A little bit of history.......
First of all, apologies for being a bit late on this thread.
Nige, you asked if there were any 'senior' ex-members of the Herc fleet who had any information about earlier foam or personal protection incidents.
I was an F/E on the fleet for almost all of the 70's and 80's; spending most of my time on 47Sqn (both the big bit and the small bit) and as an instructor at the Support Training Sqn.
Around 1978 one of our a/c, on a training trip to Berlin was hit by ground fire while flying along the corridor. For those not in the know, corrider flying rules were that you had to transit at a reasonably low altitude (if I remember correctly) around 2 -4000ft. On landing at Gatow the crew discovered that fuel was 'persisting' out of a hole in one of the wing tanks. Investigation showed that they had been hit by small arms fire but, because the round had lost most of it's power by the time it hit the a/c, it penetrated the skin but did no more damage. As you can imagine, this caused a lot of consternation in the fleet and I remember one of the Sqn Execs writing a paper recommending the fitment of foam suppression. I read the draft and know that it was passed up the line.
Fast forward a couple of years to the Rhodesia/Zimbabwe Independence Ops. To minimise the risk of ground fire (nearly all flying was done in daylight) we flew at a max height of 100ft. The Lox pack was emptied and we did have protective plates which we placed below our seat cushions. There was some ground fire damage, the worst of which was an RPG hit to the nose of one of the a/c - directly onto an empty Lox pack.
After the Op, there were papers written on lessons learned - again asking for foam suppression and also highlighting the need for adequate crew protection.
I have no idea if this will be of any use but I wish you all the best in what you're trying to do.
If I've been a boring old f**t, I apologise........I only knew one of the crew of XV179.....he was one of my students.