The Uniqe C-130A at Wright Pat

[Daryl Hunt]

I worked and flew on the C-130A that's in the Wright Patterson Museum at Dayton, Oh. There is a lot of history to that old Warhorse. Here is a bit of it.

Here is a picture of it now.

Here is what it looked like until 1970.

You will notice that it received the radome from a 1956 C-130. The original had 4 DC Generators but only 2 AC Generators but the AC-130 received 4 AC Generators because of the extra power required. There were a lot of other modifications as well. And it was converted into an AC-130A gunship and used until 1972 when the AC-130E replaced it. It was flown back to the States and found it's way to Wright Pat in 1976 without the Guns, Electronic Control Booths, Guns and other things.

If you look at what is on display, it's not original. But it really is the second C-130 off the assembly line in late 1953 and the first one that USAF bought. But as I said, it's been highly modified since then. They have tried to hide the fact it was used as a Gunship but there are little things if you know where and how to look.

The Display bird:

1. Has 4 AC Generators

2. If you lift the pads in certain places you can still see the bolt holes of the Gun Mounts

3. Where the Guns were sticking out the sides, the metal doesn't quite match up

4. There are still some old Budweiser Patches if you look close enough. We sometimes ran out of sheet aluminum and used beer cans for patches and the AC had lots of holes to patch from ground fire.

There are quite of few other little things but if you look for those 4 then it should really make your day.

Here is what the old AC-130A looked like when I knew it well.

 

[JGalt]

Why would they try to hide the fact that it was once a gunship? The AC-130A gunships were awesome pieces of American military aircraft.

 

[Daryl Hunt]

Why would they try to hide the fact that it was once a gunship? The AC-130A gunships were awesome pieces of American military aircraft.

Because they needed to display the original first purchased C-130A. They do have an AC-130A on display and I am quite familiar with that one as well, tail number 56-33560 and nicknamed Thor.