C-130 Hercules

by Martin W Bowman

  ‘To get checked out as an aircraft commander I needed short field landings. On 15 August I rode along with a 50th Squadron crew as an auxiliary crew member on a ‘bladder bird’ to deliver 30,000lb of JP4 for helicopters flying out of Sông Bé. In May 1965 the fortified capital of Phước Long Province had seen a major action between the Việt Công and Army of the Republic of Việtnam (ARVN) which had resulted in the city being retaken by the end of the second day of combat. ‘The trip meant no stick time but there are always things to learn. When we got overhead Sông Bé there was a solid overcast and no instrument approaches available, so we returned to Biên Hỏa to wait it out. After a rain storm the weather at Sông Bé improved, but its 3,400 foot aluminium runway was now too wet to land at this heavy weight. So we offloaded 15,000lbs of JP4 at Biên Hỏa and then pressed on to Sông Bé. After some diligent searching we found a hole in the overcast and then made a normal ‘firm’ landing. We offloaded the JP4 and cranked up, but the starter button for the #4 engine didn’t pop out (just like a week earlier at Đà Nẵng) so the engineer pulled the starter out while the rest of the crew sampled army chow. Sông Bé’s runway was too short for a windmill taxi start (which involves charging down the runway on three engines until you’re going fast enough that the airflow starts turning the dead prop) so we waited until another C-130 landed and requested a ‘buddy start’ (also called a ‘blow job’). We pulled up behind him on the runway with about 5 feet tailto-nose clearance. He set his power to max on all four engines and his propwash caused us to rock and roll. It took three attempts to get our #4 prop turning fast enough for the engine to sustain itself, then it took two minutes to accelerate to normal speed.’

  C-130A A97-206 (57-0499) of 36 Squadron RAAF on arrival at Sàigòn (Tân Sòn Nhứt) in 1969.

  Australian MPs on the line at Tân Sòn Nhứt in May 1968. (Stan Middleton).

  ‘On 13 October I was finally scheduled for an instrument check flight on a round-trip to Việtnam - we called such a trip an ‘out-and-back’. Our orders were to fly to Biên Hỏa and return. In addition to being a check ride, it was my first trip as the aircraft commander and my first flight with my own crew, so I was pumped! The flight engineer was also getting a check ride and after our previous mechanical problems we were paying especially close attention to the airplane’s condition. The airplane checked out just fine so we cranked it up.

  ‘We taxied out and the engineer brought the outboard engines up to normal ground idle, which sped up the airplane a bit. I applied the brakes to slow us down and nothing happened! I tried the brakes a second time and still got no braking. So I told the co-pilot to turn on the auxiliary hydraulic pump and select emergency brakes. Those worked! (If this had happened while we were landing on a short field we would have been in trouble.) We tried normal brakes again and they worked very erratically, so we switched back to emergency brakes and taxied back in. We picked up some maintenance guys and did a taxi check. This time the brakes worked just fine! We never found out what went wrong, but since everything was working again we pressed on out to the runway.

  ‘At CCK the military there was on a high state of alert, ready to go to war at any moment. Before we reached the runway, the Chinese scrambled their F-104s and in a rush to take off, one taxied under our right wing!

  ‘We were carrying 21 tons of fresh vegetables for the troops in Việtnam. To avoid refuelling in Việtnam we also carried enough fuel for the roundtrip; 18 tons. At this heavy weight we made a very slow climb out and could only reach 18,000 feet - below the preferred altitude for this route. But the trip to Biên Hỏa was uneventful and I made a really good GCA (ground-controlled radar approach) and a grease job landing. I hoped this impressed the check pilot.

  ‘After a Biên Hỏa ‘heartburn hamburger’ I returned to the airplane to return to CCK. But meanwhile the plane had been loaded with two passengers and five pallets of cargo whose destination was Cam Ranh Bay! Strange. So I called up ‘Herman Billy’ (call sign for the CCK command post) and asked what was going on. They told me that while in Việtnam I was under the control of the Việtnam command post (call sign ‘Hilda’ - the airlift control centre at Tân Sơn Nhứt). Apparently someone at ‘Hilda’ had decided we could make a little stop at Cam Ranh Bay on our way back to Taiwan! OK, whatever...

  ‘So we flew TAC VFR (visual flight rules in the clouds with radar flight-following) to Cam Ranh Bay, where I flew a very good VFR approach and landing. I filed a new flight plan to CCK because the original one was only good for returning directly from Biên Hỏa. I made a disappointing ILS (instrument landing system) approach and landing at CCK. So after doing well all day long I ended my check ride on a down note. But at my check ride debriefing the flight examiner had only praise for my flying and my crew management. Hurray!

  ‘En route the monsoon season in Việtnam made flying tough. Every day there was rain, overcast and low visibility, which made it nearly impossible to get from airport to airport using Visual Flight Rules (VFR). So we used other means. In Việtnam the civil en route air traffic controllers didn’t have radar. Instead, Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) was done the pre-radar way based on aircraft reporting over various navigation aids. This meant that very few aircraft could fly IFR in the same airspace at the same time, so IFR departure delays of up to four hours were typical. But the Air Force didn’t wait for civil aviation rules in Việtnam. Instead, we used ‘Tactical’ Visual Flight Rules using visual flight rules in instrument meteorological conditions. If this sounds like an oxymoron, it was!

  During ‘Lam Son 719’ in 1971 when eleven C-130Bs were temporarily stationed at Đà Nẵng to fly loads into Khê Sanh, C-130B 61-2642 was destroyed on the ground in an early morning rocket attack on Sunday 21st February by a 122 mm rocket which went into the fuselage, which also damaged others nearby. Đà Nẵng was nicknamed ‘Rocket City’ because it was subject to such frequent rocket attacks. The only salvageable part of 642 was its tail, which was reused on an AC-130. The quick action of the men of the 15th Aerial Port Squadron kept this attack from becoming a disaster. Luckily, 642 was the only bird on the ramp that was not loaded with Class A explosives bound for Khê Sanh next morning and it had no flight or ground personnel inside.

  KC-130F Bu150688 of VMGR-152 at Đông Hà combat base in Việtnam in 1969.

  The Air Force GCI (Ground Control Interception) guys had radar. In good weather they used radar to direct air attacks on specific locations. In bad weather they did advisory radar flight following for guys like us flying TAC VFR. There were GCI sites in Sàigòn (call sign ‘Paris’), Buôn Ma Thuột (call sign ‘Pyramid’), Nha Trang (call sign ‘Port Call’), Đà Nẵng (call sign ‘Panama’), Bình Thủy (call sign ‘Paddy’) and others. The good news was that the GCI controllers’ radar could see aircraft quite effectively in the weather. The bad news was that the controllers didn’t have information about all flights. And their radar had no information about what altitude the traffic was using. ‘Panama’ might call us and advise, ‘Fast mover northbound at your 12 o’clock, two miles, non-beacon.’ This meant that there was an unknown jet directly ahead of us with no transponder information. It may have been thousands of feet above or below us, but we couldn’t tell, so we had to take immediate evasive action.

  ‘Theoretically, IFR-assigned altitudes provided vertical separation between IFR and VFR (and TAC VFR) traffic so long as you were in level flight. Aircraft flying IFR were assigned altitudes at thousands of feet, e.g. 4,000 feet (flight level 40). VFR and TAC VFR rules said to fly at thousands of feet plus 500, e.g. 4,500 feet. (In the weather Army helicopters made up their own convention, flying at altitudes of thousands of feet plus 250 feet, e.g. 4,250 feet, which they called flight level 42.5.) When flying TAC VFR, I tried to find a cruise altitude above 10,000 feet, which was above most helicopters, unpressurized aircraft and piston-engine aircraft. All in all TAC VFR was an effective but risky method of getting from place to place in the weather.

  ‘Approach and landing
at the destination was a whole different ball game. Most airports had published instrument approaches that gave us a path to descend safely in the clouds to a specified minimum altitude. If at minimums we had the runway in sight, we could land. If we couldn’t land safely, we followed the published missed approach procedure and climbed out again. Large airfields had precision approaches that allowed us to fly down to 200 feet or even 100 feet in the clouds. At medium-sized airfields we could use radio navigation aids to descend to about 500 feet above the ground. Small fields typically had no navigation aids.

  ‘On 6 November the weather was lousy that day and as soon as we departed Tân Sơn Nhứt, departure control told us that the field was now closed because the ceiling was below landing minimums (100 feet). At nearby Biên Hỏa we picked up eighty Marines who had arrived in Việtnam just the day before. They were replacement troops for one organization, so this was considered a ‘unit move’. That meant that they didn’t get to enjoy our luxurious bucket seats. Instead they were ‘combat-loaded’ onto pallets with tie-down straps for seat belts. I believe this was to welcome them to the combat zone and help them make their brand-new jungle fatigues look less brand new.

  ‘We flew TAC VFR to Chu Lai, where approach control eventually picked us up on radar. They gave us a GCA (radar ground-controlled approach) so we had precision radar guidance all the way down. We broke out of the cloud layer at about 250 feet, but unfortunately they hadn’t aligned us with the runway and we couldn’t make a safe landing from that position. So we followed the missed approach procedure and climbed back into the clouds. This down-and-back-up stuff was probably pretty disconcerting to our green-bean passengers, who had probably never done a goaround or missed approach before. But we’d done it hundreds of times and it was pretty routine.

  ‘We told approach control how they had aligned us so they could adjust on the next try. The weather had apparently gotten worse, because this time we descended in the overcast all the way to minimums - 200 feet above the ground. We couldn’t see anything but clouds, so we went missed approach again. We gave up on landing at Chu Lai so we called up our Airlift Control Center and asked where we they wanted us to take our passengers. They told us to go to Cam Ranh Bay. So that day our passengers flew with us 300 miles up to Chu Lai, endured two missed approaches, then flew 200 miles back down to Cam Ranh Bay. Maybe you could call that 100 miles of progress - welcome to Việtnam, guys!

  ‘And this brings me to a related issue: optimistic weather observations. We could not make an instrument approach if the weather was below minimums for that approach. For example, if the cloud ceiling was at 200 feet, it wouldn’t make sense to start an approach that had a minimum descent altitude of 300 feet. But when the weather was really bad and approach controllers were really busy, they had a temptation to fudge the numbers a little. For example...That day we returned from Cam Ranh Bay to Tân Sơn Nhứt and the weather was still bad there. Approach control called it a 300-feet-overcast so they gave us a non-precision approach, which allowed us to descend to 300 feet above the ground and didn’t require a radar controller. At 300 feet we were still in the clouds so we had to go missed approach. Obviously the ceiling was well below 300 feet. Next they revised the weather observation down to 200 feet overcast and gave us a precision GCA down to 100 feet. At 100 feet above the ground we still didn’t see any runway so we went missed approach again. Obviously the ceiling was well below 200 feet. On the third try we broke out of the weather at 100 feet above the ground and landed OK. Whew! Can you imagine an airline doing this?

  C-130 crew moments before take-off for an airdrop at An Lộc.

  ‘Whatever else, it’s the GI’s inalienable right to complain. On 4 December it was the last day of my in-country shuttle and my airplane had been given the 67/2 configuration - 67 passenger seats and two baggage pallets. It was a bad configuration for Việtnam because passengers brought little baggage and really only one baggage pallet was needed. 67/2 also packed the passengers more tightly together, eliminated rear ladders for passenger entry, moved the centre of gravity too far forward and reduced our capacity to 67 pax. Departing Tân Sơn Nhứt our pax were Việtnamese and it took a half hour to explain that we were going to take only sixty-seven of their seventy troops to Cam Ranh Bay.

  ‘At Cam Ranh Bay passenger service couldn’t find our scheduled passengers for Biên Hỏa (!) so they gave us some space-available pax whose destination was Tân Sơn Nhứt. Our onboard radar died as we taxied out, so we taxied back in to get it fixed. While the radar man began his work, pax service found our scheduled troops! They were packed in like sardines and it was so uncomfortable that after an hour two passengers got off. Our radar wasn’t fixable, so I checked the weather closely and decided to press on. Departing Cam Ranh Bay IFR in the soup, departure control told us we had traffic at 12 o’clock, two miles and converging. Then he said he couldn’t vector us clear because we had not yet reached his minimum vectoring altitude! We were on course for a mid-air collision, needed a little advice on which way to turn and his rule book said not to give any! So I made a sharp 45-degreebank turn and hoped for the best. I evaded the traffic, the controller and the artillery and climbed up to 14,000 feet to be above the weather. Then the air conditioning crapped out, so we swam in our sweat for a while.

  ‘Descending into Biên Hỏa there was more artillery to avoid and more bad weather. The co-pilot saw some perimeter lights and told approach control that we had the field in sight. To approach control that meant we were in visual conditions and didn’t need their services anymore, so they handed us off to the tower. Unfortunately the lights he saw were not Biên Hỏa’s so we didn’t really have the field in sight. I spiralled down, spotted Biên Hỏa through a hole in the clouds and sneaked in underneath them. But on base leg the overcast was too low to fly under. To stay out of the clouds I had to turn onto final approach prematurely. I cut the power to idle, but we still crossed the runway threshold hot and high. Since Biên Hỏa had a 10,000 foot runway, I landed 5,000 feet long with plenty of runway left over. I think 5,000 feet long was my personal record.)

  ‘In January 1971 the war was in the wind down stage, but the 834th was still hauling supplies to various areas in-country. Most missions were the ‘bladder bird’ variety, but we also flew a few ‘Daisy Cutter’ and med-evac missions. On 23 January we loaded up our pax for Huế and Đà Nẵng. Meanwhile the loadmaster found hydraulic fluid leaking from the aux system pressure transmitter behind the right side seats. There’s also a direct-reading gauge so we just capped off the line for the remote gauge. It probably did not instill confidence as the passengers watched the hydraulics man working on our leaky plumbing. But with that taken care of, we started engines and taxied out. Before the first takeoff of the day I ran up the engines to full speed to verify that all was well in that department. Unfortunately the tachometer showed that the #4 prop was fluctuating badly. Uh oh. C-130 engines are supposed to run at a constant speed - only the angle of the propeller blades should vary. We called maintenance and taxied back in. The passengers remained onboard while the prop man worked on #4. He said it was all fixed so I taxied out and ran it up again. The fluctuation was better, but still out of limits so we taxied back in again. Sigh. Again they tweaked #4 and again we taxied out. When I ran it up again, the prop was still fluctuating, but within limits. I still had a hinky feeling about #4 but not liking the airplane wasn’t a good enough reason not to fly it. So I took off. On climb out #4 confirmed my hinky feeling. The fluctuation got much worse - now three times the max allowable. If a prop fluctuates too wildly, it can decouple from the engine. And if the prop goes out of control it can leave its usual position on the wing and crash into the fuselage or another prop. Would not want that. So we climbed up to traffic pattern altitude, ran the engine shutdown checklist and feathered #4. That stopped the engine from turning and set the prop to its maximum blade angle so it had the least wind resistance.

  ‘This was my first ‘opportunity’ to feather an eng
ine and make a three-engine landing, but I’d practiced it many times so I wasn’t worried. But when our passengers saw our #4 prop come to a stop, it probably did not add to their confidence in air travel. I declared an emergency, flew the Tân Sơn Nhứt traffic pattern and returned for a smooth landing. ‘It is better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air than in the air wishing you were on the ground.’ I told maintenance that they needed to really fix that airplane and that we had flown it all we were going to that day. There were no more flyable airplanes available so we were done for the day. After three trips to the runway and one trip around the traffic pattern our passengers were a bit tired and cranky. We couldn’t give them complimentary drinks so we sent them back to the aerial port where they had started hours earlier.

  ‘Our destination on 30 January was classified: Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The airfield had been attacked a week earlier - here’s a newspaper article about it. But the runway was apparently OK again so we loaded up ten tons of ‘Class A’ (explosives) and took to the skies. As the crow flies, it was just 110 miles from Sàigòn to Phnom Penh, but between the two were restricted areas where bombs fell. To avoid ground fire, traffic and artillery we frequently flew ‘feet wet’- parallel to the coastline. So from Sàigòn we flew south across the Mekong Delta until we reached the South China Sea, then around the southern tip of Việtnam and up the Gulf of Thailand into Cambodia, about an hour’s flying time. I mentioned that this day’s flying might be interesting and indeed it was. We flew less than two hours but when I landed and turned off the runway I was amazed at what a scene of destruction the place was - collapsed hangars, burned out buildings, burned out passenger terminal, burned out control tower. Spooky and deserted. The only thing moving was a T-28 taxiing down the runway with its crew chiefs taking a ride.