Banned in an Asian country owing to claims that it involved the ingestion of illicit substances, this otherwise beloved song incorporated lyrics from a poem written by a student at an Ivy League university and was set to music by that student's classmate. Later, the title of the piece became a U.S. slang term for certain types of military hardware. What is it, and who made it famous?

zbeckabee

Puff The Magic Dragon Peter Yarrow / Leonard Lipton "Lipton wrote his poem while he and Yarrow were students at Cornell." Banned in Singapore and Hong Kong because they thought it contained drug references. http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=1276 Jan 13 07, 6:29 PM

author

Could you tell me what kind of ´military hardware´this is? Jan 13 07, 6:38 PM

lanfranco

Very nice, zbeck, and "Songfacts" is quite a useful reference. Bear it in mind in the future if Gmack asks one of his fiendish questions. A silver dragon scale for you! author, The answer is Vietnam-era gunships equipped with Gatlings: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puff,_the_Magic_Dragon Jan 13 07, 6:42 PM

ryiannah_shrum

The plane is an AC-130 "Spooky" or "Puff the Magic Dragon" gunship, first really used in the Vietnam War but upgraded variants have been used as recently as a week ago in Somalia. This is essentially a conversion of the C-130 transport plane, except that instead of cargo space, the plane's fuselage is filled with various types of ordnance. The AC-130A, the original "Puff the Magic Dragon" simply had two 7.62mm miniguns (what Arnold used against the cops in Terminator 2), two 20mm cannons, plus two 40mm bofors anti-aircraft gun(obviously not anti-aircraft in this sense). These gunships were used to circle around a target area pummeling it with rounds and shredding anything that is foolish enough to stay in the area. A rather unrealistic but iconic example of this can be seen in the John Wayne movie, "The Green Berets". The most recent versions, the AC-130H and U "Spectre Gunship" removed the smaller miniguns. They have only 1 40mm bofors gun plus the twin 20mm miniguns. Taking us the extra space is a massive 105mm howitzer (an artillery gun). You can see the Spectre at work firsthand by using the US generals Command & Conquer: Generals. Jan 16 07, 10:45 AM