Dragon Rouge Airplane to Robins Museum

[SamMcGowan]

Resting Place for a Red Dragon Herk: A 47-year-old C-130E, one of the Air Force's oldest Hercules aircraft and the veteran of a harrowing rescue decades ago, landed for the last time at Robins AFB, Ga., for display at the adjacent Museum of Aviation. Aircraft # 63-7868 arrived at Robins on Tuesday, reported the Macon Telegraph. On Nov. 23, 1964, this aircraft was among the C-130s that participated in Operation Dragon Rouge to rescue 2,000 western hostages held by rebels in Stanleyville in the former Republic of the Congo. Damaged by rebel fire departing Stanleyville, aircraft # 63-7868 continued 800 miles on three engines, delivering its passengers to safety and earning its crew the MacKay Trophy for the most meritorious flight of that year. Previously assigned to the 314th Airlift Wing at Little Rock AFB, Ark., this C-130E is the museum's second Hercules variant, joining an AC-130 gunship already on display. (See also Museum of Aviation release)

[SamMcGowan]

I didn't see the other post. FYI, the Troop Carrier/Tactical Airlift Assoc. convention will be at Warner Robins October, 2012. Already a number of Pope veterans are making plans to come. This will give more incentive. I'm in touch with several Dragon Rouge veterans and will encourage them to make the trip.

[SamMcGowan]

I'm trying to get a list of the Chalk Numbers and corresponding tail numbers for the mission. Somewhere I have a copy of Col. Don Strobaugh's mission report. He was a captain with 5th Aerial Port at Evreux at the time and went into Stanleyville with the mission. I can't find my copy but am in touch with Don and hoping he has his handy. I just now talked to Mack Secord, who was the pilot on Chalk Six. They lost a life raft and went back to Kamina to get the spare. Mack lives in Atlanta. He got a call from the museum at Robins asking if it was his airplane but doesn't have access to his records. Crawford Ingram was his engineer.

[SamMcGowan]

http://www.robins.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123271109 - This is the news release from Robins about 7868. It says that Mack Secord was the pilot who flew it in and out of Stanleyville. I talked to Mack today and he said the museum had called him but he doesn't know for sure. Mack and his crew were Chalk Six and were supposed to drop some equipment to the Belgians to use to clear the runway. After they took off out of Kamina, they lost a life raft and it wrapped around the vertical stabilizer. They turned around and went back to Kamina and got the spare airplane, which may have been 63-7868. By the time they reached Stanleyville, the field had been secured and Chalks 7-11 had landed and discharged their troops and took off again. Mack landed and was told to wait on the ground along with Chalk 12, which was configured as a hospital, to wait for the hostages to be brought to the airfield. When they got there, they all headed for Mack's airplane because he still had the engines running. They were all wounded so his loadmasters, one of whom was Al Collins who was later at Clark (Al was with 5th APS and was second loadmaster - I don't know his crew loadmaster was) had to get them off of the airplane over to the other one. After they loaded up with about 100-125 passengers, they taxied out to takeoff. As they passed by some elephant grass, two Simbas jumped out and one fired a burst from a submachine gun into the wing while the other tried to force the paratroop door. None of the crew knew it but the Chalk 12 crew saw what happened. The other crew called them on the radio but Mack failed to realize what they were telling him until after he had become airborne. They knew they had fuel streaming out of the wing and decided to land without reverse. His engineer was SSgt Crawford Ingraham. Mack had hit his head the night before when he came out to his airplane to get some sleep and had a splitting headache all day. When he finally got to Leopoldville they had to lift him out of the seat. The flight surgeon diagnosed him with a brain concussion.