C-130 touches down early

The entire north slope of Alaska is flat for more or less 300 miles except for one bluff called Franklin Bluff. At that location, there was a construction camp for the building of the Trans Alaska Pipeline which housed thousands of people and lots of equipment. There were daily flights in and out at all times of the day and night. Wien ran an F-27/F-227 operation into the area for crew changeouts and a different carrier (name not important) moved all the cargo. At times, I suspect we might have run in a 737 if the passenger load was heavy.

On one winter night, the other carrier using a C-130 was inbound in a heavy snow storm using an NDB approach. This comment is in no way meant to be disrespectful toward the flight crew and probably most commercial pilots in those days did the same thing. I know our flight crews did and with a red face, I suspect I did it once too. They busted minimums forgetting about the bluff I suspect. As I recall, the bluff was like 200 foot AGL.

At a point short of the runway without the lights in sight, they hit the bluff a glancing blow and as I recall, gear up with some flaps. Immediately, the engines sucked in a whole bunch of dry powder snow which was kicked up by the nose and ingested to the point the air intakes were packed and the fire warning sensors overheated and sent out a fire warning light to the crew. Both looked outside and couldn't see anything so they didn't shut any down but pulled up a little while feeling things out. Finally the fire warning lights went out so things calmed down a little.

The third crew and the load master looked over the load and fuselage for damage and from the inside, everything looked OK. Still, the captain elected to return to Fairbanks at reduced airspeed just in case. Had it been daylight, there would have been lots of turbulence but at night, it was more or less calm.

Once back to Fairbanks and offloaded, the aircraft was really gone through and they found the back was broken so they went to the railroad and got 2 or 3 railroad rails and attached them to the floor inside for strength and than a crew flew it back to Marietta, GA where they pulled the wings, engines, and tail feathers and put a new fuselage under it and flew it back to Alaska. What a workhorse that C-130 is. Just like a four engine Super Cub in a way.

amen to the C-130 120+ combat missions and i'm still here

Korb said:

amen to the C-130 120+ combat missions and i'm still here

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You would not believe the work the C-130s did building the oil industry in the oil patch on the north slope of Alaska. Every carrier with a C-130 was working there but I never recall an A model in the group. The oil companies really liked that long fuselage and bigger engines.
In the early days before the haul road was completed, almost every aircraft that could fly, from a DC-3 clear up to the C-130s flew day and night and in all kinds of weather. Even the C-5 made two trips into the Deadhorse airport. The good old A-10s made several photo flights into the area and spent time at our terminal. On their departure, they made two passes over the airport with cameras on and later, an envelope came in with some special photos, some taken with a fisheye lens. The Deadhorse and Prudhoe Bay airports didn't have radar so it was kind of like "hey guys, where are you, what are you driving and on what bearing on the NDB". I am talking about hundreds and hundreds of flights per day and durring those years, not a mid air or near miss reported. Almost impossible except for one thing. The fantastic capability of the flight crews. This time, it was those in the air that made it happen, not the government crews on the ground. Everyone respected the other flight crews and it ran like clock work. My personal thoughts were comparable to the airlift in Germany in WWII. If you were a light twin or single engine, stay as close to the ground as posable and fit yourself in with the big iron at the last minute and make the final at 100 mph or above and a very fast roll out and departure from the runway. After all, a big guy with 4 props is ready to chew up your tail feathers. It always worked. Could it happen again today? I truly doubt it. Pilots today are not the same as those that flew the north slope of Alaska in the 60s and 70s. Of course I mean no disrespect to today's pilots, only how things have changed over the years.

I recently survived an under 200 foot RCAS RA while in a C-130, that resulted in us going vertical (straight down) at full power to avoid the two F-15Cs that tried their darnedest to smoosh into us. We were 60 pax and 14,000 pounds cargo, and I browned out on pull out. As it was a combat zone and the airfield we were taking off from was under rocket attack, we continued south to Kuwait. On landing, it was obvious that the bird was bent.

I can recall so very clearly, first, the larger than life F15 that flashed into view, second, the view of the horizon out of the top windows, and third, how the horizon kept creeping up on both side windows as we tried to pull out without smooshing into the ground.

When I asked the flight engineer when the last time they had a spar check on this very early -B model, he looked at his watch, and said, "About 90 seconds ago." In a valiant attempt to be funny, the navigator said something about a new method for non-destructive testing.

I owe my life, as well as the 60 some others on board, to the incredible agility and toughness of this amazing workhorse.

Thanks Drew. What an experience for sure and how lucky you were that day.

With the wing structure of the C-5 in the early models, guess what would probably have happened to one in the same situation. Even the C-130As.

At one point, there was a cargo carrier flying, among other types,
C-130s (not sure what model) from Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay with oil field equipment, no passengers. At a point north of Bettles over the Brooks Range on one trip, they ran into some rather severe CAT at cruise altitude and they lost a wing. I knew one of the flight crew and even listened to the VCR tape much later. It takes a very long time to go from cruise to the ground.

On letdown into Iliamna, Alaska, a Wien F-27 hit some rather bad CAT and lost a wing. I believe I shared that story in AlaskaAv memories or AlaskaAv memories two a couple of months ago. That one was due to a maintenance oversight though.

Thanks again Drew for sharing that story with us.