TCVA continues to strive to provide fraternal, social and recreational activities for the members and guests and encourage and support the preservation of the history of TACAMO (Take Charge and Move Out) which is the name given to the US Navy Airborne Very Low Frequency Communications mission conducted between 1964 and the present in first EC-130G and EC-130Q Lockheed Hercules aircraft and later in the E-6 Boeing Mercury. Membership in the Association includes current and former military, civil service, contractor, and family members associated with the TACAMO mission.
Historic Aircraft To Be Celebrated
Retired Sailors will gather at the National Navy Aviation Museum in the Blue Angels Atrium on Saturday 8 June at 1PM and celebrate the long service of BUNO 151891.
It has been a very long time since Navy C-130 Hercules Bureau of Aeronautics Number (BUNO) 151891 was given life by Lockheed at Marietta, Georgia and flown by a Navy crew to Naval Air Station Barbers Point, Hawaii in late 1963. With a service career that spanned all those decades, the plane, known affectionately as simply
"891", has been the workhorse in 6 different Navy squadrons. Retired after service with the Navy Flight Demonstration Team, the Blue Angels, as Fat Albert, 891 was moved from the Blues flight line to the outside display area at the nearby National Museum of Naval Aviation, proudly still sporting her famous blue and gold
paint scheme, unique to the Blues. As the only "Herc" on the line, 891 is more than just the colorful and big cargo plane it appears to be. It is perhaps the most historically significant Navy Hercules that has ever flown. The plane
was the magazine cover page star of Naval Aviation News in June 1965 and Lockheed News in October 1967.
In between very brief service as a transport with VR-21, and the Blues, 891 served in four other squadrons, providing alternative long range communications support for the Navy's nuclear deterrence submarine forces.
That mission is known as TACAMO, an acronym for Take Charge and Move Out. That is the phrase uttered to then LT Jerry Tuttle when he was charged with meeting President John F. Kennedy's orders to establish just such a capability following the events of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. TACAMO has been meeting those mission
requirements since late 1964. During nearly 30 years of TACAMO service, 891 flew long over water missions in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, as well as being the first aircraft to pioneer nearly every mission upgrade to
that system.
A group of retired Sailors will gather at the Museum in the Blue Angels Atrium on Saturday 8 June at 1PM and celebrate the long service of 891. Perhaps in an unprecedented gathering, 891 will be joined by the pilot who first brought 891's engines to life and flew the plane to its first duty station, Transport Squadron 21 (VR-21) at Barbers Point. Ron Carlson is 90 years young and is joined by fellow Navy and Marine Corps veterans who flew 891.
Included will be Ron's Flight Technician, Jack Reese as well as Dave Michael and Reid Henderson, the pilot and flight engineer who flew 891 on the last flight it ever made in 2002 with the Blue Angels.
In between service in VR-21 and the Blues, 891, under the command of then LCDR Ron Carlson flew around the world in 25 days in the summer of 1964. He and his crew, including Jack Reese, flew 891 providing logistic support for the US Navy operational training exercise in the Indian Ocean areas. They covered 46,000 nautical miles, all around the region, arriving from the east from Barbers Point and returning home there by flying west.
Around the Indian Ocean, 891's mission was logistic support for the "Concord Squadron", made up of the USS Bon Home Richard (CV-31) and three destroyers which made show of presence calls on several bordering nations.
Sponsoring the 891 celebration is the TACAMO Community Veterans Association (TCVA) whose chartered purpose is to provide fraternal, social and recreational activities for the members and guests and encourage and
support the preservation of the history of TACAMO. TCVA has over 3,000 members, a website and social media virtual gathering places for its members. A TACAMO Hall of Fame, reunions, and memorials are just some of the activities TCVA sponsors. The 891 mission is part of a larger effort to establish TACAMO displays in Navy museums. Already there are displays in the Cold War Gallery of the Washington DC Navy Yard Museum and the former NAS Barbers Point, Hawaii museum.
TCVA is led by a 1969 graduate of Milton High School, US Navy Capt. Vern Lochausen, (retired) who is a 2017 TACAMO Hall of Fame Inductee. See TACAMO.org for more information about 891 go to
https://www.tacamo.org/buno151891 and the ceremony go to https://www.tacamo.org/2019-mini-reunion-pns
