The US Navy’s well-known C-130 Hercules, Fats Albert, will return to Marshall Aerospace in Cambridge later this yr for a centre wing field substitute that may add many years to the plane’s service life, the corporate acknowledged.
The plane helps the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels demonstration group and undergoes vital structural stress as a consequence of its excessive working tempo and aerobatic show profile.
Fats Albert capabilities as each a logistics plane and a show performer. In keeping with the corporate, it routinely carries personnel and gear throughout the US and covers greater than 100,000 miles every season. It additionally opens Blue Angels occasions with a 15 minute routine that features steep climbs, sharp banks, low passes and combat-style landings.
This mix of lengthy vary motion and demanding manoeuvres locations uncommon fatigue on the airframe.
The centre wing field is described as a “lifed article” that have to be changed on the finish of its licensed service life. Because the core construction linking the fuselage to the outer wings, it carries substantial hundreds on each flight. The corporate acknowledged that putting in a brand new enhanced service life centre wing field designed by Lockheed Martin will add greater than 20 years of operational life however requires an invasive and sophisticated engineering course of.
Marshall highlighted its lengthy observe file with this work. In keeping with the corporate, it has carried out almost 80 centre wing field replacements on C-130 variants for the reason that Nineteen Seventies and was designated by Lockheed Martin in 2024 as the primary authorised Centre of Excellence for the process
Alongside the wing field set up, Fats Albert will obtain routine upkeep, together with an entire strip and repaint within the Blue Angels’ signature livery.