with a 1,500-round magazine directly feeding delinked ammunition into the weapon. This means the Minigun fitted to the pod does not require the standard MAU-56/A delinking feeder unit. A number of variants of this pod exist. Initially on fixed-wing gunships such as the Douglas AC-47 Spooky and Fairchild AC-119, the side-firing armament was fitted by combining SUU-11/A aircraft pods, often with their aerodynamic front fairings removed, with a locally fabricated mount. These pods were essentially unmodified, required no external power, and were linked to the aircraft's fire controls. The need for those pods for other missions led to the development and fielding of a purpose-built "Minigun module" for gunship use, designated the MXU-470/A. These units first arrived in January 1967 with features such as an improved 2,000-round drum and electric feeder allowing simplified reloading in flight. The initial units were unreliable and were withdrawn almost immediately. By the end of the year, the difficulties had been worked out and the units were again being fitted to AC-47s, AC-119s, and AC-130s, with a specific ammunition load that replaced every fifth 'ball' round with a tracer round to enable better accuracy by the gunners, and also earning these airborne gunships the nickname 'Puff the Magic Dragon' by the Viet Cong due to their apparent ability of spitting fire and making everything they hit disappear or die. The AC-47 had three side mounted MXU-470/As (four were mounted on its replacement, the AC-119) and when all firing at once created a devastating image in the eyes of the enemy. The first AC-130A Gunship IIs did away with the MXU-470/A mounts and instead used GAU-2/As, and not only had four 7.62mm GAU-2/A minigun mounts, but added four 20mm M61 Vulcan 6-barrel rotary cannons; this configuration was upgraded two years later in 1969 by removing two each of the GAU-2/As and M61s and adding two 40mm (1.58 in) L/60 Bofors cannons in the aptly named AC-130A 'Surprise Package'. This configuration lasted two more years until, in late 1971, the AC-130E Pave Aegis arrived, which did away with the miniguns altogether and one of the 40mm Bofors and instead went to the configuration of two 20mm M61 Vulcan, one 40mm L/60 Bofors and one 105 mm (4.13 in) M102 howitzer, a configuration that lasted until the early 2000s when the AC-130Hs (the AC-130Es had had an avionics upgrade and redesignated to H models) underwent a refit and