QUICK ACTION HELPS GUARD CREW AVOID C-130 CRASH

  • Published
  • By Master Sgt. Bob Oldham
  • 189th Airlift Wing Public Affairs
LITTLE ROCK AIR FORCE BASE, Ark. (AETCNS) --  What started as a routine training mission took a turn for the worse for the C-130 crew of "Props 76" seconds after takeoff from Little Rock Air Force Base in September.

As the Arkansas Air National Guard Hercules' propellers churned through the air toward the base perimeter Sept. 9., all four engines lost power -- from 15,000 inch-pounds of torque to 10,000 inch-pounds of torque -- causing the empty cargo aircraft to stop climbing into the clouds that overcast day and level off.

"You just don't see malfunctions that affect all four motors," Maj. Dean Martin, the 154th Training Squadron instructor pilot and aircraft commander on the mission, said as he reflected back on the flight.

At 800 to 1,000 feet over primarily wooded land, the crew didn't know it at the time, but they had only a few seconds to avert potential catastrophe.

Sitting in the right seat was Lt. Col. Rich McGough, Props 76 co-pilot who is also an instructor pilot in the squadron. Following his checklist procedures, he turned off the auxiliary hydraulic pump after the aircraft lifted off. Just after the colonel flipped the switch, the major noted that his vertical velocity indicator and collision avoidance system "went black." Both are on the same display in the cockpit.

"The auxiliary pump is the largest load on our electrical system," Martin said.

Master Sgt. Doug McGroarty, the flight engineer, switched the aircraft propellers to mechanical governing and turned the temperature datum system to null. That action, officials say, kept all four engines from flaming out, which could have resulted in a fiery heap of wreckage off the west end of the base's runway.

The temperature datum system controls the amount of fuel to the engines based on several engine parameters.

As soon as the flight engineer switched the system to null -- essentially manually overriding the system -- engines two, three and four roared back to life.

The crew's actions were crucial to avoid catastrophe, according to flight safety experts.

A representative of the engine manufacturer later said reducing the power would have caused all four engines to flame out, according to Martin. Failing to take manual control of the engines would have caused a flame-out within eight to 10 seconds.

"When (Sergeant McGroarty) brought the air turbine motor back online, Number One came back," the major said.

The crew was then able to turn around and land the plane back at the base.

The aircraft, a 1963 model, was impounded by maintenance for about two weeks as technicians and specialists studied and evaluated the cause. The culprit was a contact on a three-phase electrical bus that failed in one of the phases. Unfortunately for the crew of Props 76, it was on the essential bus, which runs several key components in the cockpit.

"At the time, it didn't seem like it was that big of a deal," McGroarty said, adding that he's been more scared in previous in-flight emergencies, such as one in which he experienced a fire in the cockpit.

With a combined 13,100 hours of flying time between the three of them, the flight engineer credited flying with a pair of experienced pilots as one of the reasons they were able to land safely on the ground. Martin has more than 4,200 hours in the air, McGough has more than 4,700 and McGroarty has more than 4,200.

Today, the aircraft is back in service, and the crewmembers are back in the air training students.

To alert others in the Air Force who fly the C-130, the wing's chief of safety generated an Air Force Safety Automated System report, coding the incident as one that has "high accident potential." That coding notified by e-mail each C-130 flight safety officer around the Air Force of the incident so that they could brief their crews to be on the lookout for a similar scenario.