Warbird Information Exchange

Maybe the C130 landed on it

Time to contact the "Mythbusters"?

www.discovery.com/mythbusters

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If God had wanted man to fly behind a flat motor, Pratt Whitney would've built one.

Did some online searching last night and wasn't able to find where a cargo aircraft had downed any other aircraft from the start of Viet Nam until now. I did find reference to two guys in an UH-1 downing two AN-2's during Viet Nam.

I think those were Air America Huey's were they not?

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Manager

That actually happened in 1985. MC-130E Combat Talon 63-7785 came in on top of a helicopter on appraoch to Tinian Island. The helicopter (an Army UH-60) was blacked out. The pilot of the Talon saw the chopper at the last second, pulled back hard on the yoke and applied max power to break his descent. The rotor blades of the UH-60 sliced through the main gear tires of the MC-130 as the aircraft passed overhead. The helicopter crashed to the runway. Fortunately, no fatalities. The MC-130 made an emergency landing at Anderson AFB, Guam without incident...

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"Everyone wants to live here (New Jersey), evidenced by the fact that it has the highest population per capita in the U.S..."

What happened is that a couple of Migs scrambled on a rescue operation. There were Spads, Jolly Greens, and i believe two C-130s involved...the Migs did shoot down a helo...One of the Migs was trying to line up on a C130, but the crew started taking evasive action...it was in the monsoon season and in mountainous terrain...The Mig tried to follow the C-130 in and out of clouds and in between mountain tops, but ended up finding that silver lining, thus the crew was given credit for the destruction of the Mig......Still a good story...I believe Aviation Journal published the story, with pictures of the offending crew.....Gary

Now that you mention it, I do remember reading that before. I forget where I saw it. You threw me with the fuel dump part. I think it was mentionede that they did jetison the drop tanks though.

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Curtis Block

I've seen too many airplanes destroyed by the term "Static Restoration."

Same thing nearly happened again in '95/96 (or thereabouts) at Red Flag. Helo on Mellon LZ blacked out, Talon II on approach - saw at last minute, pulled hard, just cleared helo...all aboard both planes required new underwear I believe.

APG - you still actively flying herks?

Chains? The Herk, would not be going fast enough for the chains to go nothing but straight down from gravity.

I have heard a couple of those stories as well.

Yep - not likely chains would do anything but make the Herk lighter...slightly.

But how 'bout a cargo net? Hmmmm....that might flutter along just enough if a guy was in close & low...again, unlikely.

Heck, just give me some AIM-9s - I can out turn darn near anyone ('cept an A10)... In fact, at a Red Flag 10 years ago or so, we hung an AIM9 on the rail of the Talon, took a pic, & mailed it to Janes! Don't think we fooled anyone though!

The book in question is "Flying Through Midnight..." by John Halliday. His story as a C-123 pilot flying "candlestick" flare missions over SE Asia in the Vietnam war. He claims a enemy twin rotor helo by dropping chains on it from the ramp. I read it years ago, and as I recal they spotted this helo at night with the helo doing some sort of logistics work and hovering with its landing lights on. The C-123 tried several times over several nights to get the helo, and eventually got it. Claimed to be non-fiction, but there are some highly doubtfull reviewers on Amazon. I recal it was an interesting read, but perhaps taken with a grain of salt.

That's simple, do one of those fractional kills. e.g. 1/n, where 1 = number of MiG's shot down and n = number of crew on the C-130.


Did the enemy have any twin rotor helos back then?

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Tri-State Warbird Museum Collections Manager & Museum Attendant

Warbird Philosophy Webmaster

Almost all of Kamov's stuff has been twin rotor since 1947.
Granted the rotors are stacked, but there are two of them.

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Lest Hero-worship raise it's head and cloud our vision, remember that World War II was fought and won by the same sort of twenty-something punks we wouldn't let our daughters date.

I'm reading Air America and in it they claim a C-123 crew dropped chains on a twin rotor helo and downed it. Also I interviewed Neil Hansen and he recalled an Air America Huey crew shooting down an AN-2 with AK-47's. also a CIA B-17.

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Manager

sounds like a good scene for a james bond movie!!

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tom d. friedman - hey!!! those fokkers were messerschmitts!! * without ammunition, the usaf would be just another flying club!!! * better to have piece of mind than piece of tail!!