http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjZMWI77b84
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvvoKch5gAI&feature=related
The Four Horsemen
By Jeff Rhodes Posted 11 August 2010 (Yahoo Group)
The Four Horsemen were the world's only four engine per aircraft
demonstration team. Flying four C-130As in close formation, the team
would perform a number of manuevers over a twenty-three minute
airshow. By late 1959, sales of the C-130, both in the US and
internationally, were starting to pick up. Lockheed capitalized on the
popularity of the Horsemen by producing promotional items as sales
tools. Today, a Lockheed-produced postcard like this one showing the
aircraft in formation occasionally turns up on online auction sites
and usually sells for about $30. This is a scan of the front of the
postcard.
The idea for the Four Horsemen, the world's only
four-engine-per-aircraft flight demonstration team, sprang from some
pilots looking to fill time.
The C-130A Hercules first entered US Air Force operational service at
Ardmore AFB, Oklahoma, in December 1956. "In early 1957, four of us
were at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, for a week to drop Army
paratroopers," recalls Jim Akin, one of the Horsemen. "One of the
scheduled drops was cancelled because of high winds. So, we said,
'Let's go fly formation.' We needed to log formation time and flight
hours."
The four pilots—Akin, Gil Sanders, Jim Fairbanks, and Gene Chaney—were
all Air Force captains, aircraft commanders, and qualified instructor
pilots. Assigned to the 774th Troop Carrier Squadron, the first
operational C-130A unit, each of them had logged roughly fifty flight
hours in the brand-new Hercules.
They started in loose formation in the airspace over Kentucky and
Tennessee but gradually brought their aircraft closer and closer
together. "We discovered we really liked flying formation," recalls
Akin. The foursome made a couple of low passes in close formation over
Fort Campbell before landing.
A second cancelled paratroop drop later that week led to a second
formation flight. The idea for a C-130 demonstration team had been
planted. It would take more than a year to come to fruition.
The Horsemen Mount Up
Returning home to Ardmore, Chaney and Akin, along with several other
pilots, would practice formation maneuvers on training missions or
when they were deployed.
"A group of us liked to fly formation, and we would go out and try
maneuvers to see if they worked and we could do them safely," notes
Bill Hatfield, one of the copilots on the first flight, and who would
eventually become the team's regular slot pilot.
At that time, Tactical Air Command, the forerunner of today's Air
Combat Command, operated the Air Force's fighters—and the C-130 fleet.
In early 1958, the nascent team seized an opportunity for its first
demonstration. The parent unit of the 774th TCS, the 463rd Troop
Carrier Wing, was tasked to put up all thirty-six of its assigned
C-130s for a mass flyby at a ceremony at Ardmore. Most of TAC
leadership would be in attendance.
"We asked our wing commander if we could do something special at the
end of the flyby," Akin recalls. "As we flew past, the four of us
broke out, came back in a diamond formation, scorched over the field
at about 300 knots at low altitude, and closed with a bomb-burst
maneuver," said Akin. "The crowd was expecting the Hercules to come
lumbering by. But we wanted to show them what the aircraft could
really do."
For that show, the team called themselves the Thunderweasels,
combining the name of TAC's premier fighter demonstration team, the
Thunderbirds, with the nickname of the 774th TCS, the Green Weasels.
Although the Thunderweasels name raised more than a few official
eyebrows, the demonstration had been a huge hit.
A Full Show
Sparked by their performance at Ardmore, enthusiasm began to build.
Eventually, the pilots began seriously working up what evolved into a
twenty-three minute show—and coming up with a new name. "We thought
long and hard about it and finally settled on the Four Horsemen after
the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. There were four of us," notes
Akin. "The name fit."
By late 1958, the team was ready for its first official show, which
came at Sewart AFB, Tennessee, the team's new home. Ardmore AFB was
closing, and the 774th had been reassigned to the base near Nashville.
The permanent Horsemen—Akin, Hatfield, Chaney, and Capt. David
Moore—flew with a rotating cast of squadron copilots who were all
aircraft commanders and instructor or standardization/evaluation
pilots. For demos, the pilots also flew with a flight engineer and a
scanner, normally an aircraft mechanic. "The enlisted crew members
would just about get into fist fights trying to fly with us,"
remembers copilot Bill Mills. "Their pride in what we were doing was
top to bottom."
To start the demonstration, the pilots, wearing scarves and a
distinctive shoulder patch featuring the silhouette of a horse head
with the Roman numeral IV in its neck, taxied out and lined up on the
runway in a diamond formation.
Normally, Moore, whom Mills described as "a very smooth pilot," flew
lead. Akin flew right wing, which the Horsemen called the number two
position. Hatfield flew the slot, or number four position. Chaney, the
team leader who had been the ferry pilot when the first operational
C-130 was delivered from the then-Lockheed Georgia Company facility in
Marietta, Georgia, flew the left wing, or number three position. "The
left wing was the hardest position to fly," said Hatfield. "The pilot
had to look across the flight deck and out the right window the whole
show to stay in position."
The Four Horsemen would take off nearly simultaneously in about 1,500
feet. The slot aircraft, which was getting extra lift from the
leader's propwash, actually got airborne first, followed by the other
three aircraft. Quickly retracting the landing gear, the four pilots
would be in tight formation at 1,500 feet altitude over the end of the
runway, climbing at 4,000 feet per minute.
Next, the team made a left banking turn, repositioned, and flew in a
close line astern, slightly stacked trail formation down the show
line. That arrow formation was followed by the arrowhead formation,
where lead and number two remained in trail formation, while the
number three aircraft moved to the left wing of number two, and the
slot moved off two's right wing. After repositioning, the group made a
flyby in the diamond formation. The four pilots then transitioned to
an echelon right formation to turn.
Coming back toward the crowd at approximately 200 feet above the
runway in the diamond, the team performed the bomb burst—what they
called the Horsemen Burst—with the lead pilot pulling up and making a
forty-five degree left climbing turn, while the right wing pulled up
and made a ninety-degree right climbing turn. Left wing pulled up and
turned ninety degrees to the left, while the slot climbed and made a
forty-five degree turn to the right. After completing their turns, the
pilots leveled off and returned to the original heading.
The team rejoined in the diamond, and then went to an extended trail
formation. With sufficient spacing between the C-130s, the four pilots
simultaneously broke to the left for landing. The Horsemen then
touched down on alternate sides of the runway.
The Famous Horsemen
Crowds everywhere were astonished. "The C-130A had a wingspan of 132
feet and weighed more than 100,000 pounds. But it could move," notes
John Dale, a Horsemen copilot. "It was very responsive, even flying
past thirty degrees of bank. We were able to do the maneuvers because
of that aircraft. It was the closest thing to a fighter I ever flew."
But the wow factor was something the team had to work at. "We had to
schedule two- to four-hour flights a couple of times a month to train
for the maneuvers," notes Akin. "We were working in Four Horsemen
practice between operational missions and deployments. Anytime the
four of us were somewhere, though, we flew a show. We didn't have
dedicated aircraft, so we flew whatever C-130 was available. We
performed from Bangor to Bangkok."
Hatfield adds, "We didn't fly standard formations, so we had to
practice. Our show required a lot of concentration." The two wingmen
flew with barely ten feet of horizontal separation between their
wingtips and the horizontal tail of the lead and at the same altitude.
Hatfield, in the slot position, flew seven to ten feet behind and
slightly above the lead. "I had to fly on the lead and react to him.
We weren't that far apart. But we never had a close call, and we never
even scratched an aircraft."
As the team's notoriety spread, airshow requests started coming in,
including a surprisingly large number of requests from Strategic Air
Command bomber bases. At that time, a fairly intense rivalry existed
between the Air Force major commands that flew bombers and fighters.
Many SAC base commanders simply preferred to see four-engine "heavies"
flying a demonstration versus single-engine fighters. The C-130 did
make for a different kind of airshow. At one demo, lead had to shut
down an engine. The Horsemen continued on as if nothing had happened.
By late 1959, sales of the C-130, both in the US and internationally,
were starting to pick up. Lockheed capitalized on the popularity of
the Four Horsemen by producing promotional items as sales tools.
Today, a Lockheed postcard showing the Horsemen in formation
occasionally turns up on online auction sites and usually sells for
about $30.
Lockheed also made a documentary called Hercules And The Four
Horsemen. Thousands of feet of footage were shot of the team flying
their demonstration over the Grand Canyon and near Williams AFB
outside Phoenix, Arizona. The result was a movie the Horsemen really
disliked.
The movie producers used actors, including one with a harsh nasal
voice, to spout ridiculous dialog, rather than use the crisp, precise
radio calls the Horsemen actually made. That was irritating, but what
was particularly galling to the team was that most of the footage was
shot at an altitude of 10,000 feet so the aircraft would appear
against the clouds.
"We flew at 500 to 1,000 feet during our shows," notes Akin. "We never
flew for shows as high as we did for that movie." Despite its faults,
the fifteen-minute film is the only official visual record of the Four
Horsemen in action. The film will soon be on www.codeonemagazine.com.
When it is posted, turning the sound down is recommended.
Into The Sunset
The pinnacle of Horsemen history came when the team appeared on the 18
January 1960 cover of Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine,
regarded as the world's leading aviation publication. Ironically,
shortly after that, the team was disbanded.
A number of factors led to the demise of the Horsemen. Some issues
were political: For instance, when Chaney was asked if he would like
to fly a dedicated C-130 as a support aircraft for the Thunderbirds,
he said no. Separately, Congress, following Senator William Proxmire's
lead, refused to allocate money for additional flying hours to
practice because the team was seen as frivolous. Other factors were
operational: The Horsemen were all overdue to rotate to other
assignments. "The C-130 was heavily tasked for operations at that
point," recalls Akin. "Even though preliminary plans had been made for
the team to have five permanently assigned C-130s, the aircraft was
just too valuable to dedicate to a demonstration team. Those plans
were quickly killed."
The main reason for the end of the Horsemen, though, was the advent of
the C-130B. By spring 1960, the Hercules squadrons at Sewart were
rapidly converting to the B-model.
"The B-model Hercules had a number of features that made it better for
long missions," notes Hatfield. "It had different engines and
propellers, and much lower hydraulic pressure on the controls. It was
not as responsive as the C-130A and just not as good for formation
flying. We tried to use the B-model for the Four Horsemen, but it
simply didn't fly like the A-model"
Once the Four Horsemen rode no more, the aircrew members went their
separate ways. Chaney and Moore have both passed away. Akin, who flew
B-24s and P-38s during World War II before reentering the Air Force,
retired after a twenty-eight year service career. Hatfield, who first
served as an enlisted cryptographer, spent most of his twenty-eight
year career in C-130s. He was also part of the initial cadre of Air
Force pilots to fly the C-141 StarLifter.
Among the Horsemen copilots, Mills, who had been an enlisted radio
operator in the Berlin Airlift, went on to serve as the commander of
the first C-130 squadron equipped with the All-Weather Aerial Delivery
System during his thirty-six year Air Force career. John Dale was in
charge of DC-130 drone director operations during Operation Linebacker
in Vietnam. He also commanded a U-2 squadron and was later director of
reconnaissance at 15th Air Force headquarters during his thirty-two
year career.
?From the first practice to the last show, the Four Horsemen flew
fifteen official airshows and additional demos when the four pilots
were deployed. But the effect the team had was lasting. "What we did
was prove to the rest of the Air Force, and, more importantly, to the
Army, what the C-130 was capable of doing. That was shown during the
Vietnam War," notes Akin. "And the C-130 is still showing that
capability today."
One of my professors at MTSU said he flew with them. I wish I had thought to ask him more about them, but at the time, we were all more interested in his story about how he got shot in the ass while unloading a C-130 at Khe Sanh. He did say they practiced a barrel roll or two, but the higher ups vetoed that idea before they flew a demo in front of an audience.
Ben
Ben,I didn't know you went to MTSU.I lived in M'boro for a long time ,finally moving away in'89.I remember passing by the ANG part of the Nashville airport they had an early C-130A with the roman nose.That was in the late 60s early 70s.I also think the TN ANG had F-84Fs stationed at BNA.
spanky