VM. great to see the `goofers gallery` full ,as usual,for a 24 Sdn crew demo...
KS,suggest the aircraft is a little `low`,as the hose is not level from the drogue...but hey ,I`m just an old AARI....!
`Scroggs` will be along to comment...

I swear the Captain of Henry's Honkies would have given up his own seat for them if he could!

Duncan,it was H& S that finally saw the demise of the Herc tankers,as the Andover tanks were single skinned,and would be a nightmare if involved in any shooting war,as the system did not allow fuel to be directly offloaded thu` the HDU to a receiver,but transferred up to the main fuel system,not that the rest of the aircraft`s fuel system was any different,ie no self sealing /flame-suppressant system,either...
I took a couple of tankers to the `scrapyard at Marshall`s` `,ostensibly for scrapping,but they were later sold on to the Sri Lankan AF ,and also the Austrian AF..Still in service I think...and they`d been operated at up to 175kMauw......! or thereabouts...

It was never comfortable looking out at the wings/engines`nodding`; one felt that Marshalls should have put a couple of extra `struts/flying wires on the wings....

IIRC,
the tanker always had 4 internal tanks. It was the PLR 2/4 mods that varied the tanks. As sycamore says they were
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routinely operated at 20000 lbs above the normal T/O weight. I would noot have bought an ex RAF tanker but I assume they are still giving good service. View from my 'office'.

IIRC, that overload was allowed for in the design, but had to be authorised by a VSO, as wartime necessity.

In the latter days of their lives, fatigue on the Tankers was monitored more precisely than any aircraft in the fleet. My (limited) understanding is that instead of using TOW multiplied by the load factor to produce Fatigue Index, we monitored AUW and recorded it, plus the fatigue meter reading, at every change of flight profile, as a result, there was plenty of life left in the Tankers before they were withdrawn from service,

As there seems to be a rewed interest in the RAF Hercules tanker I have several pics of them. Most are mine some are not If I put any up then perhaps the owners of the rights can forgive me ! I will put up one a day to gauge the interest.
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Herod,
yes the 175000 lbs overload weight was meant to be an emergency one off. Not the norm as we did with the tankers. I understand that Lockheed were approached for fatigue information about this but refused to help !

Today's offering.
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The Austrian ones certainly are, and grace UK airspace from time to time:

Austrian Hercules

Dave,
thanks for the information. However with quite a few tanker hours in my log book I would still have opted for other redundant RAF C130k a/c were I to buy one. !
I suppose you can see the sales pitch. One titled lady owner, never raced or rallied and full service history.

I thought that the ones the Austrians had bought were not ex-tankers. The Sri Lankans had bought a few of them but at least one was scrapped in situ at Marshals in Cambridge, I saw it reduced to nothing over a number of visits to drop off & collect frames. The Austrians had some of the good ones, I remember seeing a couple up in Norway parked near us some years ago (around 2005ish?), they’d upgraded them including INAS etc (no need for the Nav!)

Some years later I was on a land away to Austria in a newer TacAT type and saw one of them in the circuit, the trails of black smoke seemed rather innocuous for this day & age…

The 3 Austrian C-130K's are:

8T-CA (4198), formerly XV181
8T-CB (4256), formerly XV291
8T-CC (4257), formerly XV292

if that helps in identifying whether any of them are ex-tankers.

XV292 wasn't a Tanker - it was the aircraft that carried the 25 Years In RAF Service livery in 1992.

As I thought none of those were tankers. From my logbook I have XV201, 204, 213 & 296 as tankers. I think there were only four.

XV192 ,XV203 were also tankers,6 altogether...

Then H&S would have positively sh*t themselves at the sight of the Puma’s ferry tanks.

Nutty,maybe they`re still `in service`...

Are they? Dick Langworthy hadn’t got a good word for the spreader plates as he said he designed the originals and the final MOD product didn’t address the problem with them pulling the mounts out of the honeycomb floor panels as they just moved the loading from the tank feet to the revised mounts.

Though in fairness we never had a problem again.



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Today'
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s picture