WRITING 3 MARIA DEL ROCÍO RIESTRA PONCE

C-130 Hercules is an american military airplane, which was first manufactured in 1960s. Its main purpouses are not only cargo transport operations or SAR(Search and rescue) missions, but also flight refueling.  Nowadays, C-130 is used, mostly, for humanitarian aid operations.

This airplane has 4 turboprops, located in its two great wings, on them we can also observe its flaps and ailerons. At the front we discover the cockpick, where pilots are, and from there, they  control all the instruments of the plane. At the tail we can find the rudder, the vertical and horizontal stabilizers and ,finally, the elevator. If it hadn’t any of these devices the C-130 couldn’t fly. Last but not least, under the fuselage we can observe the landing gear, without it the airplane could neither take off nor land.

Spanish Air Force has been flying these type of planes since 1970s. Nowadays, “Hercules” is operated by the “Ala 31” that has its main base in Zaragoza. This airplane it is well know in Spain under the name of T.10 or “Dumbo” due to the elephants that appear in Ala 31’s logo.