Once in the air, the Four Horsemen would perform a series of intricate maneuvers at altitudes ranging from just above the runway to 3,000 feet. They flew their diamond really tight. According to Aviation Week’s Stanfield, the slot plane’s nose was held as close as seven feet from the leader’s tail. Because of the downwash from the propellers, each of the following aircraft flew slightly higher than the one in front. Each pilot would try to fly right ‘on top of the bubble.’ The slot airplane would be the highest in the formation, its windshield level with the top one-third of the lead airplane’s tail fin. The noses of the two wingmen were in line with a row of rivets that ran the length of the lead airplane’s wings. Dropping down into the wash of the leading airplanes could be dangerous. In one instance slot pilot Hatfield was flying an airplane that had a ‘Bulldog’ winch in the back, standard on all TAC C-130s at the time. The tie-downs that secured the winch were evidently loose, and when Hatfield accidentally dropped into the prop wash of the airplanes ahead of him, the resulting turbulence caused the winch to rise above the floor of the airplane. As the turbulence went from negative to positive G-forces, the winch came back down with such momentum that it knocked a hole in the cargo compartment floor.

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The team alternated between different formations. The arrow was a line-astern formation in which each airplane was tucked in right behind and slightly above the one before it. From the arrow they would go to the arrowhead, as the two trailing airplanes moved to the side of the line and took formation in line with each other, tucked in on the number two airplane. They also flew echelon formations, and ended their show with a bomb burst: The lead and number three aircraft would break high and to the left while numbers two and four broke to the right. They then rejoined in the diamond and returned to the airfield for a formation landing, moving into an echelon over the runway, then doing a tactical pitch-out to come back around for landing. The first plane would still be on the runway when the slot man touched down. Their show was as impressive as any put on by fighter pilots, and perhaps even more so considering the size and weight of the planes.

No particular aircraft were assigned to the Four Horsemen. Each crew drew whatever plane happened to be available on the flight line at Ardmore, or at Sewart after the 463rd moved there to join the 314th shortly after the latter wing converted to the Hercules. The two wings made up the muscle of TAC’s 839th Air Division, which was also based at Sewart. The demonstration pilots flew the same training and operational missions as the other pilots in the two C-130 wings.

Very early on, the C-130 demonstrated its ability to fly on three and even two engines without a significant loss of performance. In fact, a Lockheed test crew took off from Florida, shut down the aircraft’s outboard engines and flew all the way to California at low level on two engines. The airplane was so overpowered that crews routinely shut down the outboard engines on some flights to conserve fuel.

During one Four Horseman performance, Chaney, who normally flew in the number three position but was taking the lead that day, lost an outboard engine. He and his crew went through the engine shutdown procedure without losing their place in formation, then simply went on with the show (let’s see the Thunderbirds or Blue Angels try that one!).

The most difficult position to fly in the formation was number three, because the aircraft commander was on the opposite side of the airplane from the rest of the formation and had to constantly be turning his head to the right. As the chief of the Horsemen, Chaney usually occupied that spot, while Moore usually flew the lead. The co-pilot in the right seat helped his boss maintain the tight formation that had become the team’s trademark. All the pilots were highly qualified veterans, with an average of 4,000 hours of total flying time and 1,500 hours in C-130s by late 1959, when the Aviation Week journalist rode with them. Co-pilots were drawn from the ranks of aircraft commanders in the squadron, and quite often those men were instructor pilots as well.

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