because of the way [we now] do business
in the AMC world’, Hover continues. ‘With
an F-15 squadron or any other fi ghter unit
you’d pack your bags and deploy together,
do the job for ‘x’ amount of time, and then
all come home together. Nowadays we
always have aircraft and people out on the
road. It involves being spread out over the
country all the time.’
With the full complement of eight
C-130H1s now assigned to the wing, the
next major milestone will be the end
of conversion (EOC). Hover says: ‘EOC
includes a number of factors. It’s about
crews, which consist of six bodies: a pilot,
co-pilot, navigator, fl ight engineer and two
loadmasters. It’s also about our aerial port
that enables all the things we carry and drop
[plus it is] about our maintenance, so it’s the
entire wing.’New mission, new people?
Many would expect the move from fl ying
fi ghters to fl ying a large transport aircraft
such as the C-130 to be a tough pill to
swallow, especially for the pilots. However,the Montana Guardsmen were pragmatic
and pleased to retain a fl ying mission,
rather than perhaps being moved into the
remotely-piloted aircraft (RPA) world of
Predators and Reapers — they still fl y in a
cockpit rather than in a trailer.
Some pilots were, however, lured away
from the spectacular Montana scenery
and the new mission in order to maintain
their relationship with the Eagle. ‘We did
lose some young pilots that wanted to
continue fl ying fi ghters’, says Col Hover.
‘Those folks were hired by other Eagle
units in the Guard, but a lot of us old
heads in the full-time force that wanted to
stay here transitioned [to the C-130] over
a seven-month period at Little Rock AFB,
Arkansas. Most of us got back here in the
June-August 2014 timeframe, and around
75 per cent of us full-timers transferred
over. We also hired in quite a few C-130-
experienced folks to guide us through the
conversion because it’s such a different
mission.’
Such a transition of role as this actually
changes the dynamics of a unit considerably.The wing’s transition
from the F-15C has
led to the hiring of
specialist C-130 crews
in order to assist
with this signi cant
change.C-130s on the ightline at Great
Falls as the morning missions
get under way.64 May 2015 http://www.combataircraft.net62-69 AMC part 1- Montana C.indd 64 20/03/2015 11:52