MANSFIELD, Ohio–You’ve heard the saying, “There’s no ‘I’ in team.” And that certainly applies at the 179th Airlift Wing. When talking about the aircrew, Lt. Col. Bob Dunlap noted, “There is no one position that is more important than the other.”
The aircrew aboard a C-130 Hercules aircraft is commonly composed of six airmen, three of which are officers (the pilot, co-pilot and navigator), and three of which are enlisted personnel (the flight engineer and two loadmasters).
“That’s a unique crew complement,” observed Dunlap, a navigator. “You don’t see that a lot in Air Force airframe.”
Control of the aircraft is normally shared equally between the pilot and co-pilot. “One of the pilots will serve as aircraft commander, and they are basically in charge of the aircraft itself,” noted Maj. Matt Dudley, one of the pilots at the 179th. The other pilot serves as “pilot monitoring.”
A navigator, as the title suggests, is responsible for the aircraft’s navigation. A navigator’s primary responsibility is to be aware of aircraft position at all times. Navigators plan the route, course and time for getting over a target or reaching destination. The navigator also protects the aircraft from threats.
The main priority of a flight engineer (FE) is to monitor and operate the aircraft systems. FEs are seated in a central position behind the pilots, allowing them to see all of the instruments and detect any glitches.
A loadmaster is responsible for loading cargo and personnel, as well as calculating the aircraft’s balance and weight before a flight begins.
Together, each crew member works to achieve a mission. One of the most challenging missions they undertake, Dunlap said, is the airdrop mission. An airdrop is a type of airlift which involves the delivery of cargo or personnel via aircraft.
“The airdrop mission is what we do best, I think,” said Dunlap.
In order to carry out each airdrop successfully, it requires teamwork. He noted, “Everyone has to work together as a team to get it done.”
Dudley described what a typical airdrop mission entails, noting that loadmasters prep the aircraft about 10-20 minutes prior to the drop. After the entire crew is aboard and the plane is in flight, the pilot will turn a red light on to alert the loadmasters that they are approaching the drop zone.
“Then it’s all on the navigator at this point,” Dudley said. “[The pilot] is flying a solid line and the navigator is basically telling him, ‘Hey, we’re a little far left, a little far right.'”
“It’s a lot about coordination,” he continued. “The pilot is flying, the navigator is telling him exactly where he needs to be, the co-pilot (the one who’s not flying), is pushing buttons, deploying extraction chutes, and then the loadmasters actually release the cargo.”
Dunlap said that often they practice assault landings after an airdrop mission. An assault landing, he said, “Is a very short, unprepared, or it can be a prepared surface, but using max performance of the airplane to touch down and take the least amount of distance to roll out on landing.”
The C-130H performs well in an assault landing, he said. “We’re not the fastest nor the prettiest airplane out there, but when it comes to short field performance, this is where the airplane really comes into an element of its own and it does really, really well,” he said.
There was a period of time, however, when the base did not have the C-130s. In 2010, the base converted to C-27J Spartan aircraft.
One of the notable effects of this conversion, Dunlap noted, was “That took care of the navigators. We were out. There was no position for us…Or the engineers.” He said they could cross train and become loadmasters. He became the executive officer of the wing and some navigators transferred. “And I thought that was where the story was going to end for me,” he said.
C-27s are about half the size of C-130s, Dunlap said. They typically require a crew of four people, including two pilots and two loadmasters.
“The airplane, in our view, was absolutely fantastic,” said Dunlap. “It’s not exactly a C-130; it’s not supposed to be. It’s just a light, twin-engine tactical transport, and it did extremely well.”
Dudley, who had been used to flying the C-130s, said it was a little overwhelming at first to learn how to fly the C-27s, but within about 10 months of training, he flew a C-27 during a deployment to Afghanistan.
Dudley described the conversion, noting, “We were directly embedded with an Army unit, so we would get our mission from the Army itself.” What that meant was that he got to work alongside Army personnel.
“It was a complete joint crew, which has never been done before,” he said. “We had qualified Army pilots and loadmasters and qualified Air Force pilots and loadmasters flying together…That was just a very unique opportunity.”
In 2013, the base converted back to the C-130H aircraft, allowing people like Dunlap to return to their prior positions. “That’s why so many of us are blessed to be able to get back to this airframe because now we can finish out flying in the C-130s again,” he said.
Now that the base has obtained a full fleet of eight C-130s, “We’re just getting back into the formation phase,” said Dudley. “As we received all of our aircraft and our numbers are increasing in squadron, we’re training people on how to fly formation.”
“Typically we’re sticking with two ships right now,” he said. “Formations can be pretty large. Down at Little Rock they typically flew six ships, but we’re just kind of staying small right now with the limited aircraft and crews.”
There are two different types of formation: visual and instrumental. In the visual formation, the aircraft keep one another in sight and typically fly at lower levels, roughly 500 feet above ground. In the instrumental formation, they fly about 6,000 feet above ground.
“The equipment onboard the aircraft is basically what we rely on to stay in position. The aircraft can communicate between their computers. You can fly in the clouds and still stay in perfect formation,” he said.
He continued, noting that some navigators on base are qualified to do what’s called an AWADS [Adverse Weather Aerial Delivery System] drop. “With any type of weather, way up in the clouds, they’ll use the radar to identify certain points to know that the aircraft is in the position they want it to be,” he said.
“We’ll actually drop without ever seeing the drop zone; it’s pretty amazing.”
Dunlap added, “The software that we have in these airplanes is good enough that when we come into the drop zone here in Mansfield, we have certain unique features–a bridge, railroad crossing–that a radar will show you…And so I can plug in the coordinates of where this railroad crossing is, and as I’m coming in, the computer on the airplane has got an idea of where it’s at.”
“It’s fascinating to watch because there has been many a time, you’d come in and you wouldn’t see the drop zone at all until the last two or three miles and then all of a sudden you let the bundle go out and it would be right in the middle of the PI [point of impact].”
But again, this all goes back to the necessity of teamwork, he indicated.
“It’s truly a crew effort because the Nav has to work his systems right, these guys [the pilots] have to fly the black line perfectly, the loadmasters and flight engineer have to coordinate everything perfectly to make sure the systems are all up to speed, and the load has to release cleanly,” Dunlap said.
“That’s a habit of this airplane,” he said. “Everyone has to work together.”
Editor’s Note: This is the third story in the “Embedded at the 179th” series.
“It’s truly a crew effort because the Nav has to work his systems right, these guys [the pilots] have to fly the black line perfectly, the loadmasters and flight engineer have to coordinate everything perfectly to make sure the systems are all up to speed, and the load has to release cleanly,” Lt. Col. Bob Dunlap said.
