C-130 helps RAF Hawk.

[wysongj]

C-130 helps damaged British jet land in Iraq

Staff report

Posted : Monday Dec 15, 2008 17:53:21 EST

A deployed C-130 Hercules aircrew is earning praise for guiding a damaged British jet to a safe night landing in Iraq.

On the night of Nov. 30, pilot Capt. Daniel Hilferty was flying near the worst storm he had ever seen when his crew heard a distress call from a Royal Air Force Hawker 800 passenger jet.

The RAF executive jet had been damaged by the storm and didn’t have a working weather radar or a fully functional yaw dampener to prevent the plane from swinging left and right. The British crew also didn’t know how much damage hail had done to the jet’s fuselage.

The C-130 crew, assigned to the 386th Air Expeditionary Wing, used readings from their weather radar to guide the RAF jet around the storm.

“It was pretty neat that we were helping them, to be their flying radar in the sky,†said flight engineer Senior Airman Sean Ryan. “Sometimes we could see better than they could, and we would tell them to turn a certain way to avoid this cloud or this part of the storm.â€

Next, the two crews agreed to a mid-air rendezvous so the C-130 crew could look for damage on the jet using night-vision goggles.

“We normally fly no closer than 2,000 feet in the C-130, and we have multiple instruments, including distance and radar-like equipment, to ensure proper clearance,†said Hilferty, a C-130 instructor pilot and the flight’s aircraft commander. “The [british aircraft] possessed none of these luxuries, so we found ourselves flying in an unusually close proximity to a foreign aircraft at night with night-vision goggles.â€

Flying half a mile to the right and 500 feet above the jet, the C-130 crew used a high-power flashlight to illuminate the RAF jet.

“There was a lot of damage,†Ryan said. “You could see where the hail had hit along the nose cone, the tail and the inlets of the engine, and there were dents along every leading edge of the airplane.â€

Despite the damage, the aircrews concluded the British jet could attempt a landing at Baghdad and the plane touched down safely. The C-130 followed, and the crews got a chance to meet face to face.

“They told us until we started [giving them directions], they were sure they were going to die,†said Hilferty.

“If you have the chance to help someone, it’s a no-brainer,†the pilot from Little Rock Air Force Base, Ark., said. “If you can help in that situation, you do the best you can.â€

Other members of the C-130 crew included co-pilot Capt. Taylor Johnston, navigator 1st Lt. Ryan Pebler and loadmaster Senior Airman Allen Plack.