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The Monster Has Landed: C-130 Lumbers In For Weekend’s Wings Over Flagler Show

March 23, 2012 | FlaglerLive | 7 Comments

The C-130 arriving at the Flagler County Airport just before 1 p.m. Thursday, in a great shot by Bob Pickering. Click on the image for larger view.

It circled around the Flagler County Airport once, the colossal C-130’s 100,000 pounds defying every logic by staying aloft, then it landed, needing less than 3,000 feet to before taxying to a stop on a spot that should prove one of the main attraction at the third annual Wings Over Flagler Air Show this weekend.

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  • Wings Over Flagler: Rockin’ the Runways Edition Flies In For Weekend of Roars
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  • Wings Over Flagler 2011: Warbirds, Yakrobatics and Tributes This Weekend at the County Airport
  • Wings Over Flagler Website
  • Wings Over Flagler Scholarship Fundraiser

The transport plane and its crew of eight landed at the end of a 140 minute flight from its home base in Pittsburgh, where it’s part of the Air Force Reserve’s 758th Airlift Squadron of the 911th Airlift Wing. That particular plane has been putting in herculean work since it first flew in 1978, including multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan as a transport and hospital plane and a recent deployment to Puerto Rico with its current crew: Commander Brad Ayer, co-pilot Richard Bell, and flight engineer Marshall Martindale (“just remember,” he’s quick to remind you, “the engineer is the most important part of the plane”) and five others.

“Best job ever. Best office in the world,” is how Bell describes that cockpit. “The view is great.”

“Still can’t believe they pay me to do this,” Ayer says.

The crew will all be at the air show Saturday and Sunday, showing off the plane and giving tours of its hulky interiors and control-freak cockpit.

The C-130 after landinf. Click on the image for larger view. (© FlaglerLive)
Blue Sky Yakrobatics, the force behind Wings Over Flagler, is the work of Bill and Kim Mills in conjunction with the airport. They’ve assembled some 50 to 60 military and specialty aircraft for the fly-in. About 15 planes will take part in aerobatic demonstrations over the weekend, including renown acrobatic pilot Greg Koontz landing a plane on a moving truck.

This year’s Wings Over Flagler will celebrate the life of William “Wild Bill” Walker, the aerobatic pilot who died in a crash while performing at last year’s show. A scholarship fund in his honor has been created and two scholarships were awarded in his honor in 2011.

“We will have an announcer this year for the events,” Flagler County Airport Director Roy Sieger said. “We will also have a free gigantic kids zone with an acre of aviation related items for the children to enjoy.” And of course that other mainstay of the county airport, Jack Howell’s Teens in Flight, will also be at the show both days.

The Air Show opens at 9 a.m. Saturday with a dedication at 11 a.m., when the Stars and Stripes will be brought in by parachute. At the same time, Flagler County Commissioner George Hanns will sky dive into the show. Hanns is dedicating his sky dive in honor of all veterans, including his brother, Donald, a Vietnam veteran who died on Christmas Day last year.

The C-130 is bound to be the show’s hub. It burned 12,000 lb. of fuel on its way down to Flagler, out of a fuel capacity of 52,000 lb. The fuel it burned equates to 2,000 gallons. It’ll refuel at the county airport, which makes Sieger very happy.

Sieger himself likes to say that he’s taken off five more times in C-130s than he’s landed: “I used to jump out of these,” he says of his days as a Marine.

Click on the image for larger view. (© FlaglerLive)
Name the task. The C-130 has carried it out: troop transport, gunship, cargo plane, hospital ship, humanitarian cavalry ship, electronic eavesdropper and jammer, infiltrator of special forces behind enemy lines, search and rescue aircraft, show craft, fire-suppressant, training craft. It does it all. It’s also the only plane in the world that can carry the enormous and horrific bomb known as the Daisy Cutter, also known as the BLU-82, a 15,000 pound giant of destruction that was last in service in 2008, when it was replaced by the also known as the Moab (“Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb,” which airmen like to nickname “mother of all bombs”), an even more powerful, 21,000-pound device. The Russians, however, have developed an even more deadly device, which they call the “father of all bombs.”

Needless to say, the plane sitting on the tarmac at the Flagler County Airport, while generously armored, is not armed.

The plane was designed by the Lockheed executive Willis Hawkins, who modeled its interior dimensions after those of a railroad boxcar. When he first proposed the design to Lockheed executive, they rejected it. He convinced them to enter the design in a competition for a Pentagon contract. It won. The plane first flew in 1954. It’s been in continuous production since. Just seven weeks ago (on Jan. 30), Lockheed delivered its 2,400th C-130 from its plant in Marietta, Ga., “the longest continuously operating military aircraft production line in history” (in Lockheed’s words).

It’s had its high-profile crashes. In 1988, a C-130 carrying President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan crashed and killed all aboard. In August 1996 a C-130 carrying a Secret Service agent, a crew of eight and one of the cars used by security officers in President Clinton’s motorcade crashed into a Wyoming mountain moments after take-off from Jackson Hole airport. Four weeks earlier a Belgian Air Force C-130 crashed in the Netherlands, killing 32 people, most of them members of a Dutch military orchestra. Last July a C-130 belonging to the Moroccan military crashed and killed 78. But those are exceptions to a very long history of safety and reliability, and squadrons of C-130s routinely logging hundreds of thousands of flight hours without a hitch. The plane at the Flagler County Airport has logged between 11,000 and 12,000 hours.

Advance tickets for the Air Show are $5 for adults and $3 for students from 2 to 17 years old. Children under 2 years old get in free. Advance sales end on Friday at 6 p.m. Tickets at the gate are $7 for adults and $5 for students.

Click on the image for larger view. (© FlaglerLive)

Each prop requires 12 gallons of oil. Click on the image for larger view. (© FlaglerLive)

One of six fuel tanks on the C-130, which has a total fuel capacity of 52,000 pounds. Click on the image for larger view. (© FlaglerLive)

The C-130's monster wheels can land with a weight of 155,000 pounds, and take-off with a weight of 175,000 pounds. The plane tends to lose weight in between. Click on the image for larger view. (© FlaglerLive)

C-130 Co-Pilot Richard Bell in the cockpit. Click on the image for larger view. (© FlaglerLive)

The C-130 cockpit. Click on the image for larger view. (© FlaglerLive)

Cargo bay and bomb house. Click on the image for larger view. (© FlaglerLive)

Lounge. Click on the image for larger view. (© FlaglerLive)

The crew. Click on the image for larger view. (© FlaglerLive)

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. NortonSmitty says

    March 23, 2012 at 10:26 am

    I’ll be there by the fuel pumps if anybody wants to buy a 1946 Ercoupe 2 seater.

  2. Outsider says

    March 23, 2012 at 12:58 pm

    Can I use it to drop a MOAB???

  3. just a thought says

    March 23, 2012 at 1:18 pm

    Is that the Ercoupe that sits just west of the pumps? Not that I am a buyer but I just want to say that is a great looking plane. In about a year I probably would be a buyer but the time is not right.

  4. NortonSmitty says

    March 23, 2012 at 11:13 pm

    All day long! As long as that means Miniature Of A Bomb. The old joke about Ercoupes is” what do you call an Ercoupe with two full grown men in it? Overweight or out of gas”.

    Great little plane though. After WWII, everyone was going to have an airplane in their back yard to fly to work. This was the plane. It won a NACA (forerunner of the FAA) design competition in ’36 for a safe, stallproof and spinproof plane. With a co-ordinated yoke control that required no rudder pedals, it was said if you could drive to the airport, you safely fly this plane. Still true today. Cruises at about 110 mph. burning about 4.5 gallons of fuel an hour. Or roughly 23 MPG. It is so easy to fly it is perfect for retired or older pilots that fly once or twice a month. Enough to stay current, and still be safe and confident.

    Stop out. if you never been to a fly-in it will be a treat for the whole family. See you there.

  5. NortonSmitty says

    March 23, 2012 at 11:14 pm

    See above

  6. Kamamani says

    March 24, 2012 at 12:14 am

    Does anyone know what time the aerobatic show will be? I know the entire event runs 9-5 on Sat, and 9-3 on Sun, but I can’t find a time for the actual aerobatic show.

    [Our understanding is that there are several shows spread out throughout the two days.FL]

  7. palmcoastpioneers says

    March 24, 2012 at 11:36 pm

    ‘Thank You ‘ Flaglerlive for sharing great photos.

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