Jack of Harts

Dyess Air Force Base’s C-130 Hercules transport aircraft were some of the oldest airframes in the Air Force inventory when the Second Great Depression hit. Most historians dismiss the idea that any of them were truly a century old, surmising instead that most of the craft were the Super Hercules subclass that was half that age. There is some question as to whether or not they were refits or new construction, but whatever the case, they were ancient by the standards of the day. There is no question at all that many of the crews and support personnel descended from men who had worked aboard various versions of the Hercules as far back as the Vietnam War. They were generational craft and crews, and the Air Force had long since embraced the concept of keeping men united with their family craft. Many of them had been stationed at Dyess AFB for five, ten, fifteen, or even twenty years or more, working to keep their grand old craft flying as one planned replacement after another worked its way through the development pipeline and kept on failing to match the performance of their birds. When Dyess AFB stopped listening to the new President and aligned itself with Texas, most of the crews smiled and went back to work keeping their birds flying.