C-130H Hercules fleet to retire with Chch flyover

By Kate Green

The mighty workhorses of the Royal New Zealand Air Force are set to retire after 60 years in service.

From Antarctic rescues to combat zones to crocodile relocations, the fleet had clocked up 155,000 hours of flight time and 100,000 landings since they came into service in 1965.

The fleet of five C-130H Hercules will cease use on Friday.

The Defence Force will mark the occasion with a flyover of Christchurch Airport on Tuesday at 12.25pm.

It said it had marked the occasion with flypasts over Northland and the central North Island.

Four of the aircraft would then retire to RNZAF base in Woodbourne, and the fifth would go to the Air Force Museum at Wigram.

Chief of Air Force, Air Vice-Marshal Darryn Webb, said it was the unique tasks that got talked about the most.

There had been midwinter Antarctic rescues in -35°C temperatures, disaster response missions across the Indo-Pacific, short-notice evacuation tasks like Kabul in 2021, and operations in many combat zones.

These planes carried out the recovery of victims from Mt Erebus aircraft disaster in Antarctica, and loaded 120 people out of Banda Aceh after the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami where one survivor brought his pet monkey.

"There was air dropping a bulldozer to the remote Pitcairn Islands in the Pacific, moving crocodiles and an elephant to wildlife reserves, and my own personal experience of a live and very unhappy pig as a gift from Bougainville Islanders," Webb said.

In 2020, the government announced the ageing fleet would be replaced by five new C-130J-30 Hercules. The last of the new aircraft arrived in December.

Over the years, the aircraft received a number of upgrades, with the most recent being a Life Extension Programme in 2005 involving an extensive avionics upgrade of the flight deck and structural refurbishment, upon which the aircraft were re-designated the C-130H(NZ).

C-130H Hercules NZ7005 evacuating civilians in the Middle East. Photo: Supplied / Royal New Zealand Air Force

RNZAF C-130H Hercules history:

• 1965 - The first three Hercules are delivered to No. 40 Squadron at RNZAF Base Auckland, and are quickly put to work transporting personnel from NZ Army 161 Battery and aid to Vietnam, and makes its first flight to Antarctica.
• 1969 - By now, the aircraft has proven so valuable in providing strategic and tactical airlift capabilities that a further two were purchased, bringing the fleet to five.
• 1079s - The Hercules becomes the first RNZAF aircraft to visit mainland China and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and provided service in Pakistan, Cambodia and Bangladesh.
• 1990s - Two aircraft and supporting crews are deployed to Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War and with United Nations and other peacekeeping support in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Somalia, Uganda, the Persian Gulf and Rwanda.
• The aircraft has by now also helped sustain more than 1000 New Zealand troops stationed in East Timor around the turn of the century.
• 2001 - The aircraft deploys troops from the 1st New Zealand Special Air Service Regiment to Afghanistan, the beginning of a 20-year deployment to the country.
• More recently, and closer to home, the fleet has supported disaster response missions on an enduring basis - the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami, Cyclones Pam and Winston in the Pacific, the 2011 Christchurch earthquake and 2016 Kaikōura earthquake and more recently Cyclone Gabrielle.
• The fleet has also transported personnel to Europe to support Ukraine against Russia, and assisted in the evacuation of refugees from Afghanistan.