There was an interesting configuration of a C-130 Hercules especially outfitted for extreme short landings and take offs. It was purposely built and tested during a dark time in United States history, “The Iranian Hostage Crisis”.
Although not used, it was the catalyst for creation of the V-22 Osprey.
I think it would be an outstanding subject for very interesting model. Maybe even a what-if diorama of a successful rescue. This airplane was top-secret. I didn’t find out about it until the late 1990’s when Osprey news was trickling in…
Has anybody dared to build one in minature? How many here remember those four hundred and forty four days? I sure do.
I was a C-130 mechanic in the Air Force and I never saw or heard of anything like it. Talk about some over sized JATO bottles. That bird was off the ground in like 20 feet. WOW!
I haven’t watched that Youtube video, but I did record a segment from a TV show that showed it being tested. The take off worked, but the landing did not.
They wanted to land it in a soccer stadium, load the hostages in and take off. Wow, what an ambitious project to say the least.
Someone on one of the Yahoo Groups is working on a model of the Credible Sport C-130’s, I think he is still in the research phase. I’ll try to figure out which one.
The Museum of Aviation at Warner Robbins, Georgia has a full scale version of this model of the Herky Bird. It still has the brackets for mounting the various JATO bottles.
They made multiple aircraft (I think, three total) One was indeed destroyed (in youtube video). And as mentioned, one is intact (Georgia), sans rocket engines but with all the mounting hard points and such on it.
I think two were destroyed. One in the film when it looks like they fired the forward retros too soon and the other one in the desert. They also lost one or two helicopters in the accident and the mission was canceled. From what we were told, the were designed to land and takeoff inside a soccer field and had a takeoff roll of about 20 feet.