Turkish AF C-130 crash in Georgia (country)

[knot4u]

One C-130A was 1994. The other one with the video was 2002, a few months later was the wing separation of the PB4Y-2 firefighter plane from the same company. That resulted in the grounding of all contract firefighting tanker aircraft nationally, and the prohibition of all piston powered and WWII era fire tankers, as well as the C-130A, use in any US federal fires. The P-3 and P-2 were the only contractor tankers allowed back in service as they were on a fatigue monitoring program for their airframes.

The issue with the C-130Aa was they were retired airframes from USAF service, all of 1956/57 model year. They were retired to the boneyard in the late 1970s after a long career of tactical cargo hauling, including tactical off field landings and other fatiguing ops to the airframes.

Enter 1987, and the grounding of a two widely used air tankers: the B-17 due to age, and the C-119 due to tailboom fatigue failures in flight. There were a fair number of these aircraft in use, and their loss would affect the contract companies ability to provide air tankers for contract to the USFS. A USFS air officer came up with a plane to provide retired USAF C-130A and USN P-3A airplanes from the boneyard, to be loaned to these air tanker operators, in trade for their retired B-17s and C-119s and other older military aircraft, back to the military for museum use. Thus the great historical tanker trade program was born, and the beginning of what was to become a major scandal that sent a few people to jail. Planes that were supposed to be on loan to private contractors, somehow had their titles transferred to these operators. And aircraft that were only supposed to be converted to, and used for, aerial firefighting, we instead also being used off season for cargo hauling for profit, some of these planes being seen in Kuwait during the first gulf war, being flown by these contractors on profit-making cargo work. Two of the C-130As somehow were sold to a buyer in Mexico. All Strictly prohibited by the loan agreement for these aircraft.

The P-3s went to a company called Aero Union Corp in northern California, and the C-130s, of which there were more of them, went to a company called Hemet Valley Flying Service in SoCal, along with Hawkins and Powers in Wyoming and T&G aviation in Arizona. The 1994 C-130A accident was a Hemet Valley bird, had a wing root fire start that separated the wing. The 2002 C-130A that was captured on video was a Hawkins and Powers bird, as was the PB4Y-2 a few months later. The A model 130s, with their age and their careers they retired from, already had used center wing boxes, that were now being subjected to constant bending, as the weight of 3000 gallons of fire retardant, approximately just under 30,000 lbs, being constantly loaded up and dropped on each fire run, for over a decade now; was akin to taking a paper clip and constantly bending it one way, then another, and repeat. Eventually, they break. Which is what the A model C-130s were suffering from.

When the A model -130s were grounded in 2002, they all ended up with T&G aviation, as Hemet Valley had gone out of business on the late 90s, and the two accidents of the H&P planes spelled the end of that longtime company too. T&G kept using the C-130As on their firefighting contracts in France that they had, just at a reduced total load. But the era of rhe historical aircraft trade program had finaly come to an end. The P-2 Neptune tankers finally retired from a company called Neptune by the late 2010s, and the P-3A retired after Aero Union, the largest of the tanker companies, closed its doors in the mid-2000s. And the Blue Ribbon panel that was formed after the 2002 crashes and groundings, resulted in a revamp of the airtanker program, which we see today.

Back in the olden times when I worked at the prop shop I noticed an 18 wheeler with a flatbed full of big three-bladed props sitting out back. Our shifts normally started at 7am but my boss and I would show up at about 5:30 and open things up and actually get some work done before we'd get bogged down. We overhauled lots of Ham-STD C-130 and P-3 props/controls and did a lot of work on other props/controls for airframes used in firefighting, it was a big portion of our work. Turned out these props had been sent to us by a company named Aerospatiale that was based in Mexico without ever asking for a quote or trying to schedule anything. As I said we worked on a wide variety of different stuff but one thing we were not set up or capable of working on was Aeroproducts C-130A props/controls. They must've heard we did C-130 props and just sent them to us. So no one knew what the hell to do with these things, the truck driver was about ready to come unglued because he had to get somewhere else to pick up his next load that was going to get him and his wife back towards their home. He'd gotten this load, go down to Mexico and pick it up and it take it to Hollywood CA, he thought it sounded like a vacation so he invited his wife. I'm not sure where in Mexico he went but apparently they thought North Hollywood was adjacent to where all of the stars hang out and his wife was not in a good mood. We made some space and unloaded the 4 props so those folks could get down the road and they just sat out in the rain until the powers that be figured the whole mess out and another truck came and picked them up for destinations unknown. I have to assume those props were from the Mexican operator you mentioned. We did props/controls/governors for all of the US operators you mentioned, Aero Union might've been our biggest single customer.