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Patches


Muff Millen
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Here is an article that was posted in the AFA news.....

Brings back a lot of memories....good to see that the old bird is still flying...

Muff

Khe Sanh Veteran Back in Combat: The 746th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron, which has been supporting operations in Southwest Asia since February, recently added one more C-130 to its ranks: a 45-year-old C-130E known as Patches that arrived from Pope AFB, N.C. The aircraft, tail no. 62-1817, has a famous past that goes back to the 77-day battle of Khe Sanh in early 1968 during the Vietnam War. With overland supply of the embattled Marines impossible, Patches and her crew braved enemy fire to land and deliver much-needed supplies to the besieged outpost Feb. 5, 1968. The aircraft sustained substantial damage upon landing and taking off, but finished the mission. Pilot Lt. Col. Howard Dallman received the Air Force Cross for his efforts in leading the flight; all crew members received the Silver Star. \"I\'m proud to have her on our ramp,\" said Lt. Col. Daniel Tulley, 746th EAS commander, from Little Rock AFB, Ark. \"It gives our crewmembers and maintainers a sense of pride to know that one of their aircraft has been through something that significant.\" (USAF report by SrA. Tong Duong)

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Greetings...I remember at Pope when we recieved Patches a few years ago from Idaho and hearing the Vietnam story for the first time....quite an amazing one, the first story I read talked about the bulldozer where as the most recent one had no mention of it...also the name Patches came from the aircraft\'s inability to keep any paint on her, no sure if this was also the case in Idaho or just her unhappiness to be at Pope

looking at the next post here I guess the reason for the name probably more to do with repaired damage from Khe Sahn and not the paint.

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Charlie Brault was the FE on that mission, we all heard alot of stories over cold ones, like the marine that got killed holding the flashlight for Charlie, that Charlie had to jerry rig some of the hydralics due to damage. They were heros in our eyes. Another plane that took a beating around that same time acquired over 80 holes from a mortar or rocket attack, only two out of eight fuel tanks held fuel, but the crew got it back to Da Nang from Dong Ha. We heard that a crew from Lockheed came in a pieced it back together and flew it back to the states were it was put back together and returned to service. I saw it on the ramp at Da Nang it looked pretty sad.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Just wondering if any of you guys know the tail number of the C-130 that received the \"Purple Heart\". I do know that she was an \"E\" model and the last time I saw her was when I was stationed at Ramstein. If I remember right one if not both wings were blown off and of course the engines had to be R2\'d.

Hank

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  • 4 months later...

Hello all. been quite some time since ive been on. Hey muff, fellow tampa native here, your post reminded me of a website i recently stumbeld upon an saw that acft 63-7879 is still in service at Yokota. Then looking at the gallery, i see a pic of 63-7865 is still there too. Looks like its the wing or squadron bird. I worked on both of those acft when I was at Yokota from 90 jan to 93 jan. Its amazing to see those birds still in service!! My bird, 64-0556 I think is at Hurlburt as a ground trainer.

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  • 4 months later...

I was reading about patches and Khe Sanh . It brought back old memories when i flew in and out of Khe Sanh. I remember one thing that seemed strange to me and I wanted to see if anybody else remembers it. I landed at Da nang, and there was 4. C-130s parked on the ramp with fire trucks parked in front of them spraying water into the engine intakes. At first I thought there may be a fire. After I got out of the airplane I ask a person on the ramp what was going on. He said that they were C130's that had been on flying into Khe Sanh. And they were washing the dirt and grime out of the engines. I had never heard of such a thing but there they were the firetrucks springing lots of water into the engines. Has anyone else ever seen this before. But

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cfisher

what you were witnessing was a "compressor wash" this is the fairly quick and simple approach, by using fire trucks or a jet of water sprayed down the engine intakes. It was to clean the compressor of dirt, grime, oil, etc from the compressor blades, quick/simple not real effective.

The preferred way is to inject a soap and water solution at the compressor bleed valves, then followed up by 2 rinse of clean water, disconnect everything and then do an engine run. As soon as engine is on speed, you close the bleed air valve on the engine as not to contaminate the air conditioning packs, after 20 to 30 minutes of running engines and using the wing anti-ice/empennage anti-ice systems, to draw bleed air off the engines, you would sample the air coming from the air conditioning packs to see how it smelled. If the smell was OK then you could shutdown, if it still smelled like soap then you went to cycling the ainti-ice systems on and off again, until the air conditioning packs no longer smelled like soap.

Occassionally the "socks" in the air conditioning packs would have to be changed out to get rid of the soap smell.

Hope this helps out.

Rex.

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  • 1 month later...

A compressor wash was standard maintenance procedure following foreign object ingestion. In 1968 I was the FE on a New Zealand Airforce C130H on short finals to RAF base Changi Singapore ex Vung Tau Vietnam. A large Fish Eagle Struck the No 3 Prop at 300 feet decaying the engine rpm and partially blocking the intake. We shut the engine down as we entered the landing flare to minimise engine damage. After consulting our engine maintenance manual ( we carried a full library of C130 maintenance manuals at all times) I carried out a prop runout check, removed the compressor bleeds and scope checked the compressor blades for damage. I called in a fire truck and during the engine run they hosed a considerable amount of water into the engine intake; following satisfactory power indications on the run we did a test flight to confirm normal engine operation which was ok and the following day we flew the aircraft back to NZ. All this was in complete compliance with the manual.

Murray Rutherfurd

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On the subject of patched aircraft, does anyone out there know how 55-0026 got shot up while in SEA? It is presently with National Aircraft in Tucson and so far we have been able to count 219 repairs to just the fuselage, horizontal and vertical stabs. The wings having been replaced during later rehabs.

Most repairs are left side and under surfaces and vary in size from 1/2" to 12" x 18".

I spoke to Hank Snow and he flew one through the Ah Shau valley which got shot up pretty bad but he doesn't remember the tail number. I believe it was also a Thunderbirds support a/c for awhile.

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  • 2 months later...

Hello all. been quite some time since ive been on. Hey muff, fellow tampa native here, your post reminded me of a website i recently stumbeld upon an saw that acft 63-7879 is still in service at Yokota. Then looking at the gallery, i see a pic of 63-7865 is still there too. Looks like its the wing or squadron bird. I worked on both of those acft when I was at Yokota from 90 jan to 93 jan. Its amazing to see those birds still in service!! My bird, 64-0556 I think is at Hurlburt as a ground trainer.

Actually 79 and 65 went to Ramstein where I was stationed. I think we got about 4 birds from Yokota. 65 of course was our "Purple Heart" bird and had a big Purple Heart along with some history on the Nav's table. 79 was actually my plane for a little while. Took the ol' girl to Depot as a matter of fact. As far as replacing the Herks with 17's, I don't think it will ever happen 100%. Unfortunately some of them just have so many hours on them they are restricted and useless for anything but training missions because of the wing joints. They are more of a pain in our a$$ than anything because of scheduling issues. My favorite plane ever is probably 63-7825. She was mine in the desert, and flew like an absolute champ!

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