|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
(Published: March
26, 2007) Going
on 43 years after the first C-130 Hercules took to the skies from Elmendorf
Air Force Base, Lt. Col. Gary Gottschall finished what Lt. Sammie Hunter
started in June of 1964. On
a breezy, mildly snowy Friday afternoon, Gottschall piloted Firebird I on a
low-level, mountain-scraping, moose-viewing tour of Southcentral Alaska. Over
Sleeping Lady, the Skwentna River basin, Hayes Glacier, Mount Spurr, and
points in between and all around, Gottschall flew one of the last two C-130
flights out of Elmendorf for the 517th Airlift Squadron, known as the Firebirds. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
His passengers? A couple or three dozen spouses
and crew of the thousands who stepped aboard C-130s assigned to the 517th or
its predecessors over the last four-plus decades. Hunter was one of them. |
|
|
|
"Around for the beginning and the end,"
he said over the roar inside the no-frills cargo plane. Hunter was grinning
and hanging on to keep his balance as Gottschall, up above, took the C-130
through a mountain pass or two at 800 feet, maybe a little less. |
|
|
|
Hunter was 26 years old when he flew the first
training flight on a C-130 here, right after what was then the 17th Troop
Carrier Squadron was reassigned to Elmendorf from Dyess Air Force Base in
Texas. |
|
|
|
In the years since, Elmendorf's C-130s have
supplied science stations on the Arctic ice pack, Cold War DEW Line outposts
on Greenland, radar stations on rocky Aleutian islands where landing strips
ran uphill and stopped suddenly. More recently, they've delivered disaster
relief to earthquake victims in Pakistan and tsunami victims in Indonesia and
combat support to U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Kyrgystan, Uzbekistan,
Tajikistan, Kuwait, Qatar and Kazakstan. |
|
|
|
Since January, they've been shifting out to
Japan, and back to Dyess in Texas. They're being replaced with C-17s, a newer
cargo ship that requires smaller crews. |
|
|
|
"I hate to see them go," said Doug
Houpt, who flew C-130s up here for two tours, 1986 to 1989 and 1996 to 2001.
"They are workhorses." |
|
|
|
And sure-footed ones. Navigator Terry Huff,
standing beside Houpt, remembered landings on "one-way" strips
where pilots put down on icy runways and brought the plane to a stop wide
enough for a turnaround, then took off the same way out they had just come
in. |
|
|
|
The landing strip at Sparrevohn Air Station, he
said, "would be a good beginner's ski hill." Once on Cape Romanzof,
the small parking area for the airplane was so slippery that it slid three
feet downhill, unassisted. |
|
|
|
Another navigator, Bruce Headle, flew out of
Elmendorf from 1972 to 1975. He recalled missions to Greenland DEW stations,
places so cold you never shut down the engines because they wouldn't start
again. Places where, sometimes, a pilot needed a little extra kick to get off
the ground again. |
|
|
|
"Sometimes the top (of the ice runway) gets
a little damp, a little sticky," Headle said. "You'd get up to 40,
45 knots, that might be all you could get and you'd turn around and try it
the other direction." |
|
|
|
If that didn't work, there were JATOs -- for Jet
Assisted Take Off, little rockets that could be mounted, four on a side, on
the back of the C-130s. When the C-130 would get up to speed, a little blast
from the rockets might be "enough to kick it out of the snow," he
said. |
|
|
|
That blazing red glare against white snow and ice
is where the Firebirds got their name, Headle said. |
|
|
|
Friday's flight was a long and emotional journey
for many of the squadron's old crew members. |
|
|
|
Former loadmaster Tommy Freeman served more than
30 years and retired from the Air Force with the 517th in 1992. He made the
most of his two hours or so aboard the second C-130 on Friday's farewell
tour. The soon to arrive C-17s didn't seem to hold much promise for him. |
|
|
|
"There'll never be another airplane take its
place," he said of the Hercules. |
|
|
|
"I flew almost 8,000-something hours on this
airplane. It's always brought me home. I love it. I love it. I love the
squadron." |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Daily News
reporter Don Hunter can be reached at dhunter@adn.com
or 257-4349. |
