The flight between Christchurch, New Zealand and McMurdo Base, Antarctica is 2150 nautical miles. Based on the fuel capacity of the LC-130Fs in the mid-1960s, the Point of Safe Return in case of problems was normally between 1500 and 1700 nautical miles, depending upon the strength of the winds. Sometimes a flight can get downright interesting. The following is a true story....
I was hitching a ride from Christchurch back to the Ice with another VX-6 LC-130F crew. If I remember correctly, I navigated the leg from McMurdo to Christchurch, and the navigator for this crew took the leg back to McMurdo. Having experienced some hard liberty in Christchurch, I was dead to the world on one of the makeshift pallets back in the cargo bay almost immediately after take-off on that particular night. We must have been in flight for a good three hours when someone shook me awake. It was the navigator, and he was in panic mode, stating that he was lost and had no idea where we were. I went up to the flight deck and reviewed our navigation route. I don't remember all of the sordid details of how he got lost, but I believe it had to do with bad celestial navigation computations--remember, we didn't have inertial navigation capability on those planes back then. I looked out the cockpit windows hoping to see some "user friendly" constellations from which we could take some celestial fixes. No such luck except for some constellations on the far horizon that I recognized and that were fast disappearing. That confirmed we were way off course. The hairs were raised on the back of my neck. Hurriedly, I shot the stars I recognized in those constellations, then did reverse computations using the Air Almanac to get the fix we so desperately needed. I was successful, and as best as I can recollect, we made over a 90 degree course correction in order to make it to McMurdo (Heck, we were headed toward South America!). The remainder of the flight was uneventful, although we arrived at McMurdo later than expected. When we stepped off the plane at Williams Field, the navigator thanked me for coming to his rescue. Heck, his rescue...it was my butt too. Interestingly, no other member of that crew ever said one word to me about what had occurred. It was as if it had been a normal flight, and the Puckered Penguins lived to fly another day.
Because we were out of range of ADF steers, I hate to think what might have happened to us if I had not recognized those contellations on the horizon. Some higher power was looking over my shoulder that night.
Maurice H. Unger