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Dyess 50th C-130 anniversity


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Received this from a friend that was there. Interested if anyone else that attended had the same opinion.

"The anticipation exceeded the event. They weren't interested in anything other than the here and now. It was a plastic, politically correct, self laudatory celebration of the current regime and the current Abilene community.

You would have thought there might have been some interest in attendees that brought the first C-130's there in 1961. There were three there. Forget it! There were four former wing commanders there, Who cares? It was the only AF function I have ever attended which had corporate sponsors.

They had an award for the pilot with the most flying hours in the C-130, a local LC who had 5900 hours. Several of us there had nearly 2000 more and the hosts knew it. There are hundreds of enlisted types who have more time. But it would have spoiled a "gimmick" presentation, so forget it.

We should have expected it, as there certainly was no effort on the part of the hosts to find any of us. We practically invited ourselves. Lesson learned."

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As part of the planning committee I know that we got ahold of the 39th, the 317th and the 463rd Associations and then advertised on Facebook, contacted Protocol and sent invitations out to general officers to get it into their network, Military Affairs Committee and any group we could. We took adds out in the paper, used the base paper and any sign we could get our info out on. We even did a flyby of the city with the H and J model and put news camera men on it to broadcast to Abilene and surround area. We also contact PR at Barksdale, Goodfellow, Little Rock to get the word out and contacted as many people, I think over 800 via any way we could, phone, email, etc.

We organized local artist for the main art piece and a silent auction for the other art pieces. We also arranged the first drink to be free at the dinner. The local Lt. Col was Rob Hedden who has been the Director of Operations for the 39th and 40th and I believe the commander of the 317th Operations Support Squadron (I could be wrong on that one). He has logged almost 6000 in C-130’s starting his C-130 Career with me in 1993 at Dyess in the 40th so there was some history there. Most of the high timers have retired or switched jobs because of the constant deployment we have been under since 9/11.

I believe Lt. Col. Hedden was the high time flyer in the group. I am a very old timer with about 4500 hours. That is how young our crews are now. We had no way of data mining every retiree’s flying hours that might or might not show up so we went with a known. The young fellow with the least amount of hours was just a book end. I personally arranged the fellow with the museum collection to be at the dinner which got a good reception.

Our budget was almost zero dollars and our cost was more than you would expect putting on a modern day reunion. The list goes on and on as to the cost incurred and the only way we could get what we did was through local community involvement. It was also not just the 50 years of the C-130 but the celebration of the fantastic city of Abilene working with the C-130 folks even keeping them there during the BRAC a few years ago. The community was generous considering current economic times. We have no complaints there. A lot of us used our own money to finance things like the coins for the event knowing we would get paid back (and we have been) but we were that committed to trying to make it the best we could. I could name a civilian, a SMSgt and a dozen Captains and Lieutenants that worked their butts off especially in the contacts area not to mention all the other moving parts.

We also had to coordinate a 317th Open House with all the events. There were briefings of current airdrop capabilities, tribute to fallen C-130 Airmen, and history of C-130s at Dyess by Mr. Brian Smith (Group Historian). You must have missed the very nice presentation of Ms. Kay Nehring that showed her father’s service in the 39th TCS during the Battle of Corregidor. She married up her father’s very touching letters home to the actual color footage he had shot while flying as a pilot in C-47’s. She had actual captured maps and artifacts from his time in the Pacific. It was a very nice presentation on the life of an Airlifter and how much things have not changed. There was also an open house going on at the Sim so you could see the new technology we use for training.

We put out the itinerary on the Gala dinner brochures and handed them out as much as possible so people could see what they wanted to see. We even set up active duty airmen on the two different C-130 airframes so folks could talk to their counterpart of when they were active duty. We also set up an airdrop demo of CDS for anyone who wanted to brave the winds.

To top it all off we were also working with the Experimental Aircraft Association to put on an airshow at Abilene Regional Airport. That coordination alone took many hours of arranging visiting military aircraft per regulations, Navy aircraft and F-16 aerial demo team, along with the logistics of visiting aircraft recovery, servicing, clearances, MX support and security. We also had the local car clubs showing cars and some local businesses showing their wares, Civil Air Patrol and all the logistics that goes with food, bathrooms, safety, sound systems, etc. It was a lot to do in a very short time with a very, very small budget.

All this while the 39th was at Red Flag and the 40th was deployed to the desert. Hours and hours were spent on making it as good as we could. We started 4 months out getting everything going and even though we got great support from our host base, remember we are still a tenant unit there. We did all of this while doing our normal duties, flying, and training.

Your experience might be different but I can tell you it was not for lack of effort on the Active duty guys and our fantastic civilian volunteers who tried to make it happen.

If you have legitimate complaints, I would be happy to put you in touch with the event coordinator and we will put in in our “hot wash†and continuity book for next time. This letter was just a little insight into what went on. I could write another 5 pages going into the detail of all the things that went on to try to make this a special night. I might be a little sensitive of criticism because I saw firsthand the amount of work that went into this.

I would like to see what experiences others who went had.

You are still welcome to your opinion.

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We retired Jimbo Crawford today. He is trying to become a cop for Abilene. I moved up to Group as the FE Functional/Stan-Evil guy. I am hanging out to High year which should be 1 Dec 12. I think Chief Woods is going to beat me to fly the last H model out of here. LOL! Howz Polcat doing?

Kelz

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