By Howard Wilkinson
Enquirer staff writer

Albert B. Sieve, a retired Navy chief petty officer, received a medal Tuesday for his role in enabling a C130 Hercules cargo plane to land on an aircraft carrier in 1963. The Enquirer/MICHAEL E. KEATING

EAST END - Seeing it on the tarmac at Cincinnati's Lunken Airport on Tuesday, with its massive bulk and 132-foot wing span, it is hard to imagine the C130 Hercules cargo plane dropping out of the sky, fully loaded and landing safely on the deck of an aircraft carrier.

But, 41 years ago, Albert Sieve of Sayler Park, then a chief petty officer in the Navy, helped make it happen.

The first-ever landing of a large cargo plane on an aircraft carrier - in this case, the USS Forrestal - told the Navy that a very large aircraft bearing a huge payload could land on a ship at sea in an emergency.

Adm. Michael Mullen, vice chief of naval operations, came to Lunken to meet the 72-year-old Sieve and do what Mullen said should have been done a long time ago - pin a Naval Air Medal on Sieve's chest.

"Sometimes it takes us a while to catch up with ourselves, and things like this become long overdue," Mullen told Sieve as the two stood in front of the C130 cargo plane that had been flown in from California by a Marine Corps crew for the occasion.

Sieve, who came with his wife, Goldie, and their two sons and daughter, said seeing the plane he had worked on "brings back some good memories.''

"They built these things to last," said Sieve of the plane, which is still used for air refueling by the Marine Corps. It is scheduled to be retired this year and sent to the Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Fla. The Marine Corps has several dozen C130s still in service.

Sieve's role as crew chief was to make sure that the aircraft was loaded properly so it could be landed on the carrier deck.

"My job was to make sure the payload was balanced, that the weight was evenly distributed," Sieve said.

Sieve pointed a thumb over his shoulder at the massive plane that loomed behind him - a plane that can carry 343,000 pounds of cargo.

"You should have seen me trying to get this thing on a set of scales," said Sieve, who served in the Navy from 1950 to 1970.

At Lunken on Tuesday, Sieve was reunited with the man who piloted the plane on its historic landing in 1963 - retired Adm. Jim Flatley, who was then a lieutenant.

Sieve and Flatley stood under the plane's wing and looked at Sieve's collection of photographs from the era, as the Marine flight crew that had brought it in from California looked over their shoulders.

"Forty-one years - that's a long time," Sieve said. "But I remember it like it was yesterday."

E-mail hwilkinson@enquirer.com