“The French have developed the military use of helicopters in Algeria in advance of nearly every other country, and in addition to their widespread use for troop transport and reconnaissance, have adapted them for bombing and gunnery.”

-William Green (British aviation historian); Air Forces of the World, Their History, Development and Present Strength; London, 1958

I have a copy of this book. What Green presumably did not know when he wrote these words at the height of the Algerian war was that the French had developed another innovation in the use of helicopters, the Death Flight.

The main instigator was apparently the infamous General Jacques Massu, with the day-to-day organization and the flights themselves being handled by Colonel Marcel Bigeard. This was an open secret in Algeria. When the victims sometimes washed up on shore, they were called “crevettes Bigeard” (“Bigeard’s shrimps”). Both men escaped prosecution, went on to honored careers and lived into the 21st century. Many of their men left the French forces, some forcibly so for involvement in the OAS terror campaign of 1962. Some went to Africa to found the mercenary system that exists to this day, while others emigrated to South America to work with the local militaries. It is no surprise then that the Argentine military developed the Death Flight into a formal tactic during the Dirty War, with a dedicated unit formed for the purpose, or that the Chileans under Pinochet emulated them.
Btw, there are a lot of stories about death flights in Vietnam, but I never witnessed one and never knew anyone who had. I am sure it happened more than once, but it would have been raining bodies if the practice was as common as alleged.