C-130 historie fra Vietnam

Lockheed Martin C-130: Tough as a Grumman


In April 1972, a huge C130-E Hercules transport plane code-named Spare 617 was ordered to fly over a raging battle in South Vietnam and parachute-drop giant pallets of ammunition. If all went well, the ammo would resupply South Vietnamese soldiers fighting on the ground. But all did not go well.

Preparing to make his drop, pilot William Caldwell flew the plane low over the town of An Loc.
But the enemy had put a machine gun nest high above the town in a church steeple, Caldwell recalled. "So, we were just a sitting duck for him."

Caldwell remembers machine gun fire ripping through the cockpit, smashing a circuit breaker panel and the plane's windows. Flight engineer Jon Sanders died instantly. The attack wounded copilot John Hering and navigator Richard Lenz and damaged two of the plane's four turboprop engines.

Gunfire ruptured a duct designed to bleed hot air from the plane's powerful engines. The scalding air severely burned cargo loadmaster Charlie Shaub, as Caldwell put it, like a "600-degree hurricane."
Then it got worse. The attack set fire to some of the plane's explosive cargo.

But despite his burns, Shaub was somehow able to eject the burning pallets of ammunition. It was just in time. Seconds later, the ammo exploded as it fell to the ground. Then, Shaub astonishingly snuffed out the fire in the cargo hold. Caldwell closed the bleed air duct and shut down the damaged engines.
Next problem: how to save the wounded crew. Caldwell pointed the plane toward an air base with the best medical facilities. He would have to land a giant C-130E with only two working engines -- both on the same side of the aircraft.

Things looked grim, he said, but "I got more confident with every mile we got closer to the air base," said Caldwell.

Again, things went further south.

A hydraulics system that was needed to lower the landing gear became useless. Using nothing but sheer muscle, Lenz and cargo loadmaster Dave McAleece lowered the wheels by hand using crank handles, Caldwell said.

Caldwell landed the plane fast: pushing about 170 mph. With hydraulics busted, he had trouble steering the plane.

"I used the inboard right side engine to guide the plane down a high-speed runway turnoff," he said.
After rolling to a stop, "I got out of the airplane," Caldwell recalled. An airman on the ground asked, "Are you OK?" Caldwell replied, "You bastards didn't prepare us for THIS."

Three notable details about the mission

• What recognition did the crew receive? Caldwell and Shaub received the Air Force Cross, the Air Force's second-highest award for valor.

• Did the plane have any weapons? Spare 617 flew with virtually no defensive weaponry. "We only had 38 revolvers," said Caldwell, 70, now a retired colonel who teaches aviation at the University of Southern Illinois. It was the airplane itself, he said, that helped save them. "That airplane was just as responsible for getting us home as any of the crew."

• How hard was it to lower the landing gear? The attack knocked out the plane's hydraulic system, forcing the crew to lower the plane's gigantic landing gear manually. "I think it takes roughly 650 turns of that crank to get a landing gear down on both sides of the airplane. It's an endurance thing more than strength thing."