Bullwinkle

We took care of it for you Muff..Had a real good turn out from the DFC guys. May Jim now rest in peace.

I'll be there Rick

My old brain remembers this. Army exercise and we dropped about 6 Tanks.

All the crews dropping Lapes were from Little Rock. Story I heard from loadmasters that night as we were sitting at the bar went this way. Everything went just like it was suppose to but load hung up in the rails. Pilot pushed all the power in and started climbing at about 3 to 5 hundred feet the load departed A/C and went nose first into the ground. Picture was on front page of fayettenams newspaper the next morning.

1297 was the A/c that my sqd commander flew into Clark from here at the Rock.

I was on 1296 with the Ops officer. Both A/c had less then 1,500 hours on them. What a joy it was to fly such new A/C . The CC on 1297 was the CC that went to the factory and picked it up , if my old brain is remembering right.I believe he had a hangover for a couple weeks afterwards...

It was dropped by one of the Clark crews.

My crew was there on alert for backup.

Is this what your looking for

Try U Tube I believe there a couple on there.

Hey john I've got one here somewheres. It was something the 834Th there at Tan Son Nute gave out.I got mine in Feb. of 68 on my first in country stay.

They stopped the program in Mar or April of 68 when they started having to many Aircraft taking hits.I'll dig around and see if I can find it and scan you a copy.

To start with the Bullet Magnet came from my 18 month tour at Clark during that time I was on 17 "B" models that came back with holes in them.As for crashes I had the one , plus one off the end of a dirt field in nam and one that ended up crossways of a dirt runway plus one in Hondurus where the parking area gave way.I guess maybe the one at the Rock where a student took us off the runway on a three engine landing might count as something. Now you all be good to my buddy John we've known each other since we were just wet nosed teenagers.

Muff are you staying out of trouble???

jbob where are you???

I've got his e-mail and home address if you want it.I saw him a couple of years ago at a Loadmaster Reunion that we had at Dyess.

Yes I remeber him.

I was one of the Stan Eval Loads with the 50th.

We lost a bunch of good people on those drops.

Hey for those that would like to read about this mission from a Nav. then check out anloc.org and read Bob Kirkpactrics account.

It was one H--- of a day.

Welcome home to you also.

I sent my e-mail to that guy waiting for a response from him.

What a beautiful Aircraft that was at one time.

What would you like to know?

No you've got it right.The only thing is I can't remember where it was kept at.It was great for scanning the wings late at night, as long as you for warned the pilots.I remember them on the "B's"&"E's".You could plug them in at any of the electrical outlets in the cargo compartmentThey had about a 25 foot cord on them and they got hot real quick.

FYI...the C-130E that was blownup (mortars) during Operation Frequent Wind while on the ground at TSN was not a 776TAS bird but one from the 314TAW/50TAS flown in from Little Rock. When it landed at Clark AB from the Rock, a 776TAS crew flew it into TSN. The AC was Capt Larry Wessels, whom I flew with at Clark and CCK. None of the LR crews ever flew into TSN, and I firmly believe the Herk was blown up due to misidentification by the NVM. You see, the 314TAW birds had the new MAC fin flash, yellow stripes bordering the black MAC, which is very similar to the ARVN flag. The mortar rounds tracked the C-130E while it was taxing into the ramp, so I think the NVM mistook it for an ARVN C-130. An interesting note: The C-130 loss report had the gross weight of the bird at >200K lbs...seems everything missing from the 374TAW was onboard the bird at that time...all written off due to combat loss.

I was a Loadmaster in the 50th at the time this happened.

We had arrived at Clark the day before after flying from little Rock to March ,to Hickman with 12 hours on the ground then Midway on in to Clark.Long trip but quick.

The squadron was in the theator for incountry briefing with our first sorties to be flown that afternoon.During this briefing is when we got the word that all C-130 flights to TSN were cancelled and that one of our new aircraft had been destroyed.Nobody from Little Rock were aboard it.The 776 aircraft were in such bad shape that most of them were grounded for maintnece.They had flown the S--- out of them .

Never did get the full story but we had heard they had 2 Blu 82B's aboard when they got hit.

Hey Bob how was it?

Would any body out there have a picture of 63-7775.Before 18 April 1972 when we left it in a swamp.

Since I was there at good old CCK at that time I'll have to back up Bob as to Andy being PISSED.

Ralph