Maj. Jack Berquist was bringing in his C-130 for a landing when he and his co-pilot got a warning that the nose landing gear was not working.
It was Aug. 17, 2014 and Berquist and his crew were was the aircraft commander of the plane, which was returning to Hill Air Force Base, Utah, after battling forest fires, outfitted with a Modular Airborne Fire Fighting System designed to dump retardant on forest fires, according to a news release from the 302nd Airlift Wing.
For their efforts to land the plane safely, the crew has would later received the Air Mobility Command Chief of Safety Aircrew of Distinction Award, according to a Tuesday news release from the 302nd Airlift Wing.
On that day, the C-130 was returning to Hill Air Force Base, Utah, after battling forest fires, when Berquist, who has since retired, asked co-pilot Maj. Derik George to confirm that the landing gear was down, the news release said.
"After lowering the landing gear we got an unsafe gear indication in the nose," George said in the news release.
For more than three hours, the crew tried everything they could think of to get the landing gear down.
None of the emergency procedures worked.
They crew called a Lockheed Martin test pilot and engineer, but neither could figure out what the problem was.
A plane from the U.S. Forest Service flew underneath the stricken C-130, but they crew could not see why the nose landing gear was not coming down.
"At that point we said, 'Well, we are out of options, we are just going to land with the nose gear up,'" George said in the news release. "We called the tower, and they were able to put foam on the runway, that way it would arrest any fire that might start."
The crew ran through their checklists again and then Berquist coaxed the plane onto the runway.
"He did a fantastic job," George said. "I don't think he could've done any better. He held the nose up as long as possible and was able to get the nose on the ground in the foam."
A small fire started under the nose as it grinded against the runway, but emergency crews quickly extinguished it when the plane came to a stop, the news release says.
The damage to the plane came to $37 million, but Berquist and George walked away safely along with the rest of the crew: Navigator Capt. Brett Goebel; flight engineer Tech. Sgt. Damian Hoffmann; and loadmasters Master Sgts. Brandon York and Christian Reese.
"The most rewarding thing of the whole day was how well the crew worked together," George said in the news release. "The navigator was active duty; I was a Reservist. The other four crew members were Wyoming Air National Guard. It was very seamless. Everybody knew exactly what to do.
"MAFFS crews are some of the most highly experienced and best trained crews in the Air Force," he said, referring to the aircraft's Modular Airborne Fire Fighting System designed to dump retardant on forest fires.
