For example, the Sudan...



The Sudan, again...




And Angola...a Hercules graveyard...



But OTOH...(Kenya)...

Don't suppose you have a shot of "Puff the Magic Dragon" at work do you?
When I was in 'nam and in a pickle I used to love hearing "Puff" go to work.

Rich

Great plane to jump from but I hated tailgate
jumps the damn (D) bags would burn the hell
out of your face, Did you Fly one of these
Troop Taxis.

quote:

Originally posted by PARA1977:
Great plane to jump from but I hated tailgate
jumps the damn (D) bags would burn the hell
out of your face

You're supposed to jump from the door but not from the tailgate. You walk to the side of the tailgate and just step off the back. If a D-bag hits you then you're either too close to the man in front of you or you're doing it wrong.

It may have been a chinook that the D bags got me on cant remember, but i loved the tailgate jumps anyway.

quote:

Originally posted by PARA1977:
Great plane to jump from but I hated tailgate
jumps the damn (D) bags would burn the hell
out of your face, Did you Fly one of these
Troop Taxis.

Yeah, but the civilian version only. I have several jumps from them as well, but no tailgates.

Love these planes, i live near lockeed in GA
and hear the new J models all the time.They sound alot different to me something to do with the props i believe. and i hear they have alot more power as well. Sounds like you have an awesome job CONGRATS.

Haven't seen it in a couple of years now but the USCG had a very old C130 based out of Cordova, AK. I can't find any pictures of it but was told it was an "A" model - I do know it had a very short fuselage and three bladed props - only one I ever saw that did not have the big four bladed prop!
I'll be back up there in a week so I'll look closely when we land at Mud Hole Smith and see if I see it.
And BTW, we flew these things not as C130's but rather as L-100's and really put some hours on them! They had "T" docks that allowed the cargos to be loaded, unloaded and shifted - sometimes with the motors running all the time - made for some very short ground time, believe me!
They looked like this:

Just outside of the front gate of the Little Rock AFB is a static display of a C-130 that was credited with the evac of over 500 Vietnamese children/infants in a single flight.

The FAA designation of the civilian version is Lockheed L-382. The G model is a single stretch and the H model is a double stretch. These model designations do not correspond to military model numbers.

L-100 was Delta's designation of the civilian version, but my type rating says L-382.

I know of the cleanest A Model still flying that is seriously for sale. Problem with the A Model is that you need an end user certificate to export it, so it has to go to a charitable organization or a friendly governemnt.

The current production military J model has eliminated the flight engineer and has uprated engines and five bladed composite props.

I would not want to fly one without an engineer. I've had my ass saved too many times by an alert engineer. I guess Lockheed has to jump on the bandwagon, but this is an old design, very likely in production in one form or another longer than any other aircraft type.

Regardless of designation or anything else, it is one of the most remarkable aircraft ever built. It will do the most difficult jobs in aviation and do them repeatedly and very successfully. It's built like a tank, with excellent system redundancy. I am very grateful to have flown them for as long as I did.

The external tamks on the bird in Trapper's photo hold a bit more than 9000 lbs of fuel and increse the range substantially, but slow the airplane down by ten knots.

The old man flew those in Vietnam...

Black Bird missions..

he had 13 of them shot out from underneath him and had another 40 that were so shot up when they returned they were junked for parts..

he also took a very active part in the Development of the HC 130 H, used to pick up downed pilots in a hot jungle scenario..

I remember as a kid when the old man was stationed at Pope, those squadrons would rotate TDY to Vietnam...( 464th Troop Carrier Wing)... they would leave all nice and camouflaged.. when they returned 90 days later, they had so many replaced and patched parts on them, you could not tell what the original paint scheme had been...

those birds would take a beating and still bring the crews home..

quote:

Originally posted by Grenadier:

I have an aviation book on the C130 gunships here at home.. had it 25 plus years..as a lot of my aviation books are that old..

it has a mission scribed in Vietnam over the Ho Chi Minh trail..

Green Berets have pinpointed a Column moving down the trail.. they radio a Bird Dog Cessna over it for verification, who radios for an available C130 Gunship..

The column still hears the Cessna, and stops, and orders all trucks to turn off their engines..and everything stopped..

the C130s had electronics that could pick up the ignition systems of Soviet made trucks from 20,000 feet altitude..

the AC also had FLIR ( Forward Looking InfaRed Radar) and LLETV.. Low Life Emitting TV screens that allowed the electronics operators to see down to the ground in high detail.. and control the Computer Controlled Fire System, that aimed the guns on the ship..

they made multiple passes over the site where the convoy was supposed to be parked, but got no visual acquisitions... even sending the Bird Dog over it to verify if they were in the right spot several times..

The Green Beret team still was reporting the correct coordinates stating the convoy was in front of them..

Finally one guy in the parked convoy evidently lite a cigarette.. the LLETV on the 130 instantly picked it up at 20,000 feet, and they unleashed the 7.62 gatling guns on the coordinates....

they saw no explosions tho, from the air, although the Green Beret team reported that they had hit the convey as they could hear the screams from the wounded...

so the 130 circled around again and this time let loose with the 40 mm Bofor Guns and the 105 in the tail...on the coordinates of the original spot where the cigarette had been lit..

at the first shot from the 105 with high explosives, suddenly a large ribbon of fire erupted on the trail down below them...

they made several more passes with all guns blazing, computer aimed no less...

72 hours after it was over, the Green Beret team went back in to inspect and report the damage... evidently the entire convoy was not only wiped out, but there had not been any survivors. and those that might have survived had succumbed to their wounds, as they were untreated..

the convoy had everything from trucks to men with loaded down bicycles to waterbuffalo pulling carts...

this was the first time the Green Beret team had witnessed the aftermath, or had seen an AC130 in action...

needless to say they were amazed at the carnage..

A FE I flew a load of trips with got shot down over the trail. Radar guided 37mm set it on fire. The fire was external in the wing. Fuel lines passing through the box beam were ruptured and pouring fuel into the cabin. Everybody waded through fuel sloshing around on the deck and went out the tail. He hung in a tree all night in his harness with the Viets looking for everyone. Everybody made it out alive, but he never told me how.

A Captain I flew with when I was FO took a 37mm hit in the nosewheels. Killed the engineer, who sits above the wheels. The shell's fuse partially penetrated his seat armor and hit him in the ass. All he got was a nasty bruise.

Both nosewheels were blown off. He said the worst thing he remembered besides losing his FE was landing back in Thailand after the runway had been foamed. That foam was apparently made from animal protein. The cockpit filled up with it when all that torn sheet metal from the wheel well scooped it up. He said it took him two days to get the smell out of his hair.