So I have been playing some games with Triple Bird to test Salamence's effectiveness with the other dominant Flying-type attackers.
My conclusion so far is: Gale Wings Salamence is very effective.
Its support and offensive presence is impressive, and can easily lead to a talonflame or pinsir sweep. Gale Wings mence is almost tailored to work well with them, and break their counters up.
My set:
Salamence
Gale Wings
@ Life Orb
Naughty 252 ATK / 4 DEF / 252 SPE
-Outrage
-Aerial Ace
-Defog
-Fire Blast
This set has been very effective for me, and was built to maximize Salamence's synergy with Pinsir and Talonflame. First, Defog is of course an incredible asset, and priority Defog is very difficult to stop (and even harder to keep rocks up when I got Excadrill too). I went with Outrage instead of Draco Meteor so I could max out the power of both my Dragon STAB and Aerial Ace. Outrage smashes Rotom-W and Zapdos, and leaves huge dents in Lando-T, Gliscor, and specially defensive Hippo. It also severely weakens tyranitar, and can actually let mence WIN against Heatran that lack a super effective attack (no physically defensive heatran!).
Aerial Ace is what NEVER to be estimated-- it's still a Flying-type priority attack that rivals Dragonite's CB Extremespeed in power (and far outclasses Pinsir's Quick Attack). What's different about Salamence (compared to Pinsir/Talonflame) is its bulk and resistances. Salamence has lots of opportunities to switch in and pick off weakened opponents. Weather its a Gyarados Waterfall or a Charizard Flare Blitz, Mence can switch in and pick it off after the damage its taken while setting up (LO Aerial Ace does about 40-60% damage to most set up sweepers). Its type's synergy with the Steel types well suited for Bird teams makes it a real asset. And threats that try to wall Aerial Ace will just be grinded down to be blasted to bits by the following birds.
Finally, Fire Blast lets Mence take apart Skarmory and Ferrothorn, rounding out my bird offense's wall breaking ability.
I find that in actual practice, I only ever get revenge kills with mence, and often mence will be taken out without killing anything. But, this set is just so damn effective at breaking Talonflame/Pinsir counters and keeping SR off the field, by the time mence goes down, I almost always have a perfect chance to sweep with my other birds.
I'd be interested in trying DD and full support sets for other teams, but I think I nailed the formula for bird-support mence the first time.