Page 49 - Demo

4913 200 lbs, giving it an extra four hour%u2019s flying. We also devised a fourtank scheme. The penalty for fitting any of these tanks, of course, was acorresponding reduction in the payload and the four-tank optioneffectively took up some three-quarters of our normal capacity.Nevertheless, the remaining space would still be of vital use if we wererequired to make high priority drops at extreme range. A good exampleof this sort of load might be a group of SAS men who, while having avery high value, would take up relatively little room. My engineersstarted work on the Hercules conversion at Lyneham and we dideverything on base with the first long range aircraft going to Ascensionon 4 May.The second, and far more radical, idea was to provide the Herculeswith an air-to-air refuelling capability, the aim being to give my force theability to carry a full load all the way down to the Task Force when itwas operating off the Falklands, drop it and then return to AscensionIsland. The engineering firm of Marshalls of Cambridge started workingon this on 15 April. The company was no stranger to the C-130, ofcourse, as it was Lockheed%u2019s authorised UK service centre for the aircraftand they had been supporting the RAF%u2019s Hercules since 1975. In crudeterms, the modification involved fitting a probe above the aircraft cabinwith suitable piping running from it to deliver the fuel to the main tanksin the wings. Apart from providing the ability to take on fuel, it was alsoclear that, if we installed a hose drum unit on the rear ramp of thoseaircraft that had already been fitted with the Andover tanks, we couldalso operate the aircraft in the tanker role.Marshalls completed the prototype installation in just ten days, thefirst flight being made on 28 April. The first %u2018probed%u2019 Hercules wasdelivered to Boscombe Down the next day. It made its first %u2018wet%u2019coupling with a Victor tanker on 2 May and I received it at Lyneham on5 May.Because I had been a fighter pilot earlier in my career and had hadsome practical experience of air-to-air refuelling, I was probablyuniquely placed to oversee the introduction of this technique. After all,transport pilots tend to spend most of their time trying to keep theiraeroplanes as far away as possible from other people%u2019s aeroplanes, soAAR was going to require a different mindset. I was in the fortunateposition of being personally able to devise the very short programmeneeded to teach my crews to fly the Hercules in close formation and then