C-130

There is a low rumble somewhere in the distance.  It is unmistakable if you’ve spent most of your adult life around it.  It doesn’t increase, nor does it decrease.  It is just there in the background.  It is the sound of a C-130 bringing its four Allison turboprop engines to life in preparation for a flight.  Somewhere in the world, as you read this, there will be a C-130 starting engines.  Some crew will be preparing for their mission.

The C-130 has been in continuous production since 1955, and in that time the aircraft that was originally built to provide the US Army with tactical airlift has been adapted for almost any mission you can imagine.

They have been used to snatch men from the ground with a system called sky hook, they have caught satellites falling from the heavens with the All American system, they have flown low, dragging a hook to have cargo pulled out of them to support Kah San, or they have had their cargo pulled from them with extraction parachutes.

The aircraft has landed on an aircraft carrier, and Antarctic.  It has been equipped with rockets powerful enough to lift it off the ground in 300 feet when it weighted 175,000 pounds or stop in in the same distance.   Some have been modified to be the most accurate and deadly close air support platform known, and are in continuous demand when special operations teams need help.  Others have been equipped with special radars allowing them to fly 250 feet above the ground on nights so dark and weather so thick you can’t see the hand in front of your face.  Other's search for survivors, or refuel other aircraft needing fuel to complete their mission.

It has sniffed the air looking for radiation, and it has dropped the biggest conventional bombs ever made.  But perhaps it is best known as being the first aircraft sent to help with disaster relief.  It has dropped food to starving people on every continent and it has brought medical teams to victims of floods, earthquakes, tsunami’s, droughts, and civil wars.

It has fought wild fires, and feed starving cattle cut off by blizzards.   When villages are isolated by weather the C-130 and its crews find ways to get to wherever they need to be.

When Lockheed built the C-130 they gave it a name, I doubt anyone appreciated how appropriate it would be.  Hercules, the Roman and Greek hero known for his strength and perseverance, I think the C-130 has certainly lived up to his legends.