On Apr. 16, Nigerian Air Force C-130H-30, registration NAF918, conducted a test flight from Cambridge airport.
The air test came slightly less than three years after the aircraft had arrived on Aug. 28, 2011, from Lagos, Nigeria, where it had been dumped, out of use, for a period of 7-10 years. When the U.S. financed the restoration program, the Lockheed Martin Hercules was flown to the UK for major overhaul with Marshalls Aerospace. But its ferry flight was a sort-of Odyssey as The Aviationist’s contributor Tony Lovelock, who took the photographs in this article, recalls.
“Since the aircraft was unable to pressurise, due to massive corrosion of the front windscreen frames, it was flown low level at 12,000 feet from Lagos to England, by pilots wearing helmets and oxygen masks,” Lovelock says.
For the complete story by David Cenciotti of The Aviationist, click here.
Photo by Tony Lovelock via The Aviationist
