Watch: Department of Defense Showcases 'Angel of Death' War Machine With Firing Display

The Department of Defense tweeted out a video showcasing its AC-130 Gunship aircraft nicknamed the "Angel of Death" on Tuesday.

"Her-cu-les, Her-cu-les! You don't want to be on the receiving end of this gunship, aka the Angel of Death," the tweet read, invoking a line from the 1996 movie The Nutty Professor.

The fixed-wing aircraft's body is manufactured by Lockheed Martin and was transformed into a combat plane by Boeing. The original troop-transport version is called the Lockheed C-130 Hercules—hence the movie reference—and the AC-130 is a variant of that aircraft.

"The U.S. Air Force has been using the gunship for the past 50 years. Its primary missions include close air support, air interdiction, and armed reconnaissance," said the Defense Department.

The body of the plane was designed in the 1950s by Kelly Johnson, a Lockheed engineer, according to the company—though he thought his design would end up a failure.

"If you send that in you'll destroy the Lockheed Company," Johnson told his boss about an early design of the aircraft.

The U.S. Air Force called for the first two prototypes in 1951 and awarded the contract to Lockheed. The plane was produced out of Lockheed's plant in Marietta, Georgia. The prototype's inaugural flight happened in 1954.

The gunship version of the AC-130 was developed in 1967 during the Vietnam War. The C-130 is the longest continuously produced military plane, according to Market Place. Besides the gunship version, Lockheed's body has been used for a variety of other purposes, including airplanes that do weather reconnaissance and fly into hurricanes.

In 2015, an AC-130 gunship accidentally targeted a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. The attack killed 42 people. Military forces mistakenly believed the hospital to be a Taliban compound.