Willis Hawkins, 90, Designed C-130 Transport
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Willis M. Hawkins, the designer of the military transport aircraft known as the C-130 Hercules, died Tuesday at his home in Woodland Hills, Calif. He was 90.
The C-130 is one of the few planes in the history of aviation that has stayed in continuous production for 50 years
During the Korean War, the Air Force held a design competition for a new type of transport plane that could carry cargo and troops off dirt runways. Willis and other Lockheed colleagues came up with an unusual design that was boxy and low to the ground, based on the dimensions of a railroad boxcar.
Senior management at first rejected it, but the C-130 won the Pentagon’s design competition in 1954 and is still in production. Today, it is flown by military services of more than 60 countries and is a cargo- and troop-carrying airplane used in combat zones in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Hawkins spent more than 40 years with Lockheed, contributing to the design and development of a wide variety of military and commercial aircraft, including the Polaris Missile.
