Flight Crew Evades Rockets, Plane Lands Safely

Some tense moments for the flight crew of a C-130 turboprop transporting four US lawmakers from Baghdad to Amman, Jordan on Thursday, after their plane was fired on by insurgent forces.

United Press International reports three rockets were fired at the plane shortly after it took off. Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe and Mel Martinez (R-FL) were onboard the plane, as were Alabama Senator Richard Shelby and Congressman Bud Cramer (D-AL.)

The aircraft landed safely in Amman just after 1800 EDT Thursday... leaving its relieved passengers with some stories to tell.

"It was dark as the dickens outside, and I was looking out the little window. I saw the red glare of a shell or a missile coming up toward our plane," Shelby said in a telephone interview, according to the Huntsvile (AL) Times. "Then I saw a flare pop out and our plane just started moving and changing directions and trying to move."

Shelby gave the flight crew credit for "a tremendous job evading the missiles ... We owe them."

An uncredited email to UPI from a person onboard the aircraft gave a harrowing account of the incident.

"On departure from Baghdad our plane took fire from three ground to air missiles," the message said, adding the projectiles "could have been RPGs" (rocket-propelled grenades.)

"After visually detecting the incoming missiles," the pilots "took evasive maneuvers and deployed counter-measures on all three shots. One crew member told me that (helicopters) were called in on the shooters’ positions," the email stated.

To date, there has been only one confirmed fatal shootdown of a C-130 in Iraq -- a January 2005 downing that claimed the lives of 10 British military personnel, as ANN reported. In November 2003, a US Hercules was hit by a missile, but managed to land safely.

FMI: www.army.mil