C-130 delivering a tank in a low altitude airdrop

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@pm011235
3 days ago
I was involved in this incident. I was one of the crew members of that Sheridan tank, B-55 3/73RD 82ND ABN DIV. My duty was recovering the vehicle after the LAPES. That happened forty eight hours later after the investigators with the Airforce released it to us.

We back-pumped a majority of the fuel out and stripped it down for the riggers the day before, drove it to the rigging building next to Pope Airforce base, set it up on a pallet and loaded the parachutes on, then did push-pull detail at 3AM to get it on that C-130 for this capability exercise. I have 35mm photos that I took of the process including the cockpit and one of the loadmasters who were on the plane when it crashed.

This video footage is reversed left to right, the plane flew the opposite direction in front of the audience. I have all the news video footage of it from each news team there.

What many don’t know is the pilots knew they couldn’t take off after impact, so they steered the plane away from hitting the audience in the bleachers there. This is evidence in this footage as you can see the right wing more down and the left one higher. Plus, you could see the tire tracks and the plane’s fuselage marks on the ground. Why? Because some genius set those bleachers up to curve in the path of the airstrip. Maybe thinking it would be cool to sit there seeing the plane coming at you.

I never saw a LAPES before this, but I knew what was supposed to happen. As it was flying in I initially questioned why it was so high near the extraction zone, and it appeared to be aiming to the second adjacent strip before turning more right toward the one in front of us where it was intended to be going. Also, the drone shoot came out before this happened, and it just seemed wrong to me. Then as it descended it was diving down pretty steep, much like that of a combat landing. Lastly, I didn’t see how it was going to pull up in time to be 5’ to 6’ above the ground for the tank to be pulled out. Fortunately for myself and crew we didn’t fly with the tank as we normally do in a op like this, as I did a year or so after this happened in another platoon and crew.

The drone shoot came out and pulled the three main LAPES shoots out just about the same time it slammed down and bottomed out. The tailgate flew through the LAPES shoots, then the wings flexed hard and nearly touched the ground. As that happened the rear end tail of the plane broke from the rest of the fuselage. The Sheridan tank slid to a stop as the plane cruised by with its wings flapping. It just missed the audience and went into the tree line blowing up on impact. There was a huge fireball of its JP-4. I felt the heat where I was and could smell the fuel as it burned up. That’s when everyone else got it that something went wrong.

After that was panic as people cleared the bleachers and were evacuated from the site. I was ordered to stay with the tank until instructed further with no idea I’d be there over 24 hours guarding it.

One of the guys from my armor unit died after his Jeep was hit by one of the wings of the plane. Another guy from my until jumped out before that happened. Only two Airforce members survived the crash, but died eventually due to their burns.

My tank came out with only one gouge on the loaders hatch and some pieces of the C-130 inside the turret. I kept one for a while after I got out. No idea where it is now. There was never a release of information as to the cause of the crash. I assume pilot error initially, but there may have been a secondary issue with hydraulics being stuck or something. Speculating isn’t evidence or fact though. It just sucked that it happened at all.

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