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Another Herk in another Batman movie : technical question inside


Fräulein
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So we went and saw The Dark Knight Rises.

The first ten minutes of the film involve a Herk and a feat that had me questioning if it was possible.

This is so far the only link that I can find to give you a reference if you have not seen it http://jerrygarrett.wordpress.com/2012/07/22/how-the-aerial-stunt-was-filmed-in-dark-knight-rises/

Yes the special effects used a glider that looked like a turboprop. But would that be possible?

eta- lets just say that the turboprop on average weighs 9800lbs. I think a herc can carry a maximum of 42000.

But it is not a tow truck. Garbage scow, yes. Tow truck no. I would think the drag on the weight of the turboprop would factor in.

eta-the comments section in the link says the guy doesn't know the did between turbo prop and a jet. The aircraft in the movie did have props.

The mock up plane they used on the ground for interior shots

http://www.flicksandbits.com/2012/07/23/four-new-the-dark-knight-rises-behind-the-scenes-images/28826/dark-knight-rises-airplane/

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The only thing towed by the Herc was the four stuntmen. All the lifting of the turboprop was done with a helicopter.

I fly as a loadmaster for the company that operates the C-130 in the film, International Air Response in Mesa, AZ (www.internationalairresponse.com). The aircraft is a C-130A, registration N121TG (ex-USAF 56-0511 LPN 3119). The filming was done over a 4-5 week period in July of last year. Unfortunately (for me) they didn't require a loadmaster so instead of a sojourn in chilly Scotland, I instead got to go do airdrops at Yuma, AZ in one of our other C-130s. A good bit warmer.

Prior to shooting, one of the first things the production guys asked IAR was "how slow can that thing fly?, to which the reply was, "let's take it up an find out". The answer was about 80 KIAS straight and level with full flaps. You'll notice that in the film the flaps are at 100% which is not usual for straight and level flight. The not to exceed airspeed for filming was typically 90 KIAS in order to not outrun the camera helicopter.

Makes for interesting formation flying. As related by the pilot, during one sequence they indavertently found themselves inside a cloud with four guys trailing out the back. Two released and parachuted down and the other two were winched quickly back into the plane. Although only exposed for maybe 30 seconds, they were coated with ice and had experienced a serious drop in core temperature.

My company, Big Sky Aviation Interational, was also contacted in the spring of 2011 by a production company who was bidding on some of the aerial work for this film. The portion that we bid on involved rigging a Bandierante fuselage, sans wings for lift by a helicopter, and also rigging the fuselage without the nose and tail for lift in a vertical plane and subsequent cutaway from a helicopter with the stunt men aboard the fuselage. Unfortunately for us, the production company we worked with didn't wind up with the contract.

Looks like from what you write that they used a standin for the actual Bandierante, but the fuselage hanging in the vertical plane does appear to be done with a helicopter and the rigging appears similar to what we discussed in our proposal.

Early next week I will be flying an airdrop mission on the same aircraft used in the movie, N121TG, flown by the same pilot. I'd be happy to pass on any questions you may have for him. Just e-mail to me at [email protected]

Edited by jflimbach
misspelling
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  • 3 months later...

Just finally watched the movie last night. Nice sequence but artistic license! The weight of the plane would have dropped substantially, probably by half, when the wings and tail came off. But still, a lot of weight to be pulling through the air.

Also, it wouldn't have hung straight down. All the Embraer stuff was done with a helicopter (four point suspension), and cut away at the appropriate moment with the stunt men stiill inside. Neat trick.

So, the only thing the C-130 towed were the four stuntment (skydivers) they let off the ramp on a cable.

It looks like the C-130 isn't doing much until you consider that the pilot, Dave Kunz, was flying formation on the Embraer, up a mountain valley below the peaks, in marginal VFR weather (there was at least one inadvertant IMC event), all while maintaining and indicated airspeed of 85 +/- 5 Knots (note the flaps at 100%). The low airspeed was necessary to keep from running away from the camera chopper which had a top speed of 90 knots. The crew did a great job of holding right on the edge of the stall while getting good footage and making it look easy in the process.

Trust me, you do not want to power on stall the Herc. Back in the late 70's when I was in the C-17 SPO at Wright-Pat I used to get my flying time in with the 4450th Test Wing. One time MAC lent us an airplane to instrument and wanted us to investigate the flight dynamics of rejected landing from a short field approach. Apparently this scenario had caused them several accidents.

So, the idea was to setup a landing approach to a simulated short field, gear down, flaps 100 and the airplane trimmed up. The test point was for the copilot to call "Go Around" at which time max power was applied, then gear up and flaps 50 in rapid succession. The idea was to not touch the elevator trim and let the airplane react while the instruments took the data.

Being cautious souls, all this took place at 10,000 ft AGL. Obviously we knew that the airplane was going to pitch up. All the configuration changes result in pitch up moments which are additive. So we knew it was going to pitch, but the gusto with which it did so surprised us a bit. So as the pucker factor kicked in, the test pilot initiated recovery by pushing briskly forward on the yoke and trimming nose down. The flaps stayed at 50 and the throttles were still all the way forward because the airspeed was decaying at an alarming rate, considering it started at 100 flap threshold speed. Of course as everyone who's flown the Herc knows, there is a great deal of pitch inertia built in. So when the yoke was pushed full forward, the nose kept coming up and of course the airspeed kept going down. By the time the nose started down, the pucker factor in the cockpit was fairly extreme. Once back to straight and level the heart rates slowly go back to normal and pretty soon the test pilot uttered those immortal words, "Hmmm, maybe we should take another look at that". Wonder how many crews that's killed? I spent a lot of years in airdrop testing and had quite a few interesting moments after somebody said that.

At any rate, now that we had seen it, thought we knew what we were doing, so climbed back up to 10,000, set up and repeated the test thinking that we could catch the pitchup before it got out of hand. Wrong! The second time it really got away and we couldn't get the nose down. The thing that saved us was that the test pilot in the left seat was not a C-130 pilot, although he had flown it once or twice in test pilot school. He had a lot of hours in the F-4 in which the trick to staying alive at high angles of attack is to unload the wings, keep the wings level and ball centered with rudder and don't touch anything else. You either recover or eject. Not having the ejection option, our intrepid pilot reverted to his F-4 training and pushed the yoke forward to the stop, kept the nose straight with the rudder, and we all prayed that it wasn't going over on its back. After what seemed like an eternity of literally hanging on the props, the rudder effectiveness went down to the point that the nose slowly yawed to the left and eventually fell to the horizon and below. As the airspeed increased he make a nice recovery from the ensuing dive.

Now one of the keys to surviving a poweron deep stall in the Herc, (besides not going over on your back, in which case you're just screwed), is to not get into a spin. To not spin, you have to control yaw. True for anything from a Cessna to a C-5. The ugly thing about a spin in the Herc is that the extreme yaw causes the fuel to surge outboard in the wing opposite to the direction of the spin, this creates forces that destroy the interity of the fuel cells as the fuel surges outboard causing structural failure of that wing, followed shortly thereafter by failure on the remaining wing and the airplane then goes into "Lawn Dart" mode.

You also need LOTS of altitude. We had started out at 10,000 feet and recovered around 5,000. At this point we'd had way more than enough and RTB for a mandatory underwear change and a few beers.

The primary recommendation to come out of that test was that if you don't really pay attention and start trimming the nose down as soon as you initiate the go around, you may find yourself literally out of airspeed, altitude, and ideas in pretty short order. Seems like a commons sense kind of thing, but apparently a couple guys hadn't done it and crashed and burned. Which is why that asked us to investigate it in the first place.

All of which is a wordy way of saying that it took lots of skill (and guts) to fly that Herc up the valley at 85 knots for long periods of time to get the footage we've all seen. Took a lot of hard work to make it look as easy as it did.

Hats off to the crew of N121TG, Dave Kunz (P), David "Chicken" Gorman (CP), and Kevin Powell (FE).

Check out some other IAR video clips at

www.internationalairresponse.com[/HTML]

John

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Back in the day, 1975-76 in the 16th TATS, we did approach to stalls in training but not full on stalls. That was plenty for this FE.

Now SEFFEGeorge, you know we did some pretty interesting things in the Herk, including the Catching of Falling Stars. However you are spot on, the dead weight would have been a bit to much.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Now SEFFEGeorge, you know we did some pretty interesting things in the Herk, including the Catching of Falling Stars. However you are spot on, the dead weight would have been a bit to much.

Best assignment I ever had, except for the 1st shirt, what a "never flown as a crew member" d***head.

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