C-130 is one of the oldest and most badass planes. Its history goes back to the 1950s. It has four turboprop engines and is a flying behemoth which is designed to carry anything that needs taking, be it a tank or 452 passengers. However, the list of its capabilities doesn’t end there. The plane is also capable of performing a loop.
During the Farnborough International Airshow this past week, an LM-100J, which is the latest civilian model of the C-130J Super Hercules, performed the same stunt in an acrobatics display. The stunt is so amazing that it is hardly believable that a C-130 performed it.
The civilian version of C-130 exists as long as the military C-130. The first LM-100 flew in 1964 and 114 aircraft were delivered before production ended in 1992. The latest LM-100J has a list price of $60 million. It has the Rolls-Royce AE 2100 D3 turboprop engines and six blade Dowty R391 propellers which are similar to the military C-130J counterpart. It also has features like Full Authority Digital Engine Control (FADEC) so that the civilian pilots don’t need to worry about having a flight engineer on board.