Two Lockheed AC-130 gunship crew members from the U.S. Air Force 1st Special Operations Wing will present about their experiences in one of the Air Force’s primary close air support aircraft on Thursday, May 16, at 7 p.m. as part of the EAA Aviation Museum Aviation Adventure Speaker Series.
Maj. Clay Ten Eyck and Tech. Sgt. Alex Skidgel will speak about their time in the AC-130, the heavily armed ground attack variant of the C-130 Hercules that has been in service since the Vietnam War. Since its introduction in 1966, the AC-130 has been used in the Vietnam War, Gulf War, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and other operations.
Clay, who has been piloting AC-130s for about nine years, received some of his inspiration to become involved in aviation from a Young Eagles flight when he was around 10 years old. From there, he dove headfirst into aviation.
“I did Civil Air Patrol in high school for four years in California, and after that I went to the Air Force Academy and was in the Class of 2008 there,” Clay said. “After graduating there, I went off to pilot training in Mississippi and finished up the second half [of training] in Texas, flying the T-44 with the Navy. Like pretty much all the C-130 pilots, I went up to Little Rock to do my initial C-130 training with them. After that, my first duty station operationally was out of Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico. I started flying on the Vietnam-era gunships, the AC-130Hs. Those were all 1969 birds. I flew those for about five years and then they retired those. Then I came over to the AC-130U in 2015 and I’ve been flying those since.”
Clay has been deployed eight different times, primarily to Afghanistan, but also to Iraq and Syria as well. When providing close air support, Clay and the rest of his crew need to adapt on the fly to a dynamic environment as he orbits the AC-130 around a particular area.
“We know the overall layout and what’s going on, but you never know in combat what’s going to change and what’s going to surprise you,” he said. “Just being ready and flexible for that. … Fighter [pilot] guys, you’ve got one guy in the cockpit, but with us we’ve got so many different people backing me up, looking at the screens, really making sure we’re 100 percent comfortable putting a round out. The biggest thing for us is how close we can shoot. Really close air support is putting rounds close to friendly ground forces. For us, we’re looking at a couple of meters, really. Being able to be accurate and safe and keep the ground parties safe is our main focus for training and then for combat.”
Meanwhile, Alex has been a gunner on AC-130s for a little more than 11 years, holding that position since he joined the Air Force out of high school. It’s a fast-paced and high-stress position on the AC-130 crew, so becoming a gunner isn’t something for everyone.
“I’ve been an instructor gunner, too, and I’ve been able to teach and qualify people to become gunners and that kind of opened my eyes to the different struggles [of being a gunner]. I don’t want to say it came naturally to me, but the stress level is very high and that’s something that pushed me,” Alex explained. “The tests weren’t hard, the material isn’t hard, but it’s the tempo. You have to hit the ground running. Every day is the busiest day. You go from learning the job in about a year and within 30 days, I was already in Afghanistan.”
When an AC-130 is called in to support ground operations, Alex and his team get to work.
“I’m what they call the lead gun, so I’ve got a team of five guys that I’m orchestrating,” he said. “I’m making sure my guys are ready and we’ve got everything we need. I make sure we have the right bullets that we asked for and make sure the aircraft is 100 percent configured. From there, it’s trying to gather a picture of what kind of situation the ground party is in. Once we get over the target area, the pilot will direct us to configure the weapons how he wants them to be in the best shape to use them. I’m the one that makes sure it happens in the back. … We’re waiting for the ground party to tell us what kind of situation they’re in and potential targets. From there, we wait to hear what target our pilot wants us to engage and in the back we’re waiting for the arm select light on our weapons control panel and then once that goes on, it’s game on from there.”
Alex was part of the AC-130U Spooky crew that was awarded the 2016 Mackay Trophy for its close air support assistance in Afghanistan to a 55-man combined American and Afghan special operations team that was caught in an ambush. Administered by the Air Force and National Aeronautic Association, the Mackay Trophy is awarded for the “most meritorious flight of the year by an Air Force person, persons, or organization.”
“That night was just insane,” Alex said. “We ended up staying a lot later than we should have. When you run out of bullets, we call that ‘Winchestering’ and we’d ‘Winchestered’ because we didn’t have enough of the heavier stuff to hit the targets that we needed. We went back to get more bullets, refuel, and came back to re-engage and get the guys out of there. That was a crazy night. I don’t think I’ve ever shot that much, that fast. Like any weapons system, there’s a limitation to how much you can utilize it and we blew past those limitations.”