Lockheed WC-130

The Lockheed WC-130 is a high-wing, medium-range aircraft used by the United States Air Force for weather reconnaissance. It is a modified C-130 Hercules fitted with specialised instruments including a dropsonde system and crewed with a meteorologist so that it can fly into tropical cyclones and winter storms to measure their movement, size and intensity. The Air Weather Service received its first C-130 in 1962 for air sampling after the resumption of Soviet atmospheric weapons testing, and by 1965 it judged the WC-130 better suited to weather reconnaissance than its jet replacements. Fifty WC-130s in five variants have served, and the WC-130J Weatherbird now flies with the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron. Only one WC-130 was lost on an operational mission, an H-model in Typhoon Bess in 1974.