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That one is scary...this one gets me too...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVaAVN94sTs&feature=related

That Herc water bomber is an old one, but it gives me chills because I have mucho time in them.

Hercs historically suffer from wing corrosion and that's likely what got this one. Likely some stress cracks in the box beam as well. Makes me sick to watch it.

I've flown Hercs that were on their third wing set.

Terrible, terrible scenario - you KNOW what is going to happen and not a thing they can do about it.
An interesting little story here:
We pulled a L100 [C130] in the house one night and pulled a letter check on it. In the course of the process, one of the inspectors found a crack in the center wing spar. Our engineer was called, he in turn called the Lockheed on-site liaison engineer and they both came down to ‘look it over.’ In the course of things, the Lockheed proclaimed loudly and repeatedly that he could not believe this, what had we done to the aircraft, in all the ops all over the world this had never occurred before, etc., etc. Then the interesting part – before nine am the next morning we had a kit from Lockheed, prepared and available to repair a cracked center wing spar! I don’t recall ever seeing that same liaison engineer onsite again, and we never heard anything more about ‘never before’ from Lockheed about the L100.
BTW, we had five of these things and I was told when we retired them we had number 1 and number 2 A/C in the world airframe flight time. The old Herc would certainly do a job for you, go anywhere, haul anything and with very little maintenance.

The Herc has a very stiff wing. Lockheed has had fixes out for years.

We had some guys hit severe clear air turbulence in Africa so hard the it knocked the loadie, who was not strapped in, out cold when his head hit the overhead. The center wing broke and they're lucky they didn't come apart in midair. The wing was several degrees out of plumb. The ferry crew really picked their weather very carefully on the way back to Marietta.

We had one that was so corroded that a mechanic stuck his finger through a corroded spot into the wing itself. That one went in for a wing change mo rikki tic!

The captains name on that C-130 was Steve Wass. I met him several times when I was with Big Horn airways flying for the Smoke jumpers. Big Horn was part owned by Hawkins and Powers the company who owned that C-130.

Shortly after that H&P lost a PB-4Y to a wing failure also.

That was the end of tanker operations as we know it. Things have severely changed since those two accidents.

Note to self:

Knife Edge performance of B-52, not so good.



--Tinker

God Bless the crew of that Herc.

hawkins and Powers was a Wyoming icon, employed maybe up to 200 people at one time. They fed a lot of families in the Big Horn Basin.
It sure was sad to see them go.

Wyoming Art

It's always sad when a unique outfit, populated with a bunch of one-off's, goes down. Many of us will always feel that way about Southern Air Transport.

The water bomber crews are a special bunch. They hang it out and are good at what they do. Getting paid for what you do well is the definition of happiness, in my book.