C-130 Hercules Read online

  In August 1955 a fourth contract was issued for 84 Hercules. Total orders now stood at 159, discounting the two prototypes. In June 1956 two C-130As were delivered to the USAF Air Proving Ground Command at Eglin AFB for Category II and operational suitability tests, which they passed with flying colours. The C-130s also came through gruelling tests in cold climates and a programme of heavy lift cargoes and air drops. Finally, on 9 December 1956 the first five including 55-0023 City of Ardmore, the fiftieth Hercules built were flown to the Tactical Air Command’s 463rd Troop Carrier Wing, at Ardmore AFB, Oklahoma. During the acceptance ceremony, Robert E. Gross, the chairman of Lockheed, formally handed over the Hercules to General Otto P. Weygand, chief of TAC. Addressing the 5,000 people present, Weygand said ‘the C-130 will play a most important role in our composite air strike force, for it will increase our capability to airlift engines, weapons and other critical supply requirements’.

  By the end of 1958 C-130As equipped six TAC squadrons in the US, three PACAF squadrons in the 483rd TCW at Ashiya AB in Japan and three USAFE squadrons in the 317th Wing at Évreux-Fauville in France. During 1958 the pioneer Hercules squadrons of the 463rd Wing at Ardmore moved to Sewart AFB and this base became the hub of C-130 operations for the next three years. Altogether, 192 C-130As (and twelve ski-equipped C-130Ds) were delivered to TAC, while fifteen C130As were delivered to the Air Photographic and Charting Service, Military Air Transport Service (MATS).

  In December 1958 a contract was issued for 127 C-130Bs (Model 282) for TAC (C-130B 57-0525 first flew on 20 November 1958). The C-130B differed from the C-130A in that its internal fuel capacity was increased by 1,820 US gallons (6,889 litres), it had heavier operating weights and it was powered by 4,050eshp T56-A-7 engines. The US Navy received seven C-130F transports, the US Coast Guard twelve HC-130B rescue aircraft, the US Marine Corps 46 KC-130F tankers and MATS had five WC-130B weather reconnaissance aircraft. A further 29 examples were ordered for the air forces of Canada, Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan and South Africa.

  KC-130F BuNo149798 Look Ma, No Hook taking off from the deck of the USS Forrestal during possible COD (Carrier Onboard Delivery) trials off the coast of Massachusetts in October 1963. The KC-130F carried out 95 take-offs and 141 landings using a simulated Forrestal-class carrier at Patuxent River; it was then used in carquals on board USS Forrestal during operations off the coast of Massachusetts on 30 October. Lieutenant (later Rear Admiral) James H. Flatley USN carried out 54 approaches, of which sixteen resulted in ‘bolters’ (touch-and-go landings). He later made more landings, stopping in a range of between 270 to 495 feet without using an arrestor hook and take-offs in the range of 745 feet or less, without using the carrier’s catapults. Flatley demonstrated that the KC-130F could have delivered 25,000 lb loads to a carrier operating 2,500 nautical miles from the nearest land base but using a C-130 as a COD aircraft at sea would have involved clearing the deck of almost every other aircraft and the concept was not adopted. (Lockheed)

  USN EC-130V/NC-130H. The EC-130V is an HC-130H modified to an early-warning aircraft with rotordome (radar AN/APS-125).

  C-130H 93-2042 of the 182nd Air Wing, Illinois Air National Guard undergoing maintenance by the 309th Maintenance Wing at the Repair and Refurbishment Depot at Hill AFB.

  The C-130E (Model 382-4B), which first flew on 15 August 1961 was designed for longer-ranged logistic missions. Deliveries of the first 389 C-130Es for MAC began in April 1962. The US Coast Guard received one EC-130E electronics platform and the USN four C-130G TACAMO communications platforms. Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sweden and Turkey ordered 97 production Es to bring total C-130E production to 491.

  HC-130H 64-14855 of the 301st Rescue Squadron in the 920th Rescue Wing at Patrick AFB, Florida refuelling a US Air Force Reserve HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopter.

  Gun-camera photo of C-130A-II-LM 56-0528 of the 7406th Support Squadron at Incirlik Airbase in Turkey which was shot down on 2 September 1958 by four Soviet MiG-17s 34 miles NW of Yerevan during a reconnaissance mission along the Turkish-Armenian border parallel to the Soviet frontier. The six flight crew were confirmed dead when their remains were repatriated to the United States, but the eleven intelligencegathering personnel on board have never been acknowledged by the authorities.

  The next major variant was the C-130H-LM (Model 382C), which was first delivered to the RNZAF in March 1965. A total of 1,092 C-130H aircraft was built. Basically similar to the C-130E they were powered by T56-A-15 engines, usually derated from 4,910 to 4,508eshp. Some 1,092 C-130H/K models were built. This includes 333 variants for the USAF, ANG, AFRes and USCG and 693 C-130Hs for the US armed forces and 46 countries excluding the UK. Sixty-six C-130K-LM (Model 382-19B) examples with some components by Scottish Aviation, with British electronics, instrumentation and other equipment installed by Marshall Engineering, Cambridge were delivered to RAF Air Support Command. The C-130K first flew on 19 October 1966 and entered service as the Hercules C.Mk.1 in April 1967. Thirty C-130Ks were brought up to a standard approaching that of the L-100-30, with the fuselage stretched by 15 feet. C-130J/-30 (Models 382U/V) are being built to replace C-130s in service with the RAF, the launch customer and in the US, those with MAC, AFRes and ANG. N130JA, the C-130J (RAF Hercules C.4/ZH865) prototype was rolled out at Lockheed-Marietta on 18 October 1995 and flew for the first time on 5 April 1996.

  An A-6 Intruder receives fuel from VMGR-252 KC-130R BuNo 160625 during a flight out of Marine Corps Air Station, Cherry Point, North Carolina. This Hercules was delivered in April 1978.

  In March 1995 Lockheed Martin was formed by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta and is an American global aerospace, defence, security and advanced technology company with worldwide interests. None of the earlier variants has been more significant or as far-reaching than the C-130J development of the aircraft: which was truly a model for the next millennium, with databus architecture replacing conventional wiring; a revolutionary new powerplant driving six-blade, scimitar-shaped composite propellers; and a cockpit with a digital autopilot, a fully integrated global positioning system, colour weather and ground-mapping radar and a digital map display, plus an advisory caution and warning system that allows for fault detection.

  By the mid-1990s there were still in active service over sixty C-130As out of the 231 C-130As built, approximately 130 C-130Bs out of 230 delivered and of the 491 C-130Es built, more than 310 were in worldwide service with the US armed forces and about ninety others in operational use with armed forces of various countries. US government agencies were operating more than 300 C-130H models in a variety of special versions and about 350 standard C-130H model were in operation with the armed services of more than 46 overseas countries. About eighty of the 116 L-100, -20 and -30 aircraft built were also in service with military and non-military operators. By the dawn of the 21st Century the airlifter that is without equal had been in continuous production for over forty-five years, through at least eighty-five original and modified versions. Today the C-130 is operated by seventy countries and 2,400+ have been delivered. Now that’s versatility for you!

  In 2000 Boeing was awarded a $1.4 billion contract to develop an Avionics Modernization Programme kit for the C-130. A total of 198 aircraft are expected to feature the AMP upgrade. An engine enhancement programme saving fuel and providing lower temperatures in the T56 engine has been approved and the US Air Force expects to save $2 billion and extend the fleet life.

  As of January 2014 Air Mobility Command, Air Force Materiel Command and the Air Force Research Lab were in the early stages of defining requirements for the C-X next generation airlifter programme to replace both the C-130 and C-17. An aircraft would be produced from the early 2030s to the 2040s. If requirements are decided for operating in contested airspace, Air Force procurement of C-130s would end by the end of the decade to not have them serviceable by the 2030s and operated when they cannot perform in that environment. Development of the airlifter depends heavily on the Army�
��s ‘tactical and operational manoeuvre’ plans. Two different cargo planes could still be created to separately perform tactical and strategic missions, but which course to pursue is to be decided before C-17s need to be retired.

  Chapter Two

  Trash Haulers - The Workhorse of the Việtnam War

  I believe the term ‘hauling trash’ predated the Viêtnam War. The first time I ever heard anyone use it was in the spring of 1965 when I was on temporary duty at Ubon, Thailand on the flare mission. Willy Donovan, one of the other loadmasters, had come to Okinawa from C-135s in MATS. Willie was a big Beatles fan. One day he sang a little ditty to the tune of Yellow Submarine that went ‘We all live in a green garbage can’ etc and etc. It was about that time that I first heard the term ‘trash hauler’. I have an idea the term may have originated in MATS. I started out in TAC at Pope and never heard it there. However, we rarely carried cargo except when we were TDY overseas or were on training exercises with the Army. In Viêtnam, that was pretty much all we did. We had scheduled passenger missions every day but most of our missions carried general cargo mostly ammunition and fuel, usually in barrels although some airplanes were loaded with bladders and pumps to haul it in bulk. Some missions were into forward airfields in the field and some were from the major supply bases to other facilities around the country. During my second overseas tour in 69-70, the common term for C-130s and C-123s was ‘mortar magnet.’

  Sam McGowan, loadmaster/flare kicker in the 35th TCS, 6315th Operations Group at Naha Air Base on Okinawa. He is the author of Anything Anywhere Anytime and Trash Haulers and The Cave; an exciting novel about a C-130 flareship crewmember who is shot down over Laos and declares his own personal war on the anti-aircraft gunners who shot him down.

  US soldiers at Đà Nẵng Air Base in 1965.

  Việtnam was formerly part of French Indo-China, together with Laos and Cambodia which lie along its western border and is bounded in the North by China. After the defeat of the French forces in July 1954 it was split into two countries, the Republic of South Việtnam and the Communist North, using the 17th Parallel as the dividing line. The victors were the Communist Việt Minh (‘League for the Independence of Việtnam)1 forces led by General Võ Nguyên Giáp and they planned to take control of the South using a new Communist guerrilla force called the Việt Công (VC) or the National Liberation Front (NLF). The VC campaign increased in intensity in 1957 until finally, in 1960, Premier Ngô Đình Diệm appealed to the United States for help. Special ‘advisers’ were sent in and in 1961 President Lyndon B. Johnson began the negotiations which led to total American involvement. In February 1965 the Việt Công stepped up its guerrilla war and the first American casualties in Việtnam occurred when the VC attacked US installations in the South. The US retaliated with strikes by US naval aircraft from carriers in the Gulf of Tonkin against VC installations at Đồng Hới and Vit Thu Lu. The guerrilla war escalated until in 1965, the South Việtnamese administration was on the point of collapse. The US responded with a continued build-up of military might, beginning with Operation ‘Rolling Thunder’, as the air offensive against North Việtnam was called.

  The first C-130 tactical transports were introduced in the Southeast Asia theatre in 1961 during the crisis in Laos. As at the outbreak of the Korean War fourteen years earlier, America was largely ill-prepared for ‘conventional’ warfare on the Asian mainland. PACAF was a nucleardeterrent force, like the majority of US commands at this time, a third of its 600 aircraft being made up of F-100D/F tactical fighters. Only fifty-three C-54 and C-130A aircraft comprised its transport fleet, the majority of units being stationed in Japan, the Philippines and Taiwan. In Japan C-130As of the 815th TCS, 315th Air Division were based at Tachikawa Air Base or ‘Tachi’ as it quickly became known, northwest of Tokyo and those of the 35th and 817th TCS, 384th TCW, at Naha Air Base, Okinawa; a few aircraft of the 315th Air Division were also detached at Naha. In the Philippines, three squadrons operated in the 463td TCW at Clark Air Base and two others operated from Mactan Air Base. In Formosa (Taiwan) three C-130 squadrons in the 374th TCW operated from Kung Kuan Air Base.2

  Before total US intervention in Việtnam, the PACAF Hercules had been used mainly for logistic support between the home bases and bases in Thailand and South Việtnam. After the spring of 1965 however, the Hercules became the prime transport aircraft in the Pacific theatre. Its first task was to airlift troops and equipment to South Việtnam from Okinawa: thus from 8-12 March 1965 C-130s deployed a Marine battalion landing team to Đà Nẵng; and on 4-7 May, they carried the Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade to South Việtnam in 140 lifts. Casualties were numerous and the Hercules carried out many air evacuations.

  A line up of USAF C-130As sits on the Lockheed-Georgia Company production flight line in Marietta, Georgia, in 1957 prior to delivery. One of the first Hercules built, complete with the original Roman nose, sits at the far left. The Hercules in the middle (55-0005) would eventually be left behind at Tân Sơn Nhứt AB, South Việtnam, as that country fell to Communist forces in 1975. The aircraft to its left (55-0007) was transferred to the Bolivian Air Force in 1988. The C-130A in the foreground (55-0009) was destroyed in a rocket attack at Đà Nẵng AB, South Việtnam in 1967. (Lockheed)

  Paratroops of the 1st Brigade, 101st US Airborne Division during the airlift from Kontum to Phan Rang, South Viêtnam. During the spring and summer of 1966 the Brigade was transported on five occasions by the C-130s. Each deployment involved 200 Hercules lifts and each operation was mainly re-supplied by air. C-130B (58-0752) in the 463rd TCW, in the background, survived the war in SE Asia and was modified to WC-130B; later it reverted to C-130B and finally was sold to the Chilean Air Force in 1992. (USAF)

  From early 1965 C-130s from the PACAF and MATS wings were regularly rotated into South Việtnam. More than any other aircraft, the Hercules was destined to become the workhorse of the Việtnam War, just as the Dakota had proved itself to be in World War II. Beginning in the spring of 1965, Fairchild C-123 Providers and de Havilland Canada C-7 Caribous were stationed permanently in-country, but the transport-dedicated versions of the Hercules were rotated in and out of strips nearest the combat zones in South Việtnam from bases in the Pacific Air Forces (PACAF) region. Based mainly at the major airfields of Đà Nẵng, Tuy Hòa, Cam Ranh Bay and Tân Sơn Nhứt, the C-130 tactical transports were deployed to South Việtnam on a temporary duty basis.

  It soon became obvious that transports and their crews would be needed in large numbers to support US intervention in southeast Asia. The primary function of the Hercules was aerial transportation but they would have to perform many other roles besides; for infra-theatre aeromedical evacuation, as ‘airborne battlefield command and control centres’ (ABCCCs), AC-130 gunships, rescue aircraft, flare-dropping aircraft and even ‘bombers’. In South-East Asia the Hercules was to see widespread service, not only with the USAF, but with the US Navy, the USMC (as the KC-130F), the Coast Guard and the VNAF (Việtnamese Air Force), in what was to become a long and bloody conflict against a very determined and implacable enemy. Beginning in 1972 Project ‘Enhance Plus’ gave the VNAF over 900 badly needed helicopters, fighters, gunships and transports, including thirtytwo hastily withdrawn C-130As from ANG units in the US. In addition, the RAAF operated C-130Es on airlift duties between Australia and South Việtnam. These were from 36 Squadron and from 1966, 37 Squadron. From 1965 to 1975 40 Squadron RNZAF operated five C-130Hs on logistic flights between New Zealand and Saïgon and Vũng Tàu, South Việtnam.

  The only Hercules aircraft based permanently in Southeast Asia were the special mission aircraft such as flare ships, SAR aircraft, special operations aircraft and later, gunships. Starting in January 1965, C-130As and crews drawn from the squadrons at Naha, Okinawa, were attached to the 6315th Operations Group (TAC) control for use as flare ships in South-East Asia. Operating from Đà Nẵng, the flare-dropping C-130As and their crews were used mostly for the interdiction of the Việt Công infilt
ration routes through Laos. The C-130As were designed to operate in conjunction with the ‘fast movers’ (fighter-bombers) such as the F-4 Phantom, in night strikes against VC convoys using the Hồ Chi Minh Trail. Two code-names accompanied the start of the flare-dropping project. Operations which were carried out over the ‘Barrel Roll’ interdiction area in northern Laos were termed ‘Lamplighter’, while those flown against targets in the ‘Steel Tiger’ and ‘Tiger Hound’ areas of southern Laos were known as ‘Blind Bat’. (Eventually the two operational areas in Laos were merged into one and ‘Blind Bat’ was normally used to describe flare-dropping missions generally).

  ‘No, bats are not blind’ wrote Sam McGowan ‘but we might as well have been on those dark nights over the Hồ Chi Minh Trail in Laos and southern North Việtnam. It’s too bad we didn’t have the senses of a bat because if we had, we might have been able to see something on the truck routes that wound their way through the dense forest beneath the wings of our C-130A. Operation ‘Blind Bat’ was perhaps one of the most interesting if not dangerous missions of the Việtnam War in the years between 1964 and 1970, when the mission was terminated. Because the Communist infiltrators took advantage of the darkness of night to make their way south out of North Việtnam, the US Air Force worked diligently to find a way to detect the nearly illusive trucks and other means of transportation by which the North sent supplies to their troops in South Việtnam. Dropping flares from transports was nothing new in Việtnam; the technique had been used in World War II and Korea. In South Việtnam C-47s and C-123s flew nightly flare missions in support of ground installations that might find themselves under attack. But the C-130 ‘Blind Bat’ mission was different; our targets were trucks, not enemy squads and we were flying interdiction missions, not support for ground forces.