Farewell Fat Albert?

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Farewell Fat Albert?

#1 Post by ricardian » Sat Feb 27, 2021 8:12 pm

From the Daily Mail, Saturday 27th Feb 2021:
The entire fleet of the transporter plane favoured by the SAS is to be grounded – despite fears the cost-cutting move will put soldiers’ lives at risk.
Retiring all 14 of the ‘Super Hercules’ C-130J – repeatedly used on Special Forces operations against IS in Iraq and Syria – would also jeopardise hundreds of UK defence jobs.
The aircraft is loved by soldiers for being easy to take off and land in rugged, hostile environments and for its anti-detection technology, protecting them from rocket attacks. Now a much larger, apparently less well-suited aircraft – the Airbus-manufactured A400M – will be trusted to fly troops behind enemy lines.
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Re: Farewell Fat Albert?

#2 Post by 4mastacker » Sat Feb 27, 2021 10:14 pm

The enemy will hear that A400M thing from a long way off - quiet it is not!!
It's always my fault - SWMBO

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Re: Farewell Fat Albert?

#3 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sun Feb 28, 2021 4:05 am

If true this will not be good news for Marshall Aerospace who have contracts for maintaining the type here in the UK (and elsewhere too).

https://marshalladg.com/insights-news/b ... -away-home

Link to ricardian's quote...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... unded.html
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Re: Farewell Fat Albert?

#4 Post by Rwy in Sight » Sun Feb 28, 2021 7:55 am

When does the contract expire and could they bid for a new one for similar services on the A400?

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Re: Farewell Fat Albert?

#5 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sun Feb 28, 2021 8:50 am

Rwy in Sight wrote:
Sun Feb 28, 2021 7:55 am
When does the contract expire and could they bid for a new one for similar services on the A400?
I don't know RiS, or even if this story is true, given its provenance. If true,there would be a break clause and a payment but ultimately a lot of British jobs would be lost.I guess Marshall could try and bid for another contract but I suspect an Airbus sub-contract would be hugely complex to land given where we are politically in this country.
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Re: Farewell Fat Albert?

#6 Post by Undried Plum » Sun Feb 28, 2021 9:07 am

4mastacker wrote:
Sat Feb 27, 2021 10:14 pm
The enemy will hear that A400M thing from a long way off - quiet it is not!!
Yeah, but according to the Daily Mail it's bloody fast!

Image

=))

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Re: Farewell Fat Albert?

#7 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sun Feb 28, 2021 9:43 am

Undried Plum wrote:
Sun Feb 28, 2021 9:07 am
4mastacker wrote:
Sat Feb 27, 2021 10:14 pm
The enemy will hear that A400M thing from a long way off - quiet it is not!!
Yeah, but according to the Daily Mail it's bloody fast!

=))
Mach O.72, the Airbus 400M's top speed, assuming ISA, and then converting to kilometres an hour, gives 889. The idiots clearly transcribed the number using miles an hour from some source.

As for Marshall, they have been associated with the Airbus 400M programme, it seems..

https://www.curtisswrightds.com/infocen ... ant-1.html

https://www.flightglobal.com/marshall-m ... 15.article
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Re: Farewell Fat Albert?

#8 Post by Undried Plum » Sun Feb 28, 2021 10:34 am

If you were planning this op, which would you rather have? A Herkybird? Or an A400?



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Re: Farewell Fat Albert?

#9 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sun Feb 28, 2021 11:00 am

Ah but the Heebees had the Divine Manipulator on their side, along with the Fat Alberts!

The most impressive thing I ever saw in aviation terms, occurred in a civilianized C130, chartered by Consolidated Diamond Mines to take all the young brats (of which I was one) from Oranjemund back to boarding schools in Cape Town, after the winter break. A crocodile of kids, mostly boys, fighting, shouting and generally out of control was led out across the dust strip and up the steps into the spartan passenger cabin, separated from the cockpit by a tarpaulin, The din was enormous and the boys, generally, ignored all cabin staff entreaties to shut up and sit down, when all at once, the Captain, a large grey haired Afrikaner of impressive girth and ferocity, with the cap, uniform and stripes to prove his authority, emerged and seized the nearest boy by the lapels of his blazer and lifted him in the air and shouted "Ek biksem vir julle almal" (I will thrash you all). You could have heard a pin drop. Everybody sat down and the flight proceeded on schedule, and as we trooped meekly off the aircraft at DF Malan later we all had silently decided we wanted to fly and be just like that Captain, who had become a hero and Sky God to us all.
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Re: Farewell Fat Albert?

#10 Post by Undried Plum » Sun Feb 28, 2021 11:37 am

Lovely! :YMAPPLAUSE:

If this going to be a Herc reminiscence thread, I'll write a bit about my own experience as a raw prawn in the right hand seat.

This afternoon I've got lambs to bring into the world, but I'll write later a wee bit about my rather brief time in GD(Flying) on those things.

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Another scoop for the Daily Wail

#11 Post by Undried Plum » Sun Feb 28, 2021 11:54 am

Image

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Re: Farewell Fat Albert?

#12 Post by Ex-Ascot » Sun Feb 28, 2021 12:05 pm

Great aircraft. Big mistake getting rid of them. However only brown jobs should be pax. They stuck me on one down the back by mistake to AKT. Refused to get on one ever again.
'Yes, Madam, I am drunk, but in the morning I shall be sober and you will still be ugly.' Sir Winston Churchill.

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Re: Farewell Fat Albert?

#13 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sun Feb 28, 2021 1:06 pm

Undried Plum wrote:
Sun Feb 28, 2021 11:37 am
Lovely! :YMAPPLAUSE:

If this going to be a Herc reminiscence thread, I'll write a bit about my own experience as a raw prawn in the right hand seat.

This afternoon I've got lambs to bring into the world, but I'll write later a wee bit about my rather brief time in GD(Flying) on those things.
Well, it if it is really a farewell, then reminiscences are in order. One awaits the raw, right, hand seat experience with interest.

With respect to my youthful story, to be completely accurate, the aircraft that thundered down that dusty strip, with a cargo full of shell shocked children, back in Oranjemund was a Lockheed L-100 Hercules. I say this as I know there a many sticklers, for such detail, here. ;)))

I see that the charter company involved is still extant, Safair. For some reason, that fact makes me very happy...
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You must have somewhere
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Your destination remains
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Re: Farewell Fat Albert?

#14 Post by ian16th » Sun Feb 28, 2021 1:46 pm

The most sobering fact about the C-130 in my book is that it was flying, before the Blackburn Beverley. entered service with the RAF.
Cynicism improves with age

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Re: Farewell Fat Albert?

#15 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sun Feb 28, 2021 2:04 pm

At the risk of being the nerd that I am, I would like to throw the Embraer C-390 Millenium into the mix...
The C-390 has been marketed as a jet-powered alternative to the C-130 Hercules produced by Lockheed Martin. As of December 2020, Brazil, Portugal and Hungary have signed orders for a total of 35 C-390s, while a further four countries have expressed their interest in procuring the aircraft (Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and the Czech Republic).
A Saffer perspective...
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Re: Farewell Fat Albert?

#16 Post by G-CPTN » Sun Feb 28, 2021 2:13 pm

Will we see C130s continuing in civilian use? - just as there are still operators of DC3s/C47s?

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Re: Farewell Fat Albert?

#17 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sun Feb 28, 2021 2:17 pm

G-CPTN wrote:
Sun Feb 28, 2021 2:13 pm
Will we see C130s continuing in civilian use? - just as there are still operators of DC3s/C47s?
I am willing to be that there will be C-130's around in non-military roles in 20 years time. It is a classic design in the mould of the DC3 etc.

Of course, one shouldn't forget the venerable C-160 Transall which was very successful in its own right and intended to be replaced by the Airbus 400M but is still flying in Germany and France (if I am not mistaken), not least because the A400M has had a rocky and delayed rollout, not least in the RAF!

One historical British perspective on the A400M with hints as to why we are where we are now

Transall.JPG
Transall.JPG (35.3 KiB) Viewed 397 times
Credited to https://bethlehemssappers.blogspot.com/
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Re: Farewell Fat Albert?

#18 Post by Pontius Navigator » Sun Feb 28, 2021 3:00 pm

I had one flight, haven't the faintest recollection of where or when but remember as soon as we unstrapped everyone clambered over the cargo nets to stretch out in relative comfort and in the warmer air.
In 1984 I had two flights in a C141. It had all the mod cons of the C130 with a better toilet arrangement. The seats were as comfortable, the view was as good and the heating as efficient. As soon as we could unstrap we made for the cargo nets only to be admonished by the load master. It was forbidden to kip on the cargo.

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Re: Farewell Fat Albert?

#19 Post by Undried Plum » Sun Feb 28, 2021 10:21 pm

If I were to draw up a short list of the most brilliant aeroplanes of all time, the Herc would be right up there with the DC-3.

It was/is totally fit for purpose. It was a truly brilliant design for its job, as was the Dakota.

I, personally, don't have particularly fond memories of flying it as I shall explain in this stream of consciousness, or in another post if I spill my glass of Mac30. onto the keyboard, as happens.

For reasons and circumstances which I may perhaps bore you with in another post, I ended up doing (starting, actually) a tour on the Herc.

At the time, there were gumment spending strictures which meant that we in my backwater of GD(Flying) Branch had a ration of 9 hours a month.

Lemme tell ya, 9 hours a month in a Herc is best mathematically described as being the square root of five fifths of five eighths of ****.

Remember that the boss was also on the 9 hour ration and he got to choose who would do the take-offs and the landings. Guess how that worked out.

Muggins here got to do the bit between the climbout and the switching on of the autopilot. Not exactly challenging, especially when you consider that the bloke just behind my right shoulder had a wee four lever reproduction of the power levers about four inches beside my right shoulder; and there was a directional advisor to my left-rear who told me what to set the heading select to, and who mostly talked to the air traffic confusers on long sectors.

A coupla trips to a few components of RAFG, hauling what the Septics call call pork 'n beans, and you were out of hours and into the red for the next month.

Being the Station Something-or-other Officer really didn't make up for the mind-numbing brainlessness of not flying those other comparably brain-evacuated tasks in front of me in the right-hand seat of a freighter.

It cost the German wumman's finance providers the thick end of a million quid to train me to do something which could easily have been done by a macaque for peanuts.

OK, so a macaque couldn't have completed The Times Crossword as fast as I could in the cruise, and perhaps that should be taken into account in whatever is the current equivalent of the Biggin Hill tests, but I really wasn't doing anything with my life. So I quit.

In another post, I'll tell you my one and only bar story of us making what was initially thought to have been the (then) most massive **** in the history of Hercs.

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Re: Farewell Fat Albert?

#20 Post by Alisoncc » Mon Mar 01, 2021 6:02 am

Pontius Navigator wrote:
Sun Feb 28, 2021 3:00 pm
I had one flight, haven't the faintest recollection of where or when but remember as soon as we unstrapped everyone clambered over the cargo nets to stretch out in relative comfort and in the warmer air.
You mean like this PN. Herc from Darwin to Changi, early 1967. Actually it was heading for Butterworth and then Saigon, but dropped me off at Changi.

RAAFHerc.jpg
RAAFHerc.jpg (71.56 KiB) Viewed 336 times
Rev Mother Bene Gesserit.

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