicle.
| Characteristics | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Stock | |||
| Max Speed (km/h at ?,000 m) |
Max altitude (meters) | ||
| AB | RB | ||
| ? | ? | 3475 | |
| Upgraded | |||
| Max Speed (km/h at ?,000 m) |
Max altitude (meters) | ||
| AB | RB | ||
| ? | ? | 3475 | |
Survivability and armour
Examine the survivability of the helicopter. Note how vulnerable the structure is and how secure the pilot is, how many engines the vehicle has. Describe the armour, if there is any, also mention the vulnerability of other critical aircraft systems.
Armaments
Offensive armament
The AH-1F is armed with:
- 1 x 20 mm M197 cannon (750 rpg = 750 total)
Suspended armament
The AH-1F offers a wide range of choice for secondary armament, up to 12 choices:
- No suspended armament
- 28 x FFAR Mighty Mouse rockets
- 76 x FFAR Mighty Mouse rockets
- 2 x 7.62 mm M134 Minigun machine gun
- 2 x 7.62 mm M134 Minigun machine gun & 14 x FFAR Mighty Mouse rockets
- 2 x 7.62 mm M134 Minigun machine gun & 38 x FFAR Mighty Mouse rockets
- 4 x BGM-71 TOW missiles
- 4 x BGM-71 TOW missiles & 2 x 7.62 mm M134 Minigun machine gun
- 4 x BGM-71 TOW missiles & 38 x FFAR Mighty Mouse rockets
- 8 x BGM-71 TOW missiles
- 8 x BGM-71 TOW missiles & 38 x FFAR Mighty Mouse rockets
- 8 x BGM-71 TOW missiles & 2 x 7.62 mm M134 Minigun machine gun
Usage in battles
When playing the AH-1F, select the helipad, which is in the ideal tactical location for your playstyle. Climb to around 1500 Meters, find a target, then descend on to them. It is critically important that you engage them from the rear of side. This way, it reduces their awareness of you, since they will be looking forward, this will help you by making the adversary become disoriented when attacked. This will give you a stealthy advantage, like a ninja. Advancing onto the target, come in as fast as possible, then slow down quickly, by rising the noise of the helicopter up. When slowed down, Engage the sight stabilizer and fire the tow missile and guide it onto the target.
If the target starts moving, rolling or starts trying to evade, keep the missile on the target and adjust to what your adversary is doing. Until you see an explosion, the target going down in flames whilst the reward and notification are showing up. If out of the range, the missile will self-detonate and could give your position away, if your adversary looks around.
TEXT/NOTICE BOX Remember you only have around one and a half miles before the missiles will denote by them self, you can only select to carry either 4 or 8 BG-71 Tow missiles.
How to overcome this, with enough time spent playing with the BG-71 missiles, you will be able to determine when you are within range based on your experience. This also applies to any other type of missile in the game too.
When engaging in Close quarters combat with other helicopters, the biggest threats are air to air missiles. Since the AH-1F only offers limited protection against them with countermeasures with it's IRCM module. This means, you need to stay alert, active & on the look out for fast moving dots. If you see a small fast dot heading towards you, make very sharp abrupt turns, change height at the same time while turning and rolling.
Ident + TIP You may even be able to shoot the missile down with the installed 20mm triple rotary M197 cannon.
When engaging other helicopters, the triple barrel rotary cannon makes short work of any adversary. Make sure to load it with the air target belt, aim for critical elements of the rival helicopters such as cockpit, engine and fuel tanks. Now if you have equipped your helicopter with the additional 2x M134 miniguns 7.62mm machine guns, Bring your target in front of you and open fire. They will obliterate the target and send it smoking to the ground, they have up to 3000 rounds in total. That’s 1500 Rounds per mini gun, in addition to the 750 cannon rounds for the M197, that is potentially up to 3750 rounds!
Ground forces
Playing the AH-1F in ground forces, it is recommended to load up the 8x BG-71 Tow missiles & 38x FFAR Might mouse missiles. The BG-71 will give you the penetration at range in order to terminate tankers and with safety from the Anti-Aircraft Missile equipped anti-air vehicles. It is a wise tactic that Anti-Aircraft Missile equipped anti-air vehicles to be terminated first. Then once terminated, move into the battlefield and dominate the tanks with the 38x FFAR Might mouse missiles, which can cause a lot of damage and could potentially terminate up to 38 tanks with well-placed shots.
The ideal tactic is to utilise the helicopter and the terrain. Such as maps which have forests and lots of tree lines, stay low over the trees and select your targets based on the threat to yourself first, then the impact to the team.
For example, if you have seen no enemy SPAA vehicles or other helicopters, climb in height, hover, then fire one or two missiles. Then quickly break off the hover and move to another part of the map, this way it allows you to stay undetected, remain stealthy and become a major threat to the enemy team.
Handling radar and Surface to Air missiles, when an enemy missile equipped SPAA is achieving a lock on, you will be notified with red arrows on the screen saying radar. To break the lock start rolling, gaining speed and the arrows will go away. If you are not successful, keep a close watch around the helicopter. At this you will see white smoke coming from the ground, make very sharp abrupt turns. Change height at the same time while turning and rolling to avoid the missile.
TEXT/Notification BOX Reminder Keep a close watch out for airplanes and other attack helicopters!
Modules
| Tier | Flight performance | Survivability | Weaponry | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| I | Compressor | Flack jacket | Offensive 20 mm belts | |||
| II | Helicopter frame | New 20 mm cannons | M261 | IRCM | ||
| III | Engine | Replacing helicopter blades | Gun pod XM-18 | TOW | ||
| IV | Cover | New 7 mm MGs | TOW 4 | |||
Pros and cons
Pros:
- 20mm gun performs better against heavy armor than the 7.62mm minigun.
- Great manoeuvrability
- Very agile, with secondary load outs installed
- Great acceleration, very quick
- Good secondary weapon load out
Cons:
- No flairs
- No sidewinder Air to Air missiles
History
Describe the history of the creation and combat usage of the helicopter in more detail than in the introduction. If the historical reference turns out to be too big, take it to a separate article, taking a link to an article about the vehicle and adding a block "/ History" (example: https://wiki.warthunder.com/(Vehicle-name)/History) and add a link to it here using the main template. Be sure to reference text and sources by using <ref>, as well as adding them at the end of the article.
Media
An excellent addition to the article will be video guides, as well as screenshots from the game and photos.
See also
Links to the articles on the War Thunder Wiki that you think will be useful for the reader, for example:
- reference to the series of the aircraft;
- links to approximate analogues of other nations and research trees.
External links
| USA helicopters | |
|---|---|
| Attack | |
| Black Hawk | MH-60L DAP |
| Choctaw | H-34 |
| Cobra | AH-1F · AH-1G · AH-1Z |
| SuperCobra | AH-1W |
| Kiowa | OH-58D |
| Little Bird | AH-6M |
| Apache | YAH-64 · AH-64A · ▃AH-64A Peten · AH-64A (GR) · AH-64D |
| Utility | |
| Huey | UH-1B · UH-1C · UH-1C XM-30 |
