I started at AIS right after this accident and took over as the TERPS and Departure Procedure Instructor.
The official reasons for the crash were crew error but I believe it was a failure of Air Force training Air Force wide.
US HERK stated: “Advanced Instrument School uses this vignette to illustrate how haphazard the C-130 community was back in those days.â€
I can’t speak for the current AIS group as I have been gone for a while but when I was there the intent was not to talk bad about the Herk community at all. I was very vocal in the issues I had about how the Air Force taught departure procedures as a whole. Having been a T-37 IP both at UPT and PIT I understood very well exactly how it was taught. The basics were that we had to meet the climb gradient but other things didn’t apply to us. There was no climb gradient posted on the Jackson Hole DP so no problem, just take off, maintain at least 200’/NM and they were good to go. (At least that is what most IPs had been teaching at UPT for years.) Well, obviously that was not the case here. Had the crew flown the published DP they could have maintained 200/NM and been just fine but very few instructors at the time were teaching that. Yes, there were a lot of other contributing factors to the accident but when it comes down to it I believe the Air Force as a whole failed this crew and the accident would not have happened had the training been properly training its pilots all along.
We rewrote the AFIs and went to each of the UPT bases to teach the instructors the proper way to teach DPs. I don’t know how it is in the USAF now but I hope it is understood a little better today though I gather some of the requirements may have gone overboard.
This wasn’t truly pilot error in my opinion but a failure of the Air Force across the board. It happened in the 130 community but really every USAF weapon system at the time was training the same way it just happened to be a Herk that got the attention of the nation.
I was researching this accident for an FAA paper when I came across this forum. My deepest sympathies go out to the family and friends of this crew. While officially it was crew error all of us that were in the training business failed this crew and for that I am sorry.
JC Findley
