139th Airlift Wing closer to a second C-130 returning to the sky

Monica Dunn, St. Joseph News-Press, Mo.
·2 min read

Dec. 27—Another C-130-Hercules will soon be back in the skies above St. Joseph.

The 139th Airlift Wing of the Air National Guard based at Rosecrans Memorial Airport has received additional C-130-Hercules blades, which will allow it to get a second aircraft back flying after the U.S. Air Force grounded all those planes this fall.

The Air Force Air Mobility Command issued the grounding order on Sept. 27 after a maintenance crew discovered a persistent hydraulic fluid leak in C-130 Hercules propellers. The Air Force collected all of the good propellers across the country to prioritize which wings get the fixed propellers first.

The 139th Airlift Wing received its first good propellers in November, which was earlier than wing leaders anticipated. Originally, wing commander Col. John Cluck hoped for the first aircraft to be flying by the new year.

"Nobody wants to be back in the air more than we do," Cluck told News-Press NOW in October. "We just like say, if Santa could bring me four good props, best Christmas present ever."

The base having a second aircraft flyable will allow pilots to do all their necessary training.

"When we get two, then we can do formation fly, and so some of our requirements require that we go out with more than one aircraft," Cluck said. "So, once we get that second one up, we'll be in pretty good shape."

The 139th Airlift Wing hopes to have the second C-130 Hercules flying in the next couple of weeks.

"Then, we get three and four and go on down the road and clearly we'll go back to normal as much as we can, and we're excited about that," he said

Cluck said he felt relieved when he received the propellers needed to fly one of the base's 10 C-130 Hercules.

"The heartbeat of this wing is those aircraft, and when we don't have it, everything just still seems to lose focus," Cluck said. "This is getting us back into a position where now we can start being a wing again. That's really all we want to do. We want to do our job."

139th hopes to have a third C-130 Hercules flying by the end of January.

"We're looking at having three hopefully operational aircraft back in the air by mid- to the end of January," said Rodney Ray, propulsion section supervisor at the 139th Airlift Wing.