Chuck

Quentin Roosevelt, an American President's youngest son, was a ~20 year old fighter pilot shot down near the end of WW I in France. He's buried next to his older brother somewhere in France, who died in France during D Day as a BG...Wow! Even tho Pres T Roosevelt may have had some wacky ideas, He was a true American Patriot, as were his children...If only America had that kind of civilian leadership today...How far we have fallen as a Republic...The one bright spot is that today's young people serving America's Armed Forces still have that spark to protect America and Freedom! And, that's in spite of all of the BS coming out of Washington today! Shades of Vietnam all over again... As they say: Freedom is NOT Free

I believe Melvin Rash was Buried at Arlington earlier, as well. Mel was in the 346th at Dyess straight from Shepard LM school ~dec '66 before pcs to Naha...

I was always in the back, busy, when air dropping, but my feeble brain sure seems to remember that the check list called for the co-pilot opening the ramp and door; no reason that FE couldn't open, as switch was within his reach, as well. All my CDS drops were at 800 feet, if I remember right. I believe that most were on target at Khe Sanh even though most all were performed in fog or mist for most of the run in...

Was not the 15 Dec'69 crash also a pax run from Taipei to CCK?

Even when I didn't fill out a form F (though, even incountry we were supposed to leave a filled out form F "behind" somewhere, even if only under a rock...) I always slipped the load, unless pax or medi evac or bladder bird. Of course floor loading pax onto pallets, you'd herd them all into the plane and not let them sit down till you closed the ramp and door & you could get a heck of a lot more than 92 pax (& animals...) on board, but you were stuck with where they ended up on the floor! With 25-35K of pallets or rolling stock, because of the low fuel fuel load, I always worried about being too nose heavy, which would only become more nose heavy as you burned off fuel...

Sometime late '69 or early '70 I was LM on CCK bird that air dropped a roll, or two, of toilet paper out the paratroop door onto the flight deck of a flat top in the South China Sea... Major Gross was my AC...People were waiting for us on the ramp at Cam Ranh Bay...Apparently the Navy was able to read the very large "DY" on our tail...

I don't think that the beef is so much the J airframe itself as they brought the 130 up to the 21st century and stayed with props! (tho, a wider cargo compartment would have been nice...but, impossible to do when staying with in envelope dim.; really easier to make the Army/Marines make their combat equipment fit the opening...) I think that the sellout relates to crew complement of the J with the Air Force mgmt and Lockheed complicit. For strategic airlift, in today's GPS environment (as long as it doesn't get knocked out in some way; heck the bad guys have broken into the drone software...) along with eliminating the navigator, you probably could get away with cutting out the Loadmaster positon (this is coming from a former LM), as well... I'm not sure tho, even for strategic airlift, how you justify eliminating the FE position? What was it, a Northwest Crew that overflew their destination by an hour? Who buys into the "laptop distraction"? Do you think those two pilots would have dozed off a FE was sitting between them... Now combat airlift is a different story! I know that I'm pre GPS, but I would not want to be operating under combat conditions in forward areas (and VFR, to boot...which lots of SEA was) without a live Magellan up front! (I would also have concern with long overwater flights...including vectoring for bad weather...). The importance of the FE, to me, at least, is a no brainer: From my 130 E flight crew experience, from '66 to '70, the FE on our crew was the last word on aircraft airworthiness! I never recall an AC not deferring to the FE when it came to the mechanics of the aircraft! Most all of my flight engineers were "longer in the tooth" than the pilots...Even the Majors an LC's that had started flying in WWII would defer to the FE for airworthiness. Man, at least for combat airlift, nothing replaces experience and a five person flight crew! Eliminating the FE is like eliminating the platoon sargent in the Army...

Dan, Shoulder fired missiles (even the early, inaccurate ones) would have been a total game changer for TAC airlift in SEA. The only area that we worried about missiles was when flying in the northern part of I Corp, as there had been rumors that the NVA had moved SAM's along the north side of the DMZ, in late '67 thru '70, at least. I would add when flying up close to the DMZ it was a major concern, to the point I seem to remember that along with the navigator making damn sure where we were at all times, I think that we weren't anywhere near as high as we would be normally. Of course we had no counter measures either. I don't even want to imagine what TAC airlift would be like when the shoulder fired stuff first started to show up; I suppose that the Russians know... As far as "cost of loss," it was around in the '60's as well. Before the C5, it was the 123's that were sacrificed instead of the 130's... As far as the 141's were concerned, I don't think that there was any thoughts of using it for in-theater airlift, as well as the primary strategic airlifter... The C5 was going to be the "do all" airlifter (just like the 17)! I think that a combination of the reality of the impossibility of one airframe doing it all (heck, you can't even spec a truck tractor to do that! Same thing, except you hope not to become airborne in the TT) and the resultant design problems that came with trying to satisfy such a divergent group of requirements ended up relegating the C5 to strategic airlift (of course aquisition and upkeep $ played a major role)! Heck, you don't have to go any further than the landing gear on the C5. I seem to remember that the gear on the 130 was going to be fixed originally... Sounds like aerial resupply in the Afghan theater as/will be very interesting; I will readily admit that I would give my eye teeth to be a part of it, on any airframe (tho I wanted nothing to do with the C5 in '70...)...

Have we really had a true test of intheater TAC air/land resupply, carried out day in/day out for years, since SEA? Just asking.. I think that TAC airlift could have been used more in Iraq to cut back on the truck convoys that were continually hit...Afghanistan will be interesting... Without the 123 & 130 (& the Caribou) how would we have resupplied Khe Sanh during the seige? Heck, I remember when they wouldn't let us land any longer and would only let 123's land, in part because of the fear of loosing 130s (tho, I believe that we only lost one Marine 130 during the seige). At that point we started dropping the original CDS. (They wouldn't let us do LAPES anymore either...tho I think that was for a different reason than potenially loosing 130 airframes on the runway). The 17 could certainly do the airdrop and could have assault landed at Khe Sanh, but how would the Marines have handled all that cargo at one hit off a 17? At Khe Sanh, one of the most dangerous places to hang out at was on the runway for those guys (which was true of a lot of the forward air fields...). When the guys came out to unload you they wanted you in and out fast! We were bringing in 5 pallets; what would they have done with ~20 pallets off a 17? Also, what about 90,000 lbs of CDS off the drop zone vs 30,000 lbs (also the recovery and exposure time and the potential for it falling into the wrong hands...). Now couple that with loosing a 17 on the runway at Khe Sanh, or having one shot down during air drop... Anybody remember the "old timers" talking about the 124 that was lost between Korea and Japan during the Korean war that was loaded with Pax on both the main floor and the upper floor? I don't remember how many but, didn't that cause the 124 to be de rated for pax carrying capacity? I believe that a version of the YC-14/15 (and in that size range; not put on steriods like the 17) would have fit the bill for forward operations. The 130 E/H could have taken over the role of the 123... As it relates to TAC airlift, bigger is not always better...Also, reality is that USG, given a choice, would rather lose several 130's than a single 17 (or C5...) (in SEA it was the 123 that was the sacrificial lamb vs the 130...)

If we ever have another war that requires the type of air resupply and the forward area's air field evironments that was a big part of SEA, I think that, for fixed wing aircraft at least, the 130 will still be carrying the water (at least that transport movement that hasn't been taken over by Rotary Wing and a version of the V22). Sure, I think it was Pleiku that 133's brought in the 101st & 124's brought in heavy equipment directly into some of the forward fields in SVN and did a great job; and no small feat for the 133's! The 141's had some missions that flew directly from the States into some of the more forward fields too. I know that was also the intent of the C5's, but landing gear issues amongst other issues nixed that. I think that even -30's would have been a little too long for some of the SVN operations. The E model had enough weight capacity (+35K) while operating incountry ops (you are limited by how much weight/cargo most forward locations can handle at one time anyways...); Though, it would have been handy if the E could have handled something wider than an APC... Of course that was what the YC-14 & 15 was all about...What other airframe, besides the 130 could land on 3000' of psp just wide enough for the landing gear with red clay dust blowing all over the place or mud just waiting to suck you in during monsoons on both sides of you. Then back all the back to the threshold and speed off load the pallets with no damage (or. back up to a tree, chain the end of a multiple married pallet full of helicopter blades or a gun barrel and have the plane pull out from under it resting the married pallets on a series of drums...). Then 2 hours later when you come back into the same airstrip with 5 more pallets, the 5 pallets of ammo (or ice cream or milk...) from your first off load were still sitting exactly where you speed off loaded them! I can't count the number of times that I brought in ice cream or milk into Quang Tri or Dong Ha at 3AM and when we came back at 7AM with ammo the ice cream and milk pallets were right where we left them (they usually secured the ammo faster, I will say...)...You sure weren't going to hang around like a sitting duck while the Army or Marines made room for you (nor did the guys on the ground want you to hang out on their airstrip either!) What about buddy starts, or the FE "hot wiring" the starter, or cutting off a shreded main tire, three engined take offs, or red clay dust that kicked up like a monsoon when reversing the props to stop. We certainly have other aircraft that can handle the long hauls better than even the -30 J, to say nothing of the E's & H's. However, what aircraft (besides rotary wing...) do we have today that could have handled the air/land resupply within the forward areas of SVN better than the 130 A, B & H or J's? Maybe we will find out in Afghanistan...

Tiny Clark has it right. I had a medi-evac out of, I think Pleiku, that included a guy that had been in a tank accident. He was in an iron lung and we secured him just in front of the paratroop doors behind the last litter stanchion and they pugged him into the aft outlet. If you grew up in the '50s most everyone was familiar with an iron lung...Times have sure changed! Now we worry about pig flu...

In SEA, wasn't that covered under plausible deniability? I recall doing/receiving buddy starts; a three engine take off and a windmill engine start... I remember leaving Form F's under a rock (all of mine must have blown away...). The only war ops plan that I remember seeing in writing was the EWP max gross take off wt of 175,000 lbs (E); but, going above 155,000 lbs would have to be authorized by someone up the chain of command... I'm pretty sure that there were missions that took off above max gross take off weight on the A, B & E and probably was a contributing cause of some them to crash on take off (one might have been the B model that crashed on takeoff out of Kamh Duc in early May '68)

Little Women Bar...'69-70

I just saw a video on fox re: the 615th Air Force CRW. They apparently have C17 hard aircrews trained for this mission (don't know if any 130's in the mix...). There sure does appear to be some interesting air dropping (looks like some heavy drops and combat airland speed off load delivery...) going on with this group, it seems. As a LM from the 60's, all of it in TAC, and all on E's, I was fortunate to do a lot of air dropping, including CDS and LAPES (including 1528). LAPES was something else! (CDS was a different kind of excitment over Khe Sanh during Tet...). How much of this type of air dropping is a part of the C130 line haul airlift squadron's mission today what, with all of the special ops 130s' out there?

Late '69 early '70 we had this issue with E models out of CCK. At least one lost between CCK & Taipei...I do remember wondering if they would ground all of the E's until they found the cause...I don't believe that anybody had figured out that the props were going into reverse inflight(at least one engine) causing loss of the airplane... If I remember correctly, a crew caught it in time, while climbing out of CCK, and shut it down before it took them in..Anybody else remember this? It sure was a big deal, at the time! I do remember that it caused for one heck of a lot of discussion at RMK on Herky Hill. I seem to remember that more than one aircraft was lost before the LUCKY crew caught it as it went into reverse (wonder how that'll work with only four eyeballs on the flight deck?)

They were mortared on their way out of Quan Loi in ~Nov '69. The loadmaster Norm Thomas was killed (346th crew). They had just picked up an A model crew that had broke down. Norm and the A model loadmaster were standing in between the paratroop doors tieing down the chocks when Norm was hit with a piece of the mortar round. He had a daughter that wasn't a year old at the time.

Young Lady, When it comes right down to it, you have to live with the decisions that you make as a young person for the rest of your life...I suspect that most of us have any number of friends within our age group that were able to avoid serving during the Vietnam conflict by employing any number of available subterfuges. I find that most of them, if not all, wonder in their later years if they made the right decision to wiggle their way out of serving their country. Those that state their sole reason for not serving their country is that they're against killing another human being is a red herring! I enlisted at 18, in 1966, right out of High School. I received my draft notice in July '66, but, decided to join the Air Force instead. Looking back, the four years that I spent as a Loadmaster, I would not trade for anything! That is not to say that there were periods in those four years, that at the time, I would have willingly traded places with just about anybody. In the end, we all have to live with the decisions and choices that we make throughout our life...