A walk through the interior of the Spanish C-130H Hercules of the Cuatro Vientos Air Museum

@DefAviation ES 2·10·2024 · 23:11 0

On December 31, 2020, the Spanish Air Force said goodbye to its Lockheed C-130 Hercules after 47 years of service.

The interior of the large Spanish KC-97L Stratotanker preserved in the Museo del Aire
The Spanish phantoms of Torrejón: the two Phantom II aircraft preserved by the 12th Wing

Spain operated 12 C-130s, part of the 31st Wing: six C-130H and one C-130H-30 (a longer version) in the 311 Squadron, and five KC-tanker aircraft. 130H in 312 Squadron. This model was nicknamed "Dumbo" in the Spanish Air Force. The first of them arrived at the Zaragoza Air Base in December 1973. This model has been replaced by the larger and more modern Airbus A400M Atlas.

To date, Spain has sold four of its old Hercules: two KC-130H to Uruguay and another two KC-130H to Peru . I do not know if there are plans to sell the rest of the fleet, but one of the C-130H will remain in Spain, the T.10-03 (31-03), which is already in the Museo del Aire de Cuatro Vientos, in Madrid. Yesterday, Fly By Wire Aviation published a video showing the interior of this plane:

This plane arrived in Spain on March 12, 1974 and made its last flight on December 29, 2020, from the Zaragoza Air Base to the Cuatro Vientos Aerodrome. This photo was published by the Museum of Aeronautics and Astronautics showing the landing of T.10-03 at its current destination:

In 2020, the Museum recounted the incident that this plane took part in on November 15, 1988:

"During a normal operation, while the device was gaining altitude after taking off from the Zaragoza Air Base, it collided with the McDonell Douglas EF-18 registration CE. 15-4 that was on approach. In the impact the Hercules lost an external piece of a wing and the Hornet ended the incident with damage to a wing. Both planes managed to land in Zaragoza without consequences for their crews."

After that accident, the plane was sent to the United States to "act as a prototype for the modernization and homogenization of the entire Spanish fleet," says the Museum. Having already completed 46 years of service in Spain, the T.10-03 returned from its last mission on November 23, 2020 with a flight from Afghanistan and the Middle East, and was one of the protagonists of the farewell ceremony for this model held at the Zaragoza Air Base on December 21, 2020.

Once in Cuatro Vientos, the T.10-03 had its wings, stabilizers and drift removed to take it overland to the museum, where it arrived on March 23, 2023, as an example This photo published that day by the Association of Friends of the Air Museum.

Fly By Wire Aviation was kind enough to send me some photos of this aircraft in its current state. On these lines we see it already assembled and in the museum. In the following photo we see the front landing gear:

In the following photo we can see the cockpit of the T.10-03, which highlights the four large digital screens that were added during its modernization process (pressing here you can see a photo of a C-130 with all its analog instruments). Through the glass we can see the KC-97L Stratotanker of the museum, which we already saw here.

In the cockpit we see the pilot's seat (to port, left) and the co-pilot's seat (to starboard). On the central panel we see the engine control levers, numbered 1 to 4, from port to starboard.

In this other photo we see some of the plane's instruments: the artificial horizon (top center), on the left the wind speed indicator and on the right the altimeter. Below we see four groups of indicators, one for each engine: the first (above) are torque meters, the second indicate the revolutions per minute (RPM) and below we see the Temperature Indicator Transmitter (TIT) of each engine, in degrees Celsius.

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Main photo: Museo de Aeronáutica y Astronáutica. The T.10-03 upon arrival at Cuatro Vientos Aerodrome on its last flight on December 29, 2020.