Rhode Island is the gateway to the Atlantic for the venerable C-130 Hercules.

10:58 AM EST on Sunday, March 27, 2005

BY GERALD M. CARBONE
Journal Staff Writer

Somewhere out there in the blue, two C-130 airplanes are flying inbound to Quonset State Airport from Texas.

On Quonset's pad 1, a Rhode Island Air National Guard crew readies one of its 42-year-old C-130E planes for a morning flight toward an undisclosed war zone.

On pad 4, a Rhode Island flight crew walks atop the wings of the new C-130J model, conducting a preflight check.

The schedule is typical for a weekday at Quonset State Airport, which has become America's C-130 gateway to the Atlantic.

For 50 years now the C-130 airplane -- also known as the Hercules -- has been the workhorse of the United States military, hauling cargo and crews for all branches of the service. Most C-130s that cross the Atlantic Ocean in either direction now stop at Quonset in North Kingstown.

And last year the federal government spent more than $27 million on a hangar and maintenance building at Quonset, in order to handle the new, larger C-130J airplanes.

A pilot's voice booms through the radio in the operations center: "Rhody ops: Rhody 34, request engine start."

Suzie Viveiros, the senior airman on duty in the Rhode Island Air National Guard's nerve center, responds: "Rhody ops -- 34 clear to start."

On pad 4, the 13- 1/2-foot-diameter propellers on Rhode Island's newest C-130J airplane plane begin a slow turn. One by one the pilot powers up all four of his turboprop engines till the plane shivers and hums like a super swarm of angry bees.

The drone of C-130 Hercules airplanes has sounded almost unbroken in the skies over Rhode Island since 1960.

Today, C-130s land and take off from Quonset about 1,200 times a year. The planes can be seen from Wickford lumbering up over Quonset; above South County turf fields dropping paratroopers; flying over Sakonnet en route to the Azores.

Journal photo / Bob Breidenbach

The C-130 airplane -- also known as the Hercules.

Despite astonishing advances in aeronautics, they're still cranking out C-130s in Marietta, Ga. The plane's ingenious design has lasted five decades without becoming obsolete. And yet, the future of the Hercules airplane is now in jeopardy.

The Department of Defense recently recommended canceling orders it had placed for 60 of the new C-130Js, 4 of which are earmarked for Rhode Island. That recommendation followed a scathing report from the Defense Department's inspector general that concluded the C-130J "cannot perform its operational mission" and "can only be used for training."

The U.S. Air Force says that the report is wrong, and the commander of the C-130Js that flew in combat in Iraq -- Rhode Island Air National Guard Col. Larry Gallogly -- says that the new C-130J "is a phenomenal airplane" that "did far better than we expected it to do" in combat conditions.

FOR 50 YEARS now the C-130 airplane has gone where other planes dare not go. It still flies into hurricanes, lands on the polar ice caps, on airstrips hacked out in jungles, and in desert sands.

Bob Hill, a 72-year-old production test pilot, has taken off in the thin air of the Andes mountains hauling 38,000 pounds of bulldozers; he's hauled a fuselage full of bagged live eels into Japan; and he's flown the king of Saudi Arabia's C-130 with its gyroscoptically centered throne always pointed toward Mecca.

In wartime, Tim Nguyen has seen how well a C-130 performs in the clutch.

Nguyen (pronounced Winn) flew helicopters for the former South Vietnamese Air Force. On the night before the fall of Saigon, he was stationed at Tan Son Nhut a base on the outskirts of the city. The Viet Cong surrounded that air strip and shelled it throughout the night.

"One hundred twenty-millimeter rockets constantly, all night," Nguyen recalls. "Nine o'clock in the morning, they stopped."

In the shelling's lull, Nguyen says he had this thought: "Try to get out of here, because you get killed by all the shelling."

Apparently, everyone else had the same thought. From barracks and buildings along the air strip, hundreds of men came running toward the hum of a lone C-130A that was taxiing for takeoff.

Rockets had blown big divots in the airstrip; it was pocked with holes and littered with shrapnel. The plane kept stopping and lurching around things as it tried to gain speed on the runway.

As the plane bounced along men jumped into it through the rear loading door.

"I was late comer," Nguyen says. "I ran out there afraid at the end."

The Hercules' ramp was still down, its big rear door wide open. Nguyen ran, leaped on the ramp, and hands pulled him into the plane's cargo compartment.

The inside of the plane was packed with men standing shoulder to shoulder. There was no room even to turn around. With the trained ears of a pilot, Nguyen listened. He knew how long that runway was, knew, too, that they were nearing its end. He heard a thump as the nose came up and the plane went airborne.

He heard the engines groaning against the weight of hundreds of men; for 15 miles the old C-130A struggled to climb higher than a bullet could reach.

The scene of the plane's landing on safe ground in Thailand would have been comical had the situation not been serious. The soldiers leaving the plane looked like college kids pulling a prank to see how many buddies they could stuff into a phone booth or Volkswagen. The final tally of men stuffed into a single C-130A that flew from a cratered airstrip: 452. It was engineered to carry 90.

"ONE THING I have to admit, I saw a lot of things C-130 did, like dropping supplies, landing on dirt and unimproved runway, and things like that," Nguyen says. "But never thought it could do a thing like carry that many people."

The next day his president capitulated to the Viet Cong. The war was over, and he could not go home; the new regime would kill him. His mother, father, siblings -- his civilian job as a lawyer -- all of that life was gone.

On a flight to a refugee camp in Guam, his first step toward resettlement in the United States, he wondered what he might do for work in America. He could not be a lawyer because his English would never be strong enough.

He knew one thing about Americans: they made the C-130. He thought he'd like to work for whoever it was who built that airplane.

Nguyen's first stop in the United States was a refugee resettlement camp at an Air Force base in Florida. He delivered newspapers before sunup, worked days as a carpet installer, and took night classes to learn mechanics. Later, he enrolled in a two-year community college, earning good enough grades to gain admission to the University of Alabama. He earned a bachelor's in engineering, married a woman from Florida, then applied to Lockheed-Marietta in hopes of building C-130 airplanes.

"First try, Lockheed rejected me," Nguyen recalls. So he went to work for a competitor.

In 1983 Nguyen's perseverance paid dividends: Lockheed hired him as an electronics engineer, testing components of the C-130 airplane -- the plane that saved his life.

Now as a senior engineer, Nguyen is in charge of designing and installing the C-130's weapons evasion system -- flares and silvery chaff designed to fool heat-seeking missiles -- something the older models did not have.

IN 1951 the U.S. Air Force announced a competition for a new class of cargo planes. The Air Force was picky in its proposal: the new plane had to be big enough to carry 64 paratroopers with gear; fly 1,100 nautical miles without refueling; be powerful enough to haul 30,000 pounds; land on airstrips of sand or soil; fly at slow speeds without stalling to disgorge paratroopers; and fly with one engine out.

The Lockheed Corp. put one of its more promising aircraft engineers on the case, a 37-year-old named Willis Hawkins.

Hawkins shaped the fuselage so it would be long enough to fit the Air Force's 1 1/2-ton truck with attached semitrailer, and wide enough to haul the M5A-3 High Speed Tractor.

The result was a tube-shaped cargo hold 10 feet wide, 9 feet high, and 41 feet long. Hawkins essentially looked at the widest and longest pieces of equipment the plane would haul, and wrapped a tube around them.

Hawkins laid the wing of his airplane right across the top of the fuselage. Then, when he mounted engines to the wing they rode higher. That way, when the plane kicks up sand and silt on a dirt runway the engines stay above the flying debris and don't suck it up.

In just two months, Hawkins and his team had developed what he believed to be the perfect airplane for the Air Force's proposal. On April 10, 1951 -- a date closer to the Wright Brothers' first success with powered flight than to the present -- Hawkins met with his boss, Hall Hibbard, to unveil his final design.

Hawkins arrived at Hibbard's office in Burbank, Calif., clutching his final report and a small model of the airplane that he had just designed.

Hibbard, the vice president and chief engineer of the Lockheed Aircraft Corp., thumbed through Hawkins' report and scanned the 15-inch model, called Model 82. From an aesthetic point of view, Model 82 was an ugly thing -- it had a blunt nose and a fat fuselage that loaned it the look of a pig with wings.

Journal photo / Bob Breidenbach

Maj. Joe Francouer pilots the latest version of the C-130. After 50 years of service, Hercules needed a makeover. But the Dfense Department says the new C-130 "cannot perform its operational mission." The Air Force says the Defense Department is wrong.

Hibbard asked: "Has Kelly seen this? Kelly ought to look at it."

Kelly was Kelly Johnson, an aircraft designer of legendary genius. He had been Hawkins' mentor at the University of Michigan, but now a professional jealousy seemed to be brewing between the mentor and his former protégé.

No, Hawkins said. Kelly hadn't seen it. In fact, no one had seen Kelly Johnson for quite a while; he was working on something super secret.

Johnson's mind was then literally in the stratosphere -- he was working on the F-104 fighter plane, a sleek, supersonic craft, and he eventually designed the famous SR-17 Blackbird, the fastest, highest-flying plane ever built.

Johnson strode into Hibbard's meeting, paged through Hawkins' proposal, took a look at the model of this piglike airplane. Then, referring to the unsigned commitment letter lying on Hibbard's desk, Johnson pronounced: "Hibbard, if you sign that letter, you will destroy the Lockheed Corporation."

With that, he pivoted and walked out of the office. In the awkward silence left by his departure, Hibbard said, "Well, Willy, that model has a lovely finish."

Hawkins convinced Hibbard that if the design was so terrible the Air Force would never give Lockheed the contract. Besides, Lockheed had no other design to submit. So, Hibbard figured he had nothing to lose by delivering this one. It went head-to-head against designs submitted by Boeing, Douglas and Fairchild.

Model 82 won the competition

HAWKINS' PLANE was big for its day -- 97 feet 9 inches from nose to tail, slightly longer than the distance from home plate to first base. The wing that laid straight across its spine was 137 feet 7 inches from tip to tip; it held four turboprop engines with three-blade propellers that carved 13-foot circles.

Hawkins' choice of engine was ingenious: the General Motors Allison turboprop, now made by Rolls Royce. Standard propeller engines are powered by pistons, sometimes dozens of them. Turboprops combine the power of jet engines with the quick responsiveness of propeller-driven planes. They also don't suck in debris as easily as jet engines do, allowing them to taxi on unpaved airstrips.

The C-130 didn't have to fly at supersonic speeds, but it did need to climb quickly and stop short. The propeller helped it do both; unlike commercial jet aircraft, a C-130 can taxi in reverse by switching the attitude of its propellers.

Lockheed built the two experimental aircraft in its secret C-1 hangar in Burbank. The experimental planes, dubbed C (for cargo)-130Y, proved they could fly in August of '54, and production moved to Lockheed's plant in Marietta.

The first commercially produced C-130 flew on April 7, 1955 -- 50 years ago this year.

IN 1988 Lockheed got a new assignment: improve the C-130. The job fell to senior manager William Mikolowsky.

"It was very daunting," he says. "It's almost like the doctors say: The first thing is, do no harm. After you work with the Herc for a while you get very emotional.

"This airplane has touched the lives of so many people over the years," Mikolowsky says. "The first thing that shows up when everything has gone to hell is the C-130."

Mikolowsky managed to make the newest Hercules -- the C-130J stretch model -- 15 feet longer than the previous planes. Still, C-130s aren't quite as long as the 737 passenger planes that frequently fly out of T.F. Green Airport, in Warwick.

The extra 15 feet in the J stretch model allows crews to increase cargo drops from six pallets to eight.

The C-130J is also faster than previous models; Mikolowsky's team boosted cruising speed from 315 knots to 355 knots by removing exterior fuel tanks to streamline the plane; the team also added engine power by boosting the number of propeller blades on each engine from four to six.

Besides boosting the plane's power and tweaking its length, Mikolowsky found one thing he could do to significantly improve the C-130 -- stuff it full of technology.

The new computers made two of the C-130's crew obsolete -- the navigator and the flight engineer -- cutting the crew from five to three.

"When I first suggested trying to fly a C-130 without a navigator and without a flight engineer, they just about laughed me out of the room," Mikolowsky recalls. But with computer power, they really were superfluous.

Technology has also eased the workload on maintenance crews. They used to crawl all over the plane after a flight, peering into crawl spaces and crevices to see what systems might need repair.

With the C-130J, a maintenance worker plugs a laptop computer into the plane, the computer checks all systems down to the light bulbs, and reports any flaws that need fixing.

Each plane holds an identical backup computer just in case the first one takes a bullet. There are two other lesser computers, too, that will help the pilot fly in case both mission computers go down.

One of the C-130's primary missions is to drop pallets of supplies to people or soldiers below. Eventually, a C-130J should be able to do this better: A successful drop used to mean that the crew dropped the pallet within walking distance of the people who would retrieve it.

With the new technology on board a C-130J, each plane making a drop will be assigned slightly different coordinates, because if they all try to drop on the same spot the pallets would fall so precisely, they will fall on top of each other.

At least that's the way the plane was designed. But so far, the C-130J has had trouble making any cargo drops at all. The mission computers have a problem -- they won't release the cargo pallets because they wrongly sense a problem with the way the loads are locked down. Until that is straightened out, the J model cannot be used for dropping supplies without landing, a key mission of the Hercules airplane.

AT A BASE PRICE of about $65 million, Lockheed has delivered 122 J models so far, with another 180 on order, including 60 planes ordered by the United States military.

The Rhode Island Air National Guard was the first arm of the United States military to receive the new C-130J models. Initially eight C-130Js were budgeted or Rhode Island; four have arrived, but the Department of Defense has suggested cancellation of all of its outstanding orders for C-130Js.

A Defense Department spokesman, Marine Lt.-Col. Rose-Anne L. Lynch, said, "It's premature to discuss [potential cuts] at this time." The department is currently conducting a Mobility Capability Study, Lynch said. "The Department of Defense will balance the contracting options, military requirements and recommendations of that that study" before deciding on whether to buy the 60 new airplanes.

Initial studies by the Pentagon released last July found that the C-130J could not perform air drops or fly into hurricanes and thus was unsuited for some of its primary missions.

The man who commanded the four C-130Js in Iraq, Rhode Island Air National Guard Col. Larry Gallogly, said it's normal for a new class of airplane to have some bugs in it.

The biggest problem Gallogly saw was the plane's failure to drop cargo pallets on command. He said Lockheed is currently updating its software to work out that bug. "The air-drop issues are minor and they are being solved," he said.

In addition, Gallogly has noticed that paratroopers have had a hard time adjusting to the C-130J stretch model. Among other things, he said, the cable to which they are tethered is not suited for the stretch model.

The Hercules J model also cannot penetrate hurricanes because of problems with its radar, another problem that Lockheed is currently trying to fix.

But Gallogly said that the problems he's seen with the new Hercules are far outweighed by its added power, updated avionics and larger cargo area that allows him to deliver more troops and equipment with fewer flights into hostile area.

Gallogly returned from Iraq two weeks ago, where he oversaw resupply missions into Baghdad, Mosul and Fallujah. While he was there, the Air Force grounded 30 of its older C-130E and H models and placed another 60 on tight restrictions due to corrosion in the wing box.

With six older C-130s grounded in Iraq, the four J models had to fly more missions than anticipated.

"Our Rhode Island airplane, tail number 1431, flew for 19 days in a row without a single day off" for maintenance, Gallogly said. "We were unanimoulsy impressed with the aircraft and what it could do. We . . . walked away thinking that this was definitely the future of the C-130."

EVEN THE MENTION of canceling the C-130J purchases has stirred up the United States Senate, where 24 senators have signed a petition protesting the Defense Department's move to stop U.S. deliveries. Rhode Island Senators Jack Reed and Lincoln Chafee have signed the petition.

Reed, who is on the Senate Arms Services Committee, helped the Rhode Island Air National Guard in its quest to update its aging fleet of C-130s. The Rhode Island guard still flies four C-130E models that are 42 years old. Corrosion has eaten into the airframes of the older air planes.

Reed helped the state receive $28.3 million for a new hangar and a new maintenance building at Quonset Point; the hangar was dedicated last year and replaced a 1941 building that was not large enough to hold the new Hercules models.

In their petition to the Defense Department, the senators argued that it would cost nearly as much to pay Lockheed contract cancellation fees and to keep replacing worn and rusted parts in the old C-130s as it would cost the department to buy the 60 C-130Js for which it has contracted.

"One of the great necessities of the type of warfare we're facing now [in Iraq] is airlift," Reed said. He argued that cargo-hauling C-130s save lives by reducing the need for road convoys that have come under attack.

"These are aircraft that are very valuable," Reed said, some 50 years after the first production Hercules flew. "The C-130 is one of the best and most durable aircrafts we have."

Digital Extra: Take a multi-dimensional look at the C-130J, in text, graphics and photos, at:

http://projo.com/extra/2005/c130/flash/