If the two c0ckrell brothers' parents are still around, my deepest condolences first to them, along with the other family members.
Concerning compund family tragedies, were not a father and son both killed in seperate C-130 crashes in Africa, due to terrorist missiles?
Those Lockheed turboprops are certainly complex machines, and I'm wondering if the P-3 had a propeller malfunction (pitch control, autofeather, even prop oil...), especially at a lower speed. Navy P-3 pilots were required to learn a chart four squares wide, by eight squares long, all with different engine/prop malfunctions, in case they were far over water and something went wrong when patrolling with two engines and restarting the other two etc. Were they training in an airport traffic pattern or dropping chemicals?
Do those planes now all have a standby horizon? A Zantop Electra (under the "grandfather" policy) met with disaster after an electrical malfunction was reportedly not handled properly and both horizons failed in IMC. For decades, USAF C-130s had no standby horizon. I know a pilot who had two situations where a total electrical failure happened, inexplicably, in night IMC-they were quite fortunate to have had very experienced and busy Flight Engineers, who saved their lives!
It was my father at the pilot controls.
