In late October 1963, Lieutenant James H. Flatley III landed a four-engine Lockheed C-130 Hercules on the carrier USS Forrestal with no arresting hook, completing 29 touch-and-goes and 21 full-stop landings and earning the Distinguished Flying Cross. The C-130 came from a 1951 requirement after the Korean War exposed the limits of piston transports like the C-47 and C-119: carry 92 passengers or 64 paratroopers, operate from rough strips and load through a hinged rear ramp. Kelly Johnson reportedly told designer Willis Hawkins that signing the proposal would destroy Lockheed, yet he flew the chase plane when Stanley Beltz and Roy Wimmer took the first YC-130 aloft from Burbank on August 23, 1954.
Four Allison T56 turboprops gave it power with a 1,100-nautical-mile range, and automatic feathering kept a dead engine from windmilling. Ski-equipped versions supplied DEW Line radar sites on the Greenland ice cap and Antarctica. In Vietnam C-130s rolled 10,000-pound daisy cutter bombs out the ramp, and in 1969 a CIA C-130 with a crew from Taiwan flew six and a half hours at night to drop sensors at a Chinese nuclear test site. In the 1976 Entebbe raid, Israel flew four C-130s about 2,200 miles at roughly 100 feet, carrying a black Mercedes to fool airport guards.
- Operation Commando Scarf dropped chemicals on the Ho Chi Minh Trail to turn monsoon rain into impassable mud.
- Variants include the AC-130 gunship and the EC-130 Commando Solo flying radio and TV station.
- HC-130s used the Fulton system, snagging a balloon line with a nose yoke to yank a person off the ground.
- The 910th Airlift Wing sprayed dispersants over the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
- As of 2024 the C-130 had 70 years of continuous production, with over 2,700 built for more than 60 nations, and a 2021 Rapid Dragon test dropped cruise missiles on a parachuted pallet.
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