IIRC, the 131 was a stopgap between the retirement of the HU-16E Goat in the mid '70s and the introduction of the HU-25 Falcon in the early '80s. Apparently they were retired National Guard aircraft sold to the USCG for $1 apiece. Remember, the Coast Guard didn't have much of a budget in the '70s, this was before the "Drug War" of the '80s. Most of what I know of them have come from the old salts that flew on them, telling stories of garden hoses used as oil lines when we got them, and 55 gallon barrels of engine oil carried in the plane to keep the engines satisfied. These could be all untrue, but it's what I've been told. Any old salts got any 131 stories here?
I had many hours on the C131s. I don't remember garden hoses for oil lines (even when we picked them up at Davis Monthan) although they wen't in good shape. The engines did use a great amount of oil, the sumps held 11 gallons, each engine oil tank held 22 gallons and the tank in the back (for replenishment in flight) held 26 gallons. There were some flights that were terminated because the oil was going to run out. If we ever carried a 55 gallon drum I wasn't there, although it most probably would have been used as spare oil when we got to an outlying location. We did alot of damage to those planes; the Miami plane that taxied into a 50 lb fire bottle at Mcdill AFB and the Corpus plane that landed hard and snapped the wing off. For picture go to Google Images and type in "C131 CG" and "Convair CG" (both requests will hit some very interesting pictures)...one shows the crash in Corpus the other shows the last flight.....+ many more.
Thanks for the search tip, Stan. I really liked the pic of plane that blew an oil line on t/o. What a mess. I guess I can't complain anymore when I have to clean the underside of my Piper Cherokee.
