THE HORSEMEN
One of the most interesting stories in C-130 lore is that
of The Four Horsemen, a Tactical Air Command aerial demonstration team that came into being
during the first years of C-130 operations. The team performed
public demonstrations at military air bases throughout the world in the 1950s, demonstrating the
tremendous manueverability of the new tactical transport they flew. Their
performances were so impressive that they often stole the show from other
teams, particularly the Air Force's own Thunderbirds.
Prior to the advent of the C-130, military transports had a
reputation for being slow
and sluggish. The reciprocating engine powered airplanes from which the
first C-130 crews came were just that, and the transistion into the Jet
Age brought the crews into a new realm where they not only had
a powerful airplane capable
of speeds in the fighter range, its hydraulically boosted flight controls
allowed manuevers that were previously thought impossible in a transport.
The crews of the 463rd Troop Carrier Wing at Ardmore AFB,
Oklahoma talked among themselves about how manueverable the airplane was, and what
possibilities it afforded. At the time, TAC C-130s were a common sight at Campbell Army
Air Field, where the 101st Airborne Division was stationed. One
day the scheduled airdrops were cancelled because of high winds on the drop zone, but four
crews from the 774th Troop Carrier Squadron decided to use their
training time for some
intricate formation flying.
Close formation flying was the order of the day in troop
carrier squadrons from World
War II into the early 1960s, when the in-trail formation was adopted. The
four 774th pilots, Captains Gene Chaney, Jim Akin, David Moore and
William Hatfield, were all veteran transport pilots, and very
proficient in close formation work.
They decided to do some experimenting - they took off at 5-second intervals then joined up for several low-altitude passes down the Fort
Campbell runway. Those who witnessed the manuevers from the ground
were very impressed. Another stand-down a few days later allowed them
another opportunity to practice.
The 774th's experiments were just before the 314th Troop
CarrierWing at Sewart AFB,
Tennessee was scheduled to begin replacing its C-119s and C-123s with
the new Hercules. Word of the intricate formation flying had reached
Tactical Air Command Headquarters, so the four crews - who were now
calling themselves "The
Four Horsemen" - were sent to Sewart to put on a demonstration of the
new airplane to the crews who would soon be flying the airplane. It was
an impressive performance. As a result of the Sewart
demonstration, the Horsemen were
sent to other USAF bases throughout the United States, as well as Europe
and the Far East, to demonstrate the capabilities of the new C-130 that
was beginning to make its appearance throughout the world. Their routine
consisted of a formation take-off in a diamond formation, followed by a
steep climb that would put them at 1,500 feet at the end of a
10,000-foot runway. In the diamond, the two wingmen maintained a close formation with their noses
slightly above and even with a row of rivets on the lead airplane's
wings. Slot-man Bill Hatfield kept the upper third of the lead
airplane's tail fin in his windshield, thus putting him above and out of the propwash. From the
diamond, the team would go into the "arrow," the in-trail formation
seen above. From the arrow
they would go into "arrowhead" as the trailing airplanes came up
alongside each other to make the "feathers" at the end of the
leading airplanes' shaft. The 20-minute show ended witht the diamond coming over the airport and
executing a bomb burst (below) followed by a reforming of the diamond
for a pass down the runway. They would turn into the traffic pattern and move into echelon,
with each airplane landing right behind the other - the lead
airplane would still be on the
runway when the slot man touched down.
While the team's manuevers were impressive, they were not
"aerobatics" in the technical sense, but were rather examples of tight formation flying and
changes of position, all done at low altitudes. This is not to say
that the Hercules has never
been flown through aerobatic manuevers; it most certainly has. The Horsemen refrained from true aerobatics in their demonstrations because
the propellers tended to react when the airplane was coming
down the backside of a loop
or during recovery from a roll. So, they concentrated on flying various tight
formations, sometimes at wing-tip to wing-tip. The team applied for
official designation as a USAF aerial demonstration team, but the
application was denied because of mission requirements. Unlike fighter
squadrons, whose peacetime mission is confined to training, troop carrier squadrons in the
1950s and 1960s were quite often used on operational missions and
there just were not enough
airplanes to spare.
The era of the Horsemen was in the late 1950s, and the
pilots were then men in their
thirties. Of the four aircraft commanders, Gene Chaney and David Moore
have passed away. Jim Akin and Bill Hatfield are still around, and Bill
is on the internet at bhat53f@vista-express.com. Drop
him a note! All four men went on in their
Air Force careers and became field grade officers before retirement. Gene
Chaney was still flying C-130Bs in the Philippines with the 463rd when I
knew him in 1969-70. Bill Hatfield left C-130s and went to
Charleston to become a MATS
weanie as a squadron commander of one of the first squadrons to fly C-141s.
(He could no longer sing his favorite song "I'd Rather Have a Sister in a
Whorehouse, Then to Have a Brother in MATS"!) He commanded an Air Rescue
HC-130 squadron in Vietnam and in the US. Many of the other crewmembers
also remained in the Air Force. Billie Mills, who was a copilot on a
Horsemen crew, was a major in the 463rd Stan/Eval at Clark in 1968.
He was one of the AC's
who put the capabilities of the C-130 to the test when he landed his
B-model at Kham Duc and brought out a load of refugees on what was one of
the most dramatic days in airlift history.
The legacy of the Horsemen was memoralized in the squadron
patch for the 774th TCS. In addition to the squadron's original green
weasel (which led to the Horsemen calling themselves the "Thunderweasels," a red lightning bolt
was added to signify the Horsemen's legacy with the squadron. A
film about the Horsemen was made during the 1950s; copies are still around
in the hands of people who love the Herk.
Click Sam's C-130 Page to
return.
In-Trail formation
Bomb Burst
Diamond Formation
The Horsemen Brief Before a Flight
Left to Right - Chaney, Hatfield, Akin,
Moore