ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. — Though Lt. Evan Swinghamer has been flying C-130s for seven years, he still finds it hard to put into words what the experience is like.
“There's nothing quite like it, nothing that I can explain," said Swinghamer.
Since 1968, the United States Coast Guard has mainly operated with the C-130H. It's a plane that fills many roles, including being the eyes in the sky during search and rescue efforts to find survivors. But that aircraft took its final flight in September of this year. Crews now exclusively use the C-130J.
“The use between the old version and then this one is nearly identical. The major use for it, obviously, is always going to be search and rescue," explained Swinghamer. "The other thing that's really nice about it is we can take a lot of fuel, so we could be out for long periods of time. So if we need to go out and search for somebody who's further offshore, we can take this plane 1,000 miles out in the middle of the ocean and be out there for several hours."
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The C-130J has also been around for more than two decades, and became fully operational in the Coast Guard in 2008. The C-130H remained in service alongside it until this year. It’s safe to say it’s a major upgrade for crews.
“The engines on this plane and the props are much more efficient. We just type in where we're going to land, what altitude we're at, and it runs all the calculations itself. Whereas with the H, we actually would go through and do all of the math ourselves," he said.
That's right: crews in the C-130H would need to manually take down their fuel levels throughout the flight.
"We would rely on some of the flight engineers, and they would help us to go through how much fuel are we currently burning, what's the best altitude to go to, and that sort of thing," Swinghamer said.
That's not the case anymore in the C-130J, which boasts an impressive computerized operating system, allowing crews to focus more on their mission.
“This gives us a lot more situational awareness. It gives us the ability to focus outside so that we can be looking for people in the water, so that we can be looking for boats that are doing things illegally," he said.
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While the Coast Guard mostly relies on their helicopters to retrieve people stranded out in the ocean, the C-130 provides a number of advantages to assist in search and rescue efforts.
"The first being, if we were to be called out, we're going to get there either on scene first, because it might take the helicopters a little bit longer to get there so they can actually do the rescue. And then secondly, it might be too far for them to get there," explained Swinghamer. "If someone gets really hurt and they're farther offshore and they can't get picked up out of a boat, we can drop them life saving supplies from the back of the aircraft, and then we can stay on scene and watch them and communicate back and forth to make sure they're okay."
Though there’s nothing quite like flying the giant aircraft, what they're doing it for is much more important.
“It's an honor to do this. Being able to go out and actually save people and help people," said Swinghamer.
Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City currently has five C-130Js for its missions.
