It's the props that make the C-130 so much fun to fly. I considered just taxiing the beast pure pleasure. The big props were my happy servants, ready to respond to the most whimsical twitch of my fingers on the throttles. I found myself often pushing up the power very slightly while taxiing just to hear the props sing their accordionlike whine as they changed pitch. And then I'd pull them back into reverse and listen to them abandon their whine and enter into a great blowing belch.
And in the air the Herc was a fine handling machine, much more sensitive than the '141. It was good for formation flying because of the instantaneous thrust when power was applied (as opposed to a turbojet engine, which requires "spool-up" time). Often this instantaneous power feature was the savior of the third aircraft in a CDS drop.
It was arguably our most hazardous maneuver. The CDS, or container delivery system, was a low-altitude drop (about 500 feet) in which pallets loaded with large metal containers slid out the rear of the plane, their huge parachutes opening just prior to impact. We relied on gravity to pull the CDS from the cargo floor, and in order to achieve this, we had to slow the aircraft down to a critical speed with little or no flaps, so that our angle of attack caused a high deck angle. It's very unsettling, doing that at such a low altitude, and the planes in the rear of the formation had the problem of fighting the prop wash and wake turbulence of the planes ahead. Numbers two and three "stacked high" in hopes of flying over the turbulent air, but still it happened.
You're out there in the dark just a few wingspans above the cottonwoods, with your right hand full of throttles, your left with seventy-five tons of bucking airplane, eyes darting from altimeter to airspeed indicator, from compass to fuel flow indicators, then quickly refocusing on the ludicrously dim formation lights of the guy ahead. Thoughts that should have been left on the ground play around the periphery of your mental focus. You try to forget about the account that you lost today and the boss's foreboding over the business downturn. But the distracting thoughts continue to probe for a crack, an inroad through which to gain access to the critical core of your concentration. And then, as the navigator calls "one minute warning," it happens.
You feel it before you see it. The airspeed decay causes a loss of lift, a sinking feeling. One of the invisible but devilish curls of wake turbulence seizes your wing tip and rolls you violently. Your mind clears; you're in the survival mode now. You counteract with opposite aileron, but now, because of loss of lift, you've sunk down into the teeth of the raging vortexes, forcing you to fight to keep the Herc upright. Instinctively you ram the throttles forward and feel the four big Allison turbines thrust you into blessed acceleration. And as you battle to maintain altitude and formation spacing, you try to follow the navigator's meticulous heading instructions. He's down on the deck beside your seat, kneeling on all fours, his head pressed against the lower quarter window, watching for his computed release point. Every few seconds he keys his boom mic and directs a heading change. "Four degrees right, steady, two right, two left." It's almost preposterous, fighting the invisible tornadoes while trying to turn only two degrees. You do the best you can.
The one minute seems like an hour, but finally comes the nav's command. "GREEN LIGHT!" The copilot switches on the green light in the cargo compartment, and the loadmaster jerks the lanyard, which releases the heavy load. You hear an awful roar, like something is ripping the aircraft apart. As the load separates, the '130 lurches forward, rejuvenated, rid of its burden, and pitches abruptly as the center of gravity suddenly shifts about fifty feet.
Then you push the throttles to max power for the escape maneuver. While you close the distance to rejoin the formation, you listen intently for the drop report.
"Twenty at nine, three," comes the transmission from the DZ ofricer, who is also a C-130 pilot from your unit.
Your load has impacted twenty yards left of the bull's-eye. Not bad, but the navigator will blame you for the error. He takes responsibility for the six o'clock to twelve o'clock errors, because those are timing problems, but the three to nine errors are heading problems and thus yours, assuming he has given you the correct heading commands (which of course he always assumes).
Despite the hazards, we all delighted over the formation airdrop missions. Those evenings were sportive occasions. Three complete crews, totaling fifteen or twenty crewdogs, assembled for premission festivities, which usually included palavering over fast foods picked up on the way over from work. Then the briefing was delivered by the aircraft commander of the lead plane in the formation. Some stayed after the mission for beer or went over to Harvey's, the crewdog hangout. We enjoyed one another's company. The times were good. But one such night still stands out clearly. It was a night when complacency gave wayas is its tendencyto terror.
A line of thunderstorms was slowly crossing the Mississippi River to our west, but according to the forecast, we would have clear but hazy weather for the low-level route and the drop. The night was very dark with no moon, and haze blotted out most stars, yet the air was smooth. Our call sign was Ruler 12, number two, in a three-ship formation, sitting at the standard 2,000 feet in trail behind the leader. Ruler 13 was another 2,000 feet behind us. This was a visual formation, but we were using our station keeping equipment (SKE) as a backup, to monitor the position of the other planes in the formation. The SKE information was displayed on the radar scope, but our scope was inoperative that night. It was not a problem, though, since the scopes in the other planes worked, and we did not anticipate weather penetration. Visual contact was all we needed. All was well until shortly after we dropped down to our standard 1,000-foot altitude for night operations.
The warning was ever so subtle. I momentarily lost sight of Lead's lights as some soupy cloud flashed by us. But such conditions weren't unusual this time of year. It must have been some patchy fog. There were no thunderstorms forecast for this area until much later in the night, "Right, Jeff?" I sought reassurance from my copilot.
"Right."
We knew that the leader had a good radar and hoped he would not lead us into something nasty. I relaxed as the fog disappeared and the security of Ruler 11's formation lights reappeared. But then Hell paid us a visit.
Lead's lights disappeared again. Something grabbed us. The huge claws of some giant demon into whose stormy lair we had blundered gripped us and began to shake us savagely. The Herc lurched, jolted, and slammed, as if the weather demons were using us in some sinister demolition game.
"CLIMB! CLIMB!" yelled Russ Gatlin, my navigator. As he spoke I was thrusting the throttles forward and rotating, knowing that I had to get away from the ground immediately. But the Herc was bucking so hard that I couldn't read the gauges. The pitot-static instruments were fluctuating wildly, what I could see of them. I fought off a twinge of panic, trying to modulate the back pressure to get a climb going but not too much, lest I overrotate and let the airspeed decay.
As I fought the storm, I tried to remember the procedures for inadvertent weather penetration. Since I was number two, and slightly on the right side, the procedure called for me to turn right forty-five degrees, hold that course for one minute, and then resume the base heading. Three would do the opposite. This would give the formationnow dangerously blinda much safer spacing. But that procedure obviously wasn't going to work here in the throws of a struggle for survival where we couldn't even hold a steady heading.
About that time I heard the leader's frantic radio call. "Everybody turn south, NOW!"