Four Horsemen return

  • Published
  • By Dan Phoenix
  • 19th Airlift Wing historian
LITTLE ROCK AIR FORCE BASE, Ark. --  "That's crazy!"

Those were the first words Maj. Christian Garber, a pilot with the 41st Airlift Squadron, said when shown the video of the Four Horsemen C-130 demonstration team. It wasn't the maneuvers that impressed him; anyone who has seen C-130s in the skies above Central Arkansas knows they can climb, descend and turn like much smaller, lighter planes. But the tight formations were something else. C-130s normally fly no closer than 500 feet; the Four Horsemen's slot plane, at the back of the "diamond" formation, flew with his nose only seven feet behind the lead plane's rudder. That's a hazardous distance going 70 mph in a car. In a 175,000 pound Hercules, flying at 260 knots, it's close enough to count the rivets in the lead plane's tail.

The Four Horsemen came together in 1957, almost by accident. A morning's joint exercise was cancelled, but four C-130 crews went up to work on their semiannual quota of formation flying. As they closed their formation up tighter and tighter, a demonstration team was born. It didn't take them long -- the C-130 had been in operational service for only a few months -- and there could hardly have been a better team for the purpose. Gene Chaney, the team captain, had the distinction of flying the delivery of the very first operational C-130A from the factory to the 463rd Troop Carrier Wing at Ardmore, Okla. The other three pilots, retired Lt. Col. James Akin, David Moore and retired Lt. Col. Bill Hatfield, were all instructor pilots too, averaging 4,000 flying hours. When they flew demonstrations, their co-pilots were all aircraft commanders in their own right.

Initially, they called themselves the Thunderweasels, a combination of the Thunderbirds and their squadron nickname, the Green Weasels. But soon, they adopted the name of the Four Horsemen. Their first performance was for the 314th Troop Carrier Wing at Sewart Air Force Base, who were about to take delivery of their first Herks. For the next three years, the Four Horsemen fit practices and performances into a busy deployment schedule.

The normal 23-minute routine started in a close-formation takeoff, followed by a left turn, then arrow, arrowhead and diamond formations, an echelon right, and then the big showstopper: the bomb-burst, or "Horsemen-burst" as they called it, back to the diamond, followed by a fan break and a tight formation landing. Every position demanded absolute focus and even endurance--the left wing pilot had to spend most of the show with his neck craned to the right to keep his distance from the right wing. The slot pilot, seven feet back from the lead plane's tail, flew a little higher than the others to avoid propwash. The team joked that only the lead plane could enjoy the view, but to avoid a midair collision he had to keep his eyes on the indicated airspeed and his hand on the throttle. The smallest unexpected deceleration could have ended in disaster.

The Four Horsemen showed incredible faith in their maintainers, who were the first to work on the new planes. The crews never used specially prepared planes; they simply took whichever four were available and trusted in their maintainers and flight engineers to keep them running smoothly. Occasionally an engine would fail, but the crews carried right on with the demonstration as though nothing had happened -- let's see the Thunderbirds try that!

Barely three years after the Four Horsemen first flew, they broke up as the four pilots were sent overseas to different squadrons or left the service. There was a lot of support for the team from Lockheed and the airlift community, but the C-130 was simply too valuable to the airlift mission to spare it for demonstration duty.

This spring marks the 50th anniversary of the Four Horsemen's finale, but even the memory of the team has not faded -- they remained a part of the 463rd Airlift Group's heritage, and part of the C-130 heritage shared at Little Rock Air Force Base.

Members of the Four Horsemen, Mr. Akin and Mr. Hatfield, two of the original crew members, along with retired Col. John Dale and retired Col. Billie Mills visited Little Rock March 26 as part of the reunion of the 815th Airlift Squadron, the "Flying Jennies." Arrangements were made to get them time on the C-130J simulators and so in a small way, for the first time in 50 years, the Four Horsemen flew again.