And dozens of each, at that. Where the heck were they storing them?
(On looking it up, appears to be 12 sidewinders, 4 AIM-95 agiles, 2 shrikes and 2 bullpups. And sometimes at least one Paveway. Then in second season, it changed to 6 each of copperheads and hellfires, and 12 redeyes for the ADF pod, plus 4 falcons in the auxilliary bay.)
I seem to recall believing that they must have had specialized miniature versions of those missiles to make them work, but mainly I just suspended disbelief and enjoyed watching the show. The pilot movie and first season was pretty good; the character of Stringfellow Hawke was interesting since he wasn't a classic "good guy," he was jaded by the loss of his parents at an early age, the fact his brother St. John (pronounced "Sin Jin" in a bizarre "British-ism") was an MIA in Viet Nam. He had a snarky dark cynical element to his nature, portrayed best in a conversation with Gabriel in the pilot movie.
Later seasons softened this aspect. But, hey, I always loved that nasty-@ss supersonic helicopter.
As far as the ordnance.... it's basically a science fiction show in that regard anyway.
Interestingly there have been experiments with what are called "compound helicopters" (helicopters with more than one lift/propulsion system). They basically stalled out research wise since it makes for a complicate chopper. Extra jet engines have been tried and attained speeds of 300kts .... problem is the chopper is not big enough to carry enough fuel to give such a being anywhere near long enough "legs" to be really practical. Back when the AH-64 Apache was on the drawing boards there was a similar attack chopper called the "Cheyenne," which had a pusher-prop behind the anti-torque prop. Made the dang thing faster, but at the cost of complexity and maintainance and the U.S. Army nixed it, deciding the Apache was good enough and easier to keep running .... and I guess they were right.
