Originally Posted by
GeeRam
No wonder the nose wheel's got stuck when they were attempting a turn around at one end, looking at the length/width of that strip.
You would have thought that they'd have elected to reverse pitch and backtrack the 130's up the strip in reverse as far as they could in order to take off, once they'd unloaded the Little Birds...?
Unless the whole strip was a lot softer than they expected, and it was more than the nose wheels that got bogged down?
Many years ago I was serving on the Rhodesia Stabilization Force and was sitting on the jump seat as we were the first C130 to land at a small strip about 2 metres wide consisting of stone chips held together possibly by old engine oil. The biggest aircraft to land before us was, we were told, a DC3. The Rhodesians bet a case of beer that the Herc couldn't do it. It may have been Bulawayo but I don't recall.
It was no Khe Sanh approach. We flew from Salisbury at about 200 - 400 feet lined up on the runway with full flap and my recollection is that reverse pitch was selected as we went over the threshold. The landing was firm, no bounce. Brakes on. Nose wheels dug in and there was an almighty noise as stones hit the underside of the fuselage. The aircraft pitched forward. My first thought was that we had lost the front gear.
We stopped rapidly. The troops evacuated out the side parade doors and ramp. There was not enough room to turn the aircraft so we backed down the runway with the loadie giving directions. The engine oil temps were an issue, I recall. A little lighter we took off and flew back to Salisbury.
On leaving the choppers behind, I suspect that was always the plan given that it was a hot LZ. You really don't want to faff around stowing rotor blades, winching 2 choppers onto each Herc with incoming. Much better to plan on running away bravely.