C-130 Hercules

by Martin W Bowman

  USAF C-130As and E’s of the 817th TAS/374th TAW (YU) and 776th TAS/314th TAW (DL) and a C-123 on the line in Việtnam.

  South Việtnamese civilians assist with construction of an airbase in South Việtnam.

  ‘Since our on-load was going to be delayed, we had nothing better to do than walk over to see what the problem was with the other aircraft. We knew the entire crew, who were part of our temporary duty unit back at Clark and from another squadron in our Wing at Langley. We walked up to them and asked what the problem was that had caused their rapid and unorthodox departure from the cockpit. No one answered directly. They only told us to go take a look. They all appeared somewhat antagonized and hostile to our approach and questions.

  ‘I mounted the steps leading to the cockpit and forward cargo area of the aircraft. The plane had been rigged for Personnel Air Evacuation. In this procedure, the C-130 had a series of metal stanchions which clipped into the floor and ceiling and created a U-shaped aisle formation inside the cargo compartment. Using the stanchions for support, a web of heavy nylon straps clipped into them and intermeshed into triple tiered levels of stretcher supports in the manner of the old Pullman railroad bunks. In the aircraft there were 50 or 60 individual stretchers, three levels high, in four aisles around the cargo compartment.

  ‘Slowly and silently, together with the rest of our crew, I walked down the aisle on the right side of the cargo compartment between the two rows of three stretcher tiers. I took a left turn at the end of the aisle and walked forward to the flight station wall down the second aisle on the other side of the plane, also bounded on both sides by three high stretcher tiers. I noted that the plane was almost at the maximum number of stretchers that it could carry in this rigging assembly. Each stretcher contained one green body bag. In some of the bags the outline of a soldier could be traced horizontally from the feet to the head. In others, the occupant appeared contorted. Some were clearly less than a complete body. One, about the size of a basketball, sat alone on its stretcher, taking up little more than a quarter of the stretcher space. It was held in place by a seat strap. Most of the stretchers had a pair of boots and a dog tag fastened to them.

  ‘They Were Dead. They Were All Dead! This Was an Airplane Full of Dead Men.’

  ‘My walk through the darkened aircraft took less than five minutes. During that time I smelled the sickening sweet odour that permeated the entire craft. I noticed it as soon as I entered the cargo hold, but it wasn’t initially overwhelming or disturbing. The longer I stayed in the compartment, the stronger a contaminated sweet portion of the overall odour came to the fore. This smell had driven the aircrew from the plane as soon as the doors were opened after their fifty minute flight. The build-up of this nauseous aroma within the sealed aircraft had made them all nearly airsick. In carrying only a very limited number of bodies in the past, such a smell had never before permeated an entire aircraft as this load did. It was a smell never to be forgotten, but one we would become increasingly familiar with.

  ‘I exited the aircraft and exchanged words with the flight crew. The bodies were the results of the recent Ia Drang battle in the Central Highlands. All of the dead men were Americans. They had been loaded on the C-130 at Pleiku, the closest main airbase to the battle site and had been sent to Đà Nẵng since it held the only US mortuary in Việtnam at the time. There were two more similarly configured and loaded C-130s coming in to land behind this one. We returned to our airplane where a load of palletized cargo bound for Tân Sơn Nhứt was now ready to be put on. At the other C-130, the rear cargo door had been opened and the body laden stretchers were being put into waiting ambulances. As we took off for Saïgon, we heard the other two planes from Pleiku call in for landing and parking instructions.’9

  ‘The C-130 was very accommodating to the Tactical Airlift role. It was ugly, slow and not jet propelled. Mounting four turboprop engines, it was capable of carrying 40,000lbs of cargo 2,500 miles. It had floor mounted cargo rails which allowed palletized cargo to be quickly slid in and out directly through the rear door and ramp. In an hour, the five man crew could pull up the cargo rails and put down seats or litter bearing straps. The plane could then take fifty paratroops on an airdrop or carry seventy passengers to a distant destination. In similar fashion, it could also carry fifty hospital patients, each in his litter. The C-130 was fully pressurized and cruised at 20,000 feet at 300 knots. It could take off in 1,500 feet or in 2,000 with a sizable load. It could land and come to a complete stop in less than 2,000 feet and operated easily from 3,500 and 5,000 foot airstrips. It was an allweather, 24 hour a day machine with its own airborne radar and navigation equipment. Ugly, but practical and relatively cheap, the 130 was ahead of its time and a wonderful combination of ‘50s technology suited to the Tactical Airlift mission. Normally it had a crew of five, including a pilot, co-pilot, navigator, flight engineer and loadmaster.’ In March 1966 the ‘Blind Bat’ project relocated to Ubon, Thailand and that same year the 6315th Operations Group control was replaced by the 374th Troop Carrier Wing, later designated a Tactical Airlift Wing. Ronald Edward Dudley, born 28 January 1934, from Roanoke, Alabama flew the C-130A on three tours in Viêtnam. Much of the time, from 1966 to 1969, he served with the 41st Tactical Airlift Squadron, 345th Air Wing flying out of Okinawa in the Japanese home islands.

  Lieutenant Colonel Ron Dudley’s C-130A transport crew when he (centre squatting with dark hair) was flying secret missions from Korat Royal Thai Air Force base in Thailand in 1967 during one of his three deployments to Việtnam.

  ‘Twenty-one days a month my five man crew and I would fly into Southeast Asia in my C-130A. It was the best airplane I ever flew; it was superb. Our general mission was to resupply and support our ground troops. We could handle 100 paratroopers combat loaded or 74 people if you put them in seats. Sometimes I’d fly in small tanks or armoured personnel carriers. I put one personnel carrier into a 1,900-foot strip and three months later I went back in and flew it out. I had some missions over North Viêtnam, but most of my missions were over Laos as a forward air controller. We flew in at night dropping flares at 1,500 feet so out bombers could see the targets. We took part in some secret missions in Laos flying out of the Royal Thai Air Base. At night we’d fly down Highway 1 in Laos and North Việtnam looking for targets of opportunity to bomb. If we found a target we’d call in an air strike. On an average night you would take 100 rounds of 37mm anti-aircraft fire from VC gunners. On the worst night we took just short of 1,000 rounds. Our loadmaster, Sergeant Don Brant, came up with a name for our plane: Super Dud and the Dolighters. This became our call sign until the VC caught on. The fighter planes we worked with would call in and I’d say Good Evening. You’re about to be entertained by Super Dud and the Dolighters. I had to stop using that call sign because the VC, the bad guys, would call on our frequency and say: Super Dud, good to see you. We’re gonna have fun tonight.

  During one secret mission over Laos one night the VC antiaircraft unit set up a flak trap. They were waiting specifically for Dudley and his C-130 to arrive. The enemy somehow already had the secret frequency he was given just before taking off from the base in Thailand.

  ‘When we flew into the area the VC radio welcomed us by saying, Super Dud you have just moved to the top of the money chart. There is now a $250,000 bounty on your heads. We have imported several Number-10 (top) gunners. Tonight is your last night. I’m gonna be rich tomorrow. We had a little problem at the original sight so we moved it eight clicks up the road.

  Dudley flew over the designated area and was beginning his decent to 1,500 feet where he would begin to patrol the area for the next six hours. ‘All of a sudden there was a flicker on the ground. I realized immediately what had happened. The VC had lured me into a trap. They opened up on us with five 37mm guns. Lucky for me I was at 8,000 feet when they started shooting at us. If they had waited until I got down to 1,500 feet I would have been a dead duck. I only had to climb 5,000 to 6,000 feet to get out of the range of thei
r guns. It seemed like it took us twenty hours to get out of range. In reality it was only two or three minutes. But during those minutes we could hear stuff from what the enemy was firing at us hitting our plane. We finally made it back to base at 0300. I had just gotten to bed when an aide to Colonel Drummond, our squadron commander, knocked on my door and said he wanted to see me right away. I got dressed and the aide drove me out to the flight line where the commander was waiting.

  C-130s being loaded at Phan Rang Air Base in June 1967.

  On 13 April 1968 C-130B 61-0967 of the 774th TAS, 463rd TAW with seven crew was landing at Khê Sanh when it suffered an engine failure and suddenly veered off the runway. The aircraft hit six recently dropped pallets, still containing cargo and then continued into a truck and a forklift vehicle before coming to a halt and bursting into flames. The aircraft was damaged beyond repair but all the crew were rescued, although a civilian who was on board later died of his injuries.

  ‘What happened to you all tonight?’ the colonel inquired.

  ‘I told him, I got stuck in a flak trap and got shot up.

  ‘You got 97 holes in the airplane, the commander said incredulously.

  ‘Yea, but nobody got hurt, I replied.

  ‘The next night I was right back up their flying.

  When I checked in on the radio the same oriental VC voice on the ground said to me, Did you have fun last night?

  ‘I told him You can take your radio and stick it where the sun won’t hit it.’

  In 1967 Dudley and his C-130 was taking part in a test programme in Viêtnam to perfect a low altitude extraction system for equipment they were trying to drop off while under fire or in areas where there was insufficient landing space. ‘I dropped the first extraction under fire at a little Army outpost along the Cambodian Border called Cam Duc. Another plane had flown into the base before me and got all shot up by quad .50 calibre machine guns the VC had at the end of the runway. I came down through a hole in the clouds too steep to escape the enemy machine-guns. Because I was too steep the balled up parachute that was suppose to pull the loaded pallet out the back of the airplane dropped back inside the plane. I had to come around a second time. On the second pass Sgt Brant, my loadmaster, went back behind the hot load that was ready to go, picked up the parachute and tossed it out. Then he stood in the wall of the plane when the pallet was dragged out after the chute opened. The skid went out the back of the plane that was flying 180 mph just above the ground and skidded to a stop within a few feet of the waiting soldiers.’10

  The 41st TAS lost two more ‘Blind Bat’ C-130As to enemy action over Laos in 1968-1969. On 22 May 1968 C-130A 56-0477 with a crew of nine captained by Lieutenant Colonel William Henderson Mason was shot down on a flare mission to southern Laos near Muang Nong about twenty miles southwest of the A Shau Valley (thung lũng A Sầu) in Thừa Thiên-Huế Province west of the coastal city of Huế, where another aircraft had reported a large fire on the ground. On 24 November 1969 C-130A 56-0533 a ‘Blind Bat’ Forward air control aircraft flown by Captain Earl Carlyle Brown was orbiting at 9,000 feet in the Ban Bak area to the east of Saravan in southern Laos. The aircraft was above a 4,000 feet cloud base when it was hit by several rounds of 37mm flak and burst into flames, crashing about fifteen miles east of Bạn Talan. All eight men on board were killed. A third ‘Blind Bat’ - C-130A 56-0499 crashed on an attempted three-engine take-off from the small airstrip at Bu Dop near the South Việtnamese border with Cambodia on 13 December 1969. The strip often suffered from enemy mortar attacks and three-engined departures were not uncommon as they were preferable to staying on the ground overnight until spares could be flown in. Three successful three-engined take offs had been made by C-130s from Bu Dop in recent months but the fourth attempt failed.11 The flare-dropping missions continued until 15 June 1970 when AC-130 hunter-killer gunships took over: with electronic detection and imageintensifying night observation equipment and a 1.5 million candlepower searchlight. They were by now better equipped than the ‘Blind Bat’s for the task of identifying and destroying enemy troop and transport convoys using the Hồ Chi Minh Trail.

  A C-130E comes in for a landing in January 1968 at the airstrip at Đông Hà combat base, South Việtnam where men of US Naval Construction Battalion Maintenance Unit 301 are repairing the runway. (USN)

  On 19 June 1966 after a week of not flying, Captain John Dunn’s crew left Mactan at 9:00 in the morning on their return to the shuttle. ‘We passed through Clark, as usual’ wrote Bill Barry ‘and picked up a load of cargo and passengers for Đà Nẵng and Tân Sơn Nhứt. We landed in Saïgon as the daily replacement aircraft at 6:30 in the evening. We left Tân Sơn Nhứt and checked into the Globe. Unfortunately, the hotel was all but full for the first time and since rooms were short, our crew checked into just two suites rather than three rooms. The two enlisted members stayed in one suite and we three officers checked into another. It was a time for real togetherness. The next day, we headed out to the base about noon but found that our aircraft was being worked on by maintenance. We drew a version of the passenger run as our first mission, but it was four in the afternoon before we got off the ground. We flew clockwise to An Khê, then Chu Lai, Đà Nẵng, then back to Chu Lai because there was a large marine influx in that area all of a sudden. Then we went to Đà Nẵng to pick up a cargo load, which we took back to Saïgon. It was fifteen minutes after midnight when we finally landed and shut down the engines.

  ‘The next day, we left the hotel at noon and ate on base at the officers’ club. We checked into 130 Ops and were scheduled for a cargo hauling mission with a 4:30 takeoff. Our first stop was the army base at An Khê, where we picked up cargo and passengers. We flew from An Khê in the Central Highlands due east to the coast and then south to a new army base which was being established at Tuy Hòa, a large plain on the coast. To the north of it was a river clearly identifiable on my radar. The base itself, however, was not a good radar target, as the runway blended into the coastal plain and, other than distance from the river, there was nothing to distinguish it from the plain itself. We quickly offloaded the cargo and troops through the back door and ramp with our engines running and were airborne again in five minutes. It was still daylight, but the sun was setting and the field had a low cloud cover over it which appeared to be decreasing in height. It was also lightly raining.

  ‘It was only a twenty minute flight back to An Khê and we returned there to pick up another similar mixed load also bound for Tuy Hòa. It took forty minutes to get the new load onboard and we again set off for Tuy Hòa. When we got abeam Tuy Hòa this time, it was beginning to get dark due to a combination of the time of day and the steadily increasing cloud build-up and rain around the base. Again, we landed visually, offloaded quickly and got airborne in less than five minutes.

  ‘Now, with an empty aircraft, we flew 25 minutes down the coast to Cam Ranh Bay, where we were supposed to pick up cargo and take it to Tân Sơn Nhứt. It took us nearly an hour to get offloaded and put a pallet on at Cam Ranh Bay. We then took off and proceeded east for a return to Saïgon. Just after we were airborne, the Cam Ranh Bay ALCE called and told us that things had taken a turn for the worst back at Tuy Hòa and we were to turn around and go back to An Khê for another load to take into Tuy Hòa. As directed, we turned around and flew back to An Khê.

  ‘It was now dark in the An Khê valley and the base’s approach radar was again out of commission. There was a low cloud layer over the base just a hundred or so feet above our minimums. We first attempted a prescribed letdown, flying with the base radio antenna as our guidance; but when we hit our minimums the runway was not in sight. My radar was working, so we next attempted another radio approach with me giving final guidance and altitude levels using the radar as the primary aid. The base runway showed up well on the radar, but the valley was not all that big and had a 3,000 foot mountain less than ten miles south of the runway. Right next to the runway was a 500 foot high karst hill. We made our approach in a s
outherly direction, staying to the east of the hill just as we had earlier when I was flying with John Dunn and we evacuated a medical case. In the event of a missed approach, the pilot was to immediately climb to 1,500 feet, thus keeping us above the hill while circling counter-clockwise to avoid the mountain.

  ‘On our second radar assisted approach, we broke out just in time to see the lighted runway, but we were not lined up with it so we climbed back into the clouds and circled for another attempt. The third attempt was successful. We were on the ground after an hour of shooting approaches to get down in the weather and black night. The flight would usually have taken 25 minutes. It took an hour for the army to load us up with pallets of ammunition and then we were off again for Tuy Hòa.

  Quảng Trị US Marine Corps, US Army and ARVN Combat Base on Highway 1 about 8 kilometres southeast of Đông Hà in April 1967.

  One of the RAAF C-130 Hercules in 1966 that beat a regular path to Việtnam, transporting troops and supplies and taking the wounded home. (Bert Lane)

  ‘We were inbound to Tuy Hòa in twenty minutes, but now it was also night over the South China Sea. It was still raining and the cloud layer had thickened. Just as at An Khê, we were just 100 or 200 feet above our minimum approach altitude. Tuy Hòa did not yet have radar or even an approach radio to use for a landing aid. We were cleared for an approach, again using the radar and me as our main aids. The radar, however, did not paint the field at Tuy Hòa; so the approach was planned as a turn so many seconds after we came abeam of the river, which sat a half mile to the north of the Base. The river did give a strong radar return. Tuy Hòa sat just inland from the coast and the nearest mountains were ten or fifteen miles east of the runway. Our missed approach plan was to climb straight ahead to 1,000 feet and then circle to the south and back out over the ocean for another attempt.