I was a USAF loadmaster with many drops at Bragg/Pope and never missed that bad. And that was before GPS with a navigator using stubby pencil!!
Somebody’s gonna lose a stripe or two or three, or a bar or leaf......................
Was it parachuted or was it “airmailed”?
I flew Hueys in Vietnam & did slingloads. Learned to follow rather than fight the load as it oscillated. Those who fought the load ended up “airmailing” it as the arc got wider and wider.
I think you found the problem—and solution. My Herk experience was in EC-130Es (ABCCC), so we weren’t part of the airlift community. However, a number of our pilots, navs and flight engineers had pulled tours in “trash haulers,” and they told me an air drop was one of the most demanding missions and having the nav to keep them on course and on time was a huge plus. Ditto for the FE, who could monitor systems and let the pilots focus on flying the aircraft.
So what happened? With GPS and advanced aircraft systems, the USAF determined the navigator and flight engineer were no longer needed on J model C-130s and the C-17. So on the Globemaster III, you now have a three-person crew doing tasks once assigned to five or more, on the flight deck and in the back end. Obviously, there are a lot of things that might have caused the air drop to go awry, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the crew got off course and behind schedule—even with GPS and all those automated systems—and the HUMVEE landed off the reservation and in someone’s back yard.