{"id":54660,"date":"2014-08-21T07:25:45","date_gmt":"2014-08-21T11:25:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=54660"},"modified":"2014-08-21T10:26:40","modified_gmt":"2014-08-21T14:26:40","slug":"happy-birthday-old-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=54660","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday, Old Friend"},"content":{"rendered":"

This Saturday will be an old friend\u2019s 60th birthday. On 23 August 1954, the Lockheed C-130 made its first flight.<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the US military aircraft with the longest operational history. That honor goes to the B-52, which first flew on 15 April 1952 and entered operational service on 29 June 1955<\/a> (the C-130 entered operational service on 9 December 1956).<\/p>\n

However, like the B-52 the C-130 has been a US military fixture \u2013 and workhorse – as far back as I can remember.<\/p>\n

It was not the first military aircraft in which I ever flew. That would have been either a UH-1 or a C-123. After three plus decades, I can\u2019t remember with certainty which of those two was the first \u2013 I think it was a UH-1, but I\u2019m not positive.<\/p>\n

However, it was indeed a C-130 that took me from Kuwait to Iraq \u2013 both times. And I left Iraq both times on one.\u00a0 It was also the military aircraft on which I flew last while in uniform.<\/p>\n

Over the years, I flew on a number of C-130s \u2013 including at least one that might have literally been older than I was. When I was young, the Air National Guard still had a few \u201cA model\u201d C-130s in their inventory.\u00a0\u00a0 Some of those C-130As supported my unit on one exercise.<\/p>\n

The C-130 always put me down safely, and took me where I wanted to go (with one minor hiccup, discussed here<\/a>).\u00a0 Unless, of course, I was jumping out of the bird’s jump doors – or walking off it’s loading ramp at jump altitude (got the chance to do a tailgate jump or two – they were a blast).\u00a0 (smile)<\/p>\n

The C-130 has been called the most successful military aircraft in history<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 Frankly, it\u2019s hard to argue with that characterization.\u00a0 It’s a helluva fine piece of military hardware.<\/p>\n

Finally:\u00a0 believe it or not \u2013 you can indeed get more than 450<\/span><\/em><\/strong> people on-board a C-130, take off \u2013 and land safely. It\u2019s been done at least once<\/a>. And yes, this last link is indeed worth your time to read.<\/p>\n

Happy birthday, Herc. I hope to be here for your 70th and beyond.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

PS, and FWIW:\u00a0 according to his autobiography, Ben Rich helped designed the intakes on the C-130 in his pre-Skunk Works days.\u00a0 Maybe that’s one reason why the bird was so successful.\u00a0 (smile)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This Saturday will be an old friend\u2019s 60th birthday. On 23 August 1954, the Lockheed C-130 … Happy Birthday, Old Friend<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-air-force","category-historical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54660\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}