In 1960, the Navy, on behalf of the Marine Corps, issued a contract to develop a C-130 tanker variant and then converted six of them to the KC-130B. Check out Simple Flying's additional content ...

he KC-130 Hercules can resupply austere battle zones ... cycle times of multiple-receiver aircraft formations (a typical tanker formation of four aircraft in less than 30 minutes).

One of the two planes involved in the incident was a KC-130 refuelling tanker (like the one seen in this archive picture) A big search and rescue operation is continuing in Japan for five missing ...