Volley gun
Two notable artillery-sized volley guns were developed in the mid-19th century, although neither was particularly successful in practice. Developed in the 1860s and based on an 1850s design by a captain Fafschamps, the French mitrailleuse is an example of a multi-barreled volley gun that could fire all of its barrels simultaneously or sequentially over a short period of time. Also developed in the 1860s, General Origen Vandenburgh of the New York State Militia designed a weapon that had eighty five parallel .50 caliber rifle barrels. After failing to sell the weapon to the United Kingdom, he reportedly sold a small number to the Confederate States of America, although there is no record that they were actually used. One Vandenburgh gun was located at Fort Fisher, North Carolina, and another reportedly at Salisbury, NC.
Gunship
The Douglas AC-47 Spooky was the first notable modern gunship. In 1964, during the Vietnam War, the popular Douglas C-47 Skytrain transport was successfully modified into a gunship by the United States Air Force with three side-firing Miniguns for circling attacks. At the time the aircraft was known as a "Dragonship", "Puff, the Magic Dragon" or "Spooky" (officially designated FC-47, later corrected to AC-47). Its three 7.62 mm miniguns could selectively fire either 50 or 100 rounds per second. Cruising in an overhead left-hand orbit at 120 knots air speed at an altitude of , the gunship could put a bullet or glowing red tracer (every fifth round) into every square yard of a football field-sized target in potentially less than 10 seconds. And, as long as its 45-flare and 24,000-round basic load of ammunition held out, it could do this intermittently while loitering over the target for hours.