Nobody I know of has evidence of a higher groundspeed..... 161 knots directly on the tail is pretty nice. Image Unavailable, Please Login
Actually made it to 463 ground speed but the picture was kinda shakey.... It was on the way to St Johns NFL back around 2008. Somewhere I have a pic of 360 knots true air speed in dive off the coast of Saudi Arabia. The Herk isn't a speed demon by any means so it's always interesting when an opportunity presents itself. Image Unavailable, Please Login
Yep.... Funny thing is that the H models that were built in the late 70s / early 80s kinda got passed over in a lot of ways. The older E models were so out of date they got updated but are now at the boneyard but the newer planes were just good enough that nothing much was done. In particular that plane has the old APN-59 radar which is really a relic and has now been replaced on all the "legacy" C-130s in the fleet. The new J model has a lot of technological advancements but for some missions it's hard to beat the old fashioned crew. I think the Air Mobility Command rodeo events are pretty well done due to budget reasons but at the very last one in (I think) 2012 the team my squadron sent in an old C-130E came out on top.
Remember that the C-141 was originally intended to be a "Jet Hercules". By the time they were done, there was little in common except the fuselage diameter.
