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Read that was a 7 hour flight then the drop was at 500 ft. Wow. Great job!
Pretty close. I pulled out my flight log and it was a little over 7 hours from take off to TOT. We then went out and orbited for a couple of hours before landing at Howard AFB. Btw, we dropped the Rangers at 400'agl. None of us had ever practiced doing that, and had some discussions about all that with the Rangers during mission planning.
It was a bit distressing to see all the fuel on the tarmac when we taxied in, and found out that (about) 10 of the 15 C-130s that conducted an airdrop at Rio Hato took hits in the fuel tanks. Thank goodness for blue foam. I still remember a maintainer out there on his ladder in the middle of the night, plugging holes with patching material on a Herk leaking JP4. He was soaked.
One of my friends on the Rio Hato mission went aft after the airdrop to help the Loadmasters. Under the piles of d-bags left behind was a paratrooper who had taken a round during the airdrop and was pushed out of the way. I believe he made it, thank the Lord.
We got refueled and headed back to America about 4 hours later.
