kaima
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|  | An Afghanistan Stop
« Thread Started on Jul 19, 2012, 8:04pm » | |
A neighbor gave me an old issue of the magazine Combat Aircraft as he knows I am interested in aircraft in general. There is an article on the cargo aircraft C-130J, the latest version of this aircraft that is around 60 years old but still a very practical workhorse of aviation.
The story includes an incident where the California Air National Guard was in Afghanistan when ....
"Looking back at the recent Afghanistan deployment, he (Loadmaster) said:' One memorable and special mission was we were directed to have our aircraft configured for about 70 people (it ended up being 80 in the end). We were told to fly to Kabul, but no other information was offered."
"When we arrived, we discovered we were transporting the Polish Prime Minister and his entourage. We took him to a site where three or four of his soldiers had been killed for a special service. As we were landing, a pair of "Hind" helicopters appeared out of nowhere and followed us all the way down and hovered there until we stopped. Then a bunch of armored vehicles came up around the aircraft, we shut down, and the Prime Minister and his group were whisked away by his special ops people. When they returned from the service, we flew them back to Kabul where they transferred back to their Polish VIP jet for the trip back to Poland".
![[image]](http://media.defenseindustrydaily.com/images/AIR_C-130J_lg.jpg "[image]")
I suspect the seating arrangement was somewhere between
![[image]](http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c247/thorssoli/2008/EnrouteDurkadurkastan_0620_edited-1.jpg "[image]")
and
![[image]](http://www.expeditions.udel.edu/antarctica08/images/C-130.jpg "[image]")
I have flown both, although we didn't have the inner wal or sound deadening on the flight when we had the standard airline seat modules installed for our use. It sure beat the standard net seats.
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