WT Forums

<i>If there is trash to be hauled, the C-130 can haul it there.</i>


<b>Biggest Plane To Land on Carrier Joins Pensacola Naval Museum</b> (Posted: Friday, March 04, 2005)
[Associated Press, March 3, 2005]

(by) BILL KACZOR

PENSACOLA, Fla. - The biggest plane ever to land on an aircraft carrier, a four-engine turbo prop transport, has become a museum piece after the short-lived experiment, but the pilot who flew those missions says the Navy is showing renewed interest 42 years later.

The hulking Marine Corps cargo plane, configured as a tanker, left Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego this week on its final flight to Pensacola, where it now is the newest addition to the National Museum of Naval Aviation.

During November 1963, the KC-130 made 21 full-stop landings aboard the USS Forrestal.

The pilot, retired Rear Adm. James H. Flatley III, recalled Thursday that his colleagues doubted such a big plane could land on a carrier. The KC-130 has a 132-foot wingspan and the total weight, including cargo and fuel, ranged from 40 to 60 tons during Flatley's landings.

The C-2, which is now used to deliver cargo to carriers, has an 80-foot wingspan and a maximum weight of 28.7 tons.

"Everybody kind of laughed about (the KC-130) and said `We may look at it around the field here, but that thing's never going to the ship," Flatley said from his home in Mount Pleasant, S.C. "Six weeks later we were all done."

Navy officials summoned Flatley to the Pentagon to discuss the project about six months ago.
Today's larger carriers could more easily land C-130s, but their main interest is for the proposed "sea basing" of troops and equipment on platforms or large ships instead of in foreign countries.

Such sea bases could include runways slightly longer than the Forrestal's 1,017-foot flight deck.
"You could run C-130s in and out of there all day," Flatley said.

The experiment began with a series of touch-and-go landings off Jacksonville and then full-stop landings off Cape Cod, Mass., all without benefit of a tailhook that usually brings carrier planes to a stop.

Instead, Flatley and his two crew members flew the plane slower than normal before hitting the brakes and reversing the engines to bring it to a stop in only about 275 feet.

"We were standing, literally standing, on the brakes before we hit down," Flatley said.

The plane also had plenty of power to get back into the air without a catapult or rockets sometimes used for short takeoffs.

Flatley, now 71, went on to set a record with 1,608 carrier landings, mostly in jets, that stood for 10 years. The KC-130 saw service in Vietnam, as did Flatley, and other war zones, most recently Afghanistan and Iraq.

A variant of the C-130 Hercules, Flatley's is part of the museum's outdoor aircraft display at Pensacola Naval Air Station.

Flatley was a fighter pilot like his father, a Word War II Navy ace. He was fresh out of test pilot school at the Naval Air Test Center at Patuxent River, Md., when he got the C-130 assignment.

The Navy kept his feat a secret for about a year but then awarded him a Distinguished Flying Cross. Co-pilot W.W. "Smokey" Stovall, and flight engineer Ed Brennan, both now deceased, received Air Medals.

Another flight engineer, Al Seive, who took turns with Brennan, went unrecognized until last year when the KC-130 flew to his hometown, Cincinnati, for a belated Air Medal presentation.



THE RAMPTOR ENGINEERING TEAM <img src=icon_smile_big.gif border=0 align=middle>
"Who cares if it works? Does it look good on the ramp?"

_________________
????