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WYO ANG


mongo
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59-1533 c/n [cn]3586[/cn]

This was the tail number of one airplane damaged at Cheyenne. This airplane was reportedly picked up and dropped back to the earth during a tornado. I remembered seeing photos of the fuselage being loaded into a C5, I think and sent back to the factory. After wings and a tail it was assigned to the NCANG. I'm sure any of the Wyoming guys might have photos and hopefully they will post them.

Larry

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Correction

This C-130 was moved by NASA on its Super Guppy in July 1980, to Hayes Corp. Birmingham, AL for repairs. I was the NASA loadmaster (Cargo Mission Manager, job paid more that of a LM). I was a civil service employee with the Johnson Spce Center which owned and operated the Super Guppy that loaded the AC. At the same time I was an AFR C-130B LM assigned to the 924th TAG, Bergstrom AFB, TX. The Warner Robins Depot built wooden cradles to support the fuselage, the landing gears were removed and the fuselage was cut at FS737 and as much weight was removed as possible to meet our weight restrictions.

NASA purchased the Super Guppy to move oversized loads for the Space Shuttle and Space Station programs, We would move oversized loads for DOD, DOD contractors and other goverment agencies to keep the Guppy busy and help pay the bills.

I have located the pictures and I'll post them later.

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  • 4 years later...

Images posted these images on behalf of bob130ab.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4343[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4344[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4345[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4346[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4347[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4348[/ATTACH]

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Yes for me on desent and landing, the pilots didn't control the throttles, the FE did and we didn't use head sets to talk to each other. On approach the pilots would call out power setting to the FE and sometime as we desented to fast they would start calling for more power. The Guppy is a modified C-97 and I understand that many of Boeing's earlier large ac was configued that way. The Supper Guppy's fuselage was 25' in diamerture but we couldn't use all of it as we had to raise the loads to accomodate the conture of the Guppy using the adapters in the photo. we had different hight adapters and sometimes we stacked a couple of the shorter ones. We moved a bunch of A-7, F-14, and sections of the B-1 fuselarge for DOD.

After a few mission me and the other two LM normally didn't fly with the Guppy as the preplanning and load preperation proved to be more helpful for us to fly commerical ahead of the Guppy and have the load ready and loading crew organized prior to the Guppy's arrival.

Watching the Guppy land and take off looks weird. Because of the airflow under it's large fuselage it would lift off of the ground with the main landing gear first then run on the nose gear for a ways before lifting off and climb the same way. Also it touched down on the nose gear first. This Guppy had the turbo prop engines from the C-133. We used up all available props after operating it for 9 years, it's now at DM. After I retired NASA purchased another Super Guppy from the French Gov that is equipped with engines from a C-130H and is still operating but is about to run out of work due to the Space Shutttle program ending.

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I don't know how many C-97s were converted to Guppys. There was a Mini Guppy, Pregnant Guppy, the one in the photo and the newer version that the French Gov bought or modified. The Mini and Pregnant Guppy had recip engines. This was before my time. I have seen photos of the Pregnant Guppy. It was loaded from the rear. The tail was removed and rolled away. It and ours belonged to a private company. NASA would charter them to move oversize space articles. Between the time span of the Apollo and Space Shuttle Programs the company went out of business.

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We used to see one stop at Frankfurt every now and then when I was at Rhein Main. 84-86, always drew attention, I would have liked to get a closer look at it but they taxi'd to the Frankfurt airport flight line and not the military ramp. People back then said Airbus owned it to ferry fuselages and wings.

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I was in transient alert at Patrick AFB in 73-74 (before the Cape had a runway). We would close the east-west runway and I would get to park the Guppy. It was usually there to unloaded components for the the Apollo launch assemblies. It was always amazing watching it get unloaded.

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Here's an excerpt from an email I got from the ex-Gemini Air Cargo captain about the Guppy.

Don R.

"I flew the Boeing 377MG mini guppy with Aero Union for a bit and really enjoyed the a/c. It had 4360 engines and we could not get full hp out of it because we couldn't get 115/145 fuel. It ran really great and was a helluva lot of fun to fly. The engineer was pretty busy. When I first was flying the plane, (I was copilot) and we had the tail swung open, I asked who checked he control cables when it was put back together. The answer was "We all do".

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