Airdrops have to be made from very low altitudes and as such are vulnerable to small arms’ fire and the risk of ground collision in mountainous terrain. In Bosnia, drops were often thwarted by bad weather conditions and the possibility that the DZ could be immediately overrun by unfriendly forces before food could be offloaded from pallets. Worse, in May 1993 six people were killed and eight injured by aid crates parachuted into Goradze and Srebrenica. Moreover, at one DZ, five people were killed in the fight around the parachute, whilst at another, a woman and child lay dead beneath a pallet. Clearly, other methods had to be tried and to this end the tri-wall aerial delivery system (TRIADS) was first used on 20 March 1993, over Srebrenica: in this method individual HDR packets packed into 4 x 31 feet cardboard boxes are ‘fluttered’ onto DZs. The boxes have walls made of three layers of cardboard and self-destruct after leaving the C-130 because the ties holding them together are pulled apart: individual HDRs then scatter into the air and fall to the ground, in much the same way as a leaflet drop. On the night of 23/24 August 1993 USAFE C-130s flew over Mordar and discharged in a ‘free fall’, 13,440 individual MRE (Meals Ready to Eat) packs weighing approximately 20lb, in boxes designed to open in mid-air, spreading the packages inside a wide area.
A typical high-velocity CDS airdrop mission was flown by six Hercules on the night of Thursday 24/Friday 25 March 1994 to Bjelimići, Bosnia. One of the C-130Es was 64-0529 - UN call-sign 43 - from the 43rd Wing at Pope AFB, North Carolina, commanded by Captain Michael P. Brignola, flying as check pilot for the mission pilot, 27-year-old Captain Darren A. Maturi, an American of Italian extraction from Virginia, Minnesota, who occupied the left seat. Darren had graduated in the top 15 per cent at flying school and though this qualified him to fly jet fighters, he had chosen transports. He had no regrets and in the past eighteen months had flown drops into Turkey, the Gulf and Angola, as well as to Bosnia; he was also the co-pilot aboard the first Bosnian airdrop mission on 1 March to Cerska, when three C-130s had dropped supplies in a drop zone 1,138 yards wide and 1,935 yards long.6
Captain Brignola gathered the flight crew of nine around him outside the Hercules and went through the AAA and SAM avoidance procedures, Chaff dispensers and inert heat-sensitive flares being standard equipment; then everyone climbed aboard. Into the rear fuselage went the loadmasters, Staff Sergeant David T. Marko from Woburn, Massachusetts; Staff Sergeant Mike T. Norton from Chicago, Illinois. Technical Sergeant Barney ‘Joe’ Ivy and AFRes loadmaster from West Memphis, Arkansas also went to gain experience. On the flight deck all the crew, apart from Sergeant Jim A. Carezas, the satellite communications operator, also in charge of oxygen supply, were from the 37th Airlift Squadron; Jim Carezas was from Travis AFB. During a typical airdrop mission the C-130 travelled about 1,500 air miles, which takes around six hours; and on a typical day, four USAF C-130s would fly to Sarajevo and twelve would make airdrop missions.
A great Frank Sinatra fan, Darren Maturi donned his red-and-white cap with his ‘Frank Rules’ badge; the cap was a present from Colonel Harry Andersson, a family friend who flew F4U Corsairs in the US Marine Corps on Guadalcanal in World War II. Navigator was Captain Mark A. Naumann, from Minnesota. Most navigators appear intense and Mark was no exception, his glasses making him look even more studious as he studied at his small table the large green scope, portable GPS NAVISTAR, maps and papers marked ‘SECRET’. Flight engineer Staff Sergeant Robert A. Higginbotham, from Mooresville, Indianapolis, sat pensively studying dials and gauges.
Pilot 1st Lieutenant Ross Becker and co-pilot 1st Lieutenant Eric L. Meyers (right), also from the 815th ALS, 403rd ALW, their flak jackets on now, and Staff Sergeant Ronald A. Downer, flight engineer, 327th ALS, 403rd ALW, maintain a close watch as the C-130E wends its way through the steep mountain passes in Bosnia near the end of the flight into Sarajevo on 23 March 1994. (MWB)
On arrival at Sarajevo C-130E 62-1834 is unloaded and UN passengers disembark after its arrival from Rhein-Main. Brigadier General James E. Sehorn, director of operations, HQ 14th AF (AFRes) at Dobbins AFB, Georgia, who was ‘hitching a ride’ on this flight, was first off the aircraft to help with the unloading! On 14 December 1967 flying a F-105 on a ‘Wild Weasel’ strike in the war in SE Asia, the then Captain Sehorn was shot down and captured and spent over five years as a PoW in the notorious Hỏa Lò prison otherwise
The sun dropped behind the far side of the airport as UN 43 taxied out. In the lead were Captain David A. Peiffer and his all-41st ALS crew. His Hercules was equipped with AWADS (Adverse Weather Aerial Delivery System) and was thus able to navigate to its own release point. There were six Hercules in the ‘package’: two AWADS and their wingmen. Darren Maturi was to have led to gain lead experience - what was termed ‘spreading the wealth’ - but an enforced delay aboard Captain Warren H. Hurst’s C-130, who was to have been the No. 2, meant that he flew his slot. Hurst’s co-pilot was Captain Catherine A. Jacob, one of three female pilots in the 37th ALS; Hurst would catch up as the mission progressed. To the left, Captain Gallagher nosed out to take the third slot, then a fourth with Captains Mike Hampton and Ed Brewer at the controls. Hampton’s aircraft was an AWADS-equipped Hercules. Captain Jones, who was to have flown the fifth slot, had a malfunction and the spare aircraft, piloted by Major Douglas D. Delozier, filled in.
Welcome to War-torn Sarajevo! (MWB)
C-130E 62-1834 is reloaded with supplies at Split, Croatia for another flight to Sarajevo. (MWB)
Peiffer was soon climbing away into leaden skies and UN43 followed. Darren Maturi opened the throttles and the C-130 rumbled along the runway; there was a slight judder as it gained height and the wheels were retracted. The orange scope of the AN/APN-169A SKE (Station-Keeping Equipment) atop the instrument panel showed a reassuring line of five red blips with a circle (us) behind the lead blip. To the left of the SKE, the flight command indicator, or the ‘fluter phone’, waited to be used to pass commands to the other aircraft. The layer of black cloud grew wider. On intercom Darren Maturi said, ‘We are now entering the ‘bumpy zone’!’ Peiffer’s white-flashing tailnavigation lights disappeared into the cloud; he turned and Maturi turned also. The conga-line on the SKE followed a fraction later. At 7,000 feet the C-130 started to pick up icing and leading-edge deicers had to be turned on; only the faithful line of red blips following on the SKE lit up the console.
Priorities for drops over Bosnia were provided by US European Command (EUCOM) from the UNHCR office in Geneva. EUCOM would pass the information to Joint Task Force at Naples, where a targeting board convened daily to assess information and determine where formations would drop. The information was then passed to planners and schedulers at Rhein-Main who put together the actual mission. Airdrops had concentrated mainly on Mostar recently due to the large numbers of refugees there.
West of Munich Captain Maturi followed Peiffer in the turn; applying 20 degrees of bank. Intercom conversation was staccato, short and to the point. Darren Maturi and Mike Brignola agreed that it is harder to be element leader, which they were, than formation leader. At this point Jim Carezas, the sat-comm operator, informed Captain Mark A. Naumann that a fighter pilot has reported triple A in the area. However, it was made on VHF in the clear, so the two pilots agreed that it could not be too sensitive. On intercom someone said, ‘On some nights I hear word of twenty sightings let’s press on.’
The moon was high above as the C-130 skimmed the clouds below. Misty gossamer trails scudded past, while in front huge clouds loomed like polar ice caps; Darren Maturi banked away slightly to avoid turbulence. There was a city below: lights, lots of them. There were no stars visible, only the twinkling of Peiffer’s nav’ lights. Captain Maturi had got a little high, so he banked lightly to the left; the blips followed obediently like carriages being pulled by a locomotive. There was a brief, tantalizing glimpse of the Alps in a rare shaft of moonlight, though the pilots were seemingly oblivious to the majestic sight. They were thinking ahead, fully aware of the dangers a full moon presen
ted over the drop zone.
Full moon out there.’
‘Means we’ll be visible over Bosnia.’
‘Yeah, could do with some cloud.’
On the interphone came a chilling reminder of the recent shooting down, on 28 February, by F-16Cs, of four Serbian SOKO G-4 Super Galeb jets - the first confirmed violation of the UN aid resolution by fixed-wing aircraft since NATO began Operation ‘Deny Flight’ in April 1993: ‘Unidentified aircraft land immediately or I will have to take action. You are in violation of UN Resolution 816.’ Nothing further is heard and the pilots showed no more concern in their voices than they did before. Mark Naumann cut in, ‘Twenty minutes off our combat checklist’.
The formation headed inexorably into Croatian and then Bosnian airspace. Somewhere out there F-16 escort fighters were patrolling, protecting their ‘assets’, as the C-130s are termed. Apart from the Hercules there was another, smaller ‘package’ of French and German Air Force Transalls heading for their drop zone at Tesanj.
The crew donned their flak vests. Darren Maturi discarded his lucky cap, put on his lightblue helmet and clamped his oxygen mask on. Everyone followed suit. Thumbs up showed that everyone’s oxygen system was working normally as Carezas turned the controls to depressurize the cabin and the hold. Everyone was now breathing pure oxygen. Navigation and cabin lights were extinguished and the cockpit was bathed in a red hue; Captain Mark A. Naumann called out the time to the IP (Initial Point) and Higginbotham checked the fuel gauges above his head.
WHOOMPF!
Alarmed, Mark Naumann exclaimed, ‘What was that?’ He didn’t wait for an answer -‘Did we take a hit? Did any pieces fly off?’ Fortunately it was nothing more than an air pocket.
The DZ was Bjelimići, south-west of Sarajevo. Captain Mark Naumann explained the drop procedure: ‘AWADS enables us to make airdrops at night or in bad weather when we cannot visually see the drop zone. We have a GPS NAVISTAR navigational computer so we can programme radar targets into the computer, call up the targets and it projects cross-hairs onto the radar scope over the targets; we can then see if the cross-hairs are accurately placed on the target. If not, the navigator can manually move the cross-hairs over the target to update the navigational computer. Then we fly off the navigational computer to the release point to make the drop. The rear ramp is lowered. Coming into the drop we slow down a certain distance out, making a series of warning calls thirty seconds slow down, five seconds slow down, then the slow-down call itself, slowing down to our drop zone air-speed, which is 140 knots.
Captain Mark Naumann made a one-minute advisory call. He added ‘Confidence high - ‘Dee Zee’ ahead,’ and sends a ‘Down Prep’ on the SKE system, which our followers receive. He then made a ten-second call and sent another ‘Down Prep’ which our wingmen following us received.
Through all of this he has been evaluating wind speed and altitude and passing on flight directions to Darren Maturi. The biggest variable that occurs after the load exits is the wind. For example, a tenknot cross-wind airdropping at, say, 10,000 feet, causes the load to drift about 800 yards over the ground. The Hercules is travelling at about 100 yards per second, at a drop airspeed of 140 knots. Captain Mark A. Naumann used his equipment to evaluate the winds, speed of aircraft and all of these sorts of parameters, forecast versus the actual, to come up with the CARP, or computed release point. Maturi eased the control column back to reduce his airspeed and raised the nose about 8 degrees to allow the CDS to exit from the rear cargo door.
Once Captain Naumann had the DZ in the crosshairs he informed the pilots: ‘Green light, Green light, Green light!’ Mike Brignola threw the switch that released the cargo-restraining strap and the extraction process was set in motion: slowly at first the six pallets of food bundles, medical boxes, clothing, blankets and tetanus serum, slid down the rollers towards the black void. The small chemical green pen-lights which stay lit for more than eight hours to aid recovery of the CDS on the ground, swung pendulously on the webbing straps. It took only about four seconds but it seemed longer - and then suddenly they were gone. Each bundle was attached to a conventional 26 feet ring-slot parachute, opened by static line; the parachutes bring the bundles in at about 60 mph. Special packing techniques ensure the survival of the contents: on one occasion, 4,000 glass vials of penicillin were dropped near a hospital and not one broke!
Captain Jim Stockmore had the opportunity to observe an allied air-drop; here is his eye-witness account of it: The effort was well organized, with strict control measures in place. Prior to the drop, a crew of about sixty local residents under the control of the local police chief, Hurem Sahic, were in place around the drop zone. Most of the crew had walked the rugged uphill route from Zepa, a 15-kilometre trek, which takes about three hours by foot. They now huddled around a small fire, attempting to stay warm in the wind and snow on the high, flat drop site.
Before the drop, small sorties of NATO aircraft went over the area, an indication that the C-130 Hercules aircraft were not far behind. The window for the drop had been passed the day before, through the UNMO CAPSAT communications net, the only link to the outside world. Within the announced time-window, the aircraft arrived over the drop zone. An eerie silence fell on the hilltop.
The crew knew instinctively that at any moment the pallets would drop somewhere in the area. The rate of descent - about 50 mph - also meant that any one of them could be crushed to death; however, through experience they had learned where to position themselves to minimise the threat. Even so, their silence was indicative of their anxiety.
The pallets began to hit with a loud thud. Three struck the south side of the drop zone ahead of the others; then minutes later, a ripple of impacts, similar to the sound made by dud artillery rounds, echoed across the field. There was a chorus of cheers from the crew and after waiting about fifteen minutes to ensure there were no more drops, they rushed to find the pallets. Each was guarded throughout the cold night by a member of Hurem’s crew.
‘The Bosnians expected fifty-six pallets, based on the information passed though the UNMOs. Altogether, three US planes dropped a total of forty-one CDS bundles and by 0500 hours, thirtyfive pallets had been found. Three had come down without fully deployed parachutes, but without damage to the contents. Hurem’s crew made inventories of the contents of the pallets and loaded them on Ukrainian trucks for the trip down the hill to Zepa. On arrival the cargo was again inventoried, then warehoused and distributed by the local government. Two persons were arrested for attempting to enter the drop zone and pilfer cargo.’
Meanwhile, in the six C-130s leaving the area above, the loadmasters confirmed, ‘Load clear!’ Down below, Bosnia was illuminated by many hundreds of lights - and aboard UN43, Captain Brignola remarked on how strange it was that a country at war had so much electricity. The total flight-time was going to be around six hours by the time the C-130 touched down at Frankfurt and upcoming vacations were discussed to help while them away.
At last the two parallel runways at Frankfurt appeared; their green landing and red exit bars glowing against the skyline. Minutes later the C-130 was down and one by one the superb Hercules were marshalled into position by ground signallers using illuminated batons. Engines were cut and the cabin lights came on. Another six cargoes of supplies had been delivered to Bosnia and for the crews a day of rest would be taken before it all began again - if not here, then somewhere else in Europe, or the Far East, or Africa: wherever the US air forces would be needed next.7
From September 2001 until December 2005, when it closed, Rhein-Main continued to provide support for transient C-130, C-141 Starlifter, C-17 Globemaster III, C-5 Galaxy, KC-135 Stratotanker, KC-10 Extender and Air Mobility Commandchartered civilian airliners supporting both US military activities throughout Europe, as well as a waypoint for air mobility operations throughout Southwest Asia towards the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now based at Ramstein, the 37th Airlift Squadron in the 86th Airlift Wing routinely performs airdrop and air-land miss
ions, delivering equipment, supplies and personnel ‘on target, on time’. The current fleet consists of one C-40B, two C-20Hs, five C-21As, two C-37As and fourteen C-130Js.
The airlifters can train and deploy paratroops, transport a fire truck, helicopter, boat or other vehicles, evacuate wounded as a flying hospital, or serve as a troop carrier, cargo aircraft or humanitarian responder. The speedy crews can switch tasks in mid-mission, flying cargo in and troops out, for example, transforming their aircraft from one mode to another in 45 minutes or less. They do all of this with a minimal flight crew of three or four, managing a geographical responsibility that spans much of Europe and Africa from their base in southern Germany. And that’s not all. With a rugged airframe and four powerful Rolls-Royce AE 2100 turboprop engines, the 86th’s C-130Js get in and out of places that other larger airlifters simply can’t. Short, unimproved air strip? No problem - let a little air out of the tyres to soften the landing and the C-130Js will get the job done.
Captain Mike Brignola (centre, right) brief the crew of C-130E 64-0529 in the 41st ALS, 43rd ALW, from Pope AFB just before the ‘off’ at Rhein-Main for the night air drop at Bjelimici, Bosnia on 24/25 March 1994. (MWB)
Captain Darren Maturi (left) and Captain Mike Brignola in front of C-130E 64-0529 just before take-off from Rhein-Main for the night airdrop at Bjelimici, Bosnia on 24/25 March 1994. (MWB)
Pilot Brian Shea of the 37th Airlift Squadron, comments: ‘The ‘Herc’ is an iconic aircraft and we are still exploring its capabilities. This plane is such a beautiful mix of technology and time-tested reliability. Our squadron has tackled airdropping entire army units across Europe, hauled massive amounts of cargo across Africa and fulfilled the varied niches in between without hesitation.’
C-130 Hercules Page 36