Day in the Life of the RCAF: CC-130H Hercules - Episode 14

435 Squadron was founded in 1944 in Burma as part of World War II. Ever since following the war we've been a transport and rescue squadron. Currently we do fixed-wing search and rescue for the Trenton search and rescue region. Our search and rescue area of responsibility spans from Thunder Bay in the east to the Alberta BC border in the west and all the way to the North Pole. We operate the CC130H model Hercules here in both the search and rescue and air to air refueling roles. It's a four-engine turboprop plane. Each engine has about 4,300 shaft horsepower. The biggest thing that we use the Herc for, its main benefit is it can hold a lot of fuel and it can fly a long time. So in our search and rescue region that allows us basically a single fuel to fly way up north, whether it be Yellowknife, Res Bay, those type of areas, the west out into the Rockies. That's the big benefit of how we use the Herc here. So for the air to air refueling role, although it does not have the capacity to offload tremendous amounts of fuel like some of the much larger strategic air to air refueling platforms, its ability to work in remote locations make it uniquely capable to support some of the Canadian regions. So the Hercules, it's a relatively large aircraft. It carries a lot of inertia when you fly it. So compared to a plane like a Cessna where you instantly put an input into the flight controls and the plane does what you want, the Herc has a lot of inertia. So a lot of pilots that come from a small plane and end up on something like the Hercules, that's one of the things they notice that it doesn't instantly do what you want to do. You have to stay ahead of it and think almost 10 to 15 seconds ahead what the plane is going to be doing next. So the AXO station on board the Hercules consists of radar display as well as multiple displays that mimic what the pilots have at their stations, including a flight computer and flight programming equipment. So the primary duty of an air combat systems officer is to assist the pilots in completing their mission and coordinating all the other background details for the flights. So we assist with flight planning, communications and working in the back with the search and rescue technicians. Generally the job satisfaction is very high. We have an extremely noble role in the sense that we're able to provide life-saving support to Canadians from coast to coast. So I don't think there's any greater job satisfaction to know at the end of the day that you either supported or directly led to the safeguarding of our Canadian civilians.