It’s been the heavyweight workhorse of the United States airforce since 1970, moving

everything from emergency food relief to main battle tanks and even other aircraft and pretty

much everything else in between. It’s also the only ever plane to carry and launch a

full-sized intercontinental ballistic missile in the air.

Even at 50 years old there is no plane as far as we know to replace the Lockheed C-5

Galaxy in the near future but after a 17 year modernisation program and even bringing back

mothballed ones, the C-5s are expected to be in service until at least the 2040s, this

is the story so far of the biggest plane in the USAF.

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Like the B-52, the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy has been in every major US conflict from Vietnam

up to the present day. It’s the largest transport aircraft in the USAF and although

its not the biggest transport plane in the world, that accolade now goes to the singular

Antonvo AN-225 Mriya, what it does offer is a fleet of aircraft with a range of up to

13,000 km unloaded. Although when fully loaded with up to 127

tons of cargo, the range drops to 4260 km, because it can be refuelled in the air, it’s

real range, loaded or unloaded is only limited to the time the engines can be kept running

continuously and the multiple crews onboard can be fed, watered and rested during the

flight. The beginnings of the C5 go back to 1961 when

the next-generation replacement for the Douglas C-133 and Lockheed starlifters was being looked

at by several companies. What was needed was a bigger aircraft for

a variety of outsized equipment the military was now using but also they needed to be able

to move it to anywhere in the world quickly. This would need not only a radical design

for the airframe but also engines had to be big enough and powerful enough to do the job.

In 1964 an official proposal for the “Heavy Logistics System” or the CX-HLS when out

to the top aircraft makers in the US. From this Boeing, Lockheed and Douglas were given

a 1-year study contract to come up with an aircraft and General Electric & Pratt & Whitney

the same for the engines. All the designs from the three companies had

swept-back wings and placed the cockpit at the top of the fuselage, with Boeing and Douglas

having it in pod while Lockheed extended it to the entire length of the fuselage, giving

their design an egg-shaped cross-section. They also had front and rear cargo doors to

allow simultaneous loading and unloading. Although the airforce thought the Boeing design

was the best, the lowest total cost solution at the time was the Lockheed one, so in the

end, they were selected to build 81 C-5A’s which were delivered between 1969 and 1973.

The program also produced the General Electric T-39, the first high-bypass turbofan engine

which was not only much more powerful than any previous engine, it was also much more

efficient and led the way for future engine designs that would power the very large commercial

jets like the Boeing 747 in the future. Due to their unique high bypass design at

the time and their priority on power rather than noise, this gave the T-39 and the C-5

a rather loud and characteristic engine whine compared to more modern engines and those

fitted to the latest C-5M. Although Boeing lost the contract their design

wasn’t wasted. Even before the competition had finished they were asked by the president

of PAM-AM to build a super large passenger plane to replace Boeing 707, so a lot of the

ideas from the CX design would go on to form the basis of the Boeing 747.

In the long run, Boeing would go on to become the world’s biggest aircraft maker and make

far more money off of the back of the 747, producing over 1550 over the next 50 years

compared to the 131 Lockheed C-5s. But if Boeing did well out of NOT winning,

Lockheed had more mixed fortunes, with the C-5 becoming the first development program

to have an overrun of $1 billion. There were also problems with the wings with

cracks been detected during fatigue testing. By the 1980s non-emergency loads on the C-5A

had to be reduced to no more than 23 tons out of the 127 total capacity and a $1.5 billion

repair program called “H-mod” to replace the wings was initiated which doubled the

total cost of the program. In 1975, the airforce admitted that the military

cargo version of the Boeing 747 had a bigger load capacity than the C-5 but that on the

other hand, the 747 couldn’t carry oversized essential wartime items including the U‐21

aeroplane, A 20‐ton crane, an M‐22 crane, a rock crusher/screen machine and a ditch

machine. Some at the pentagon argued that for the $1.5

billion repair cost to fix the C-5 they could buy thirty Boeing 747 cargo planes which had

no underlying issues and were proven in commercial use.

Even so, in 1982, 50 more C-5Bs were ordered with upgrades and modifications to make it

more reliable and easier to maintain. Two of those C-5Bs were converted C-5Cs for

large cargo like satellites and other space-related items starting in 1998 and to be used by the

DoD and NASA. After a study in the early 2000s showed that

the C-5 airframe still had 80% of its service life left, the remaining one C-5A, 49 C-5Bs

and the two C-5Cs were converted to the C-5M Super Galaxy with new GE CF-6 engines and

mounting pylons, avionics, airframe and skin, landing gear, cockpit and pressurisation systems.

This would give the C-5M better range, shorter take-off abilities and be more efficient with

lower operating and lifecycle costs. The conversion program started in 2006 and ended in 2018.

With it’s lifting nose, nicknamed the Knights Visor and height controlled steerable landing

gear with 28 wheels, the C-5 can not only land on unprepared runways, once there it

can be lowered to be the height of a truck bed making easy to both load and unload cargo

at the same time, effectively making it a drive through-loading system.

But it's not only cargo it can carry, it also has a passenger compartment which can hold

up to 80 in rear-facing seats which are considered safer in the event of a crash.

Although the C-5 Galaxy was designed to carry most of the things an army needs to fight

a war, in 1974 it was suggested that it could be used to launch a Minuteman ICBM, something

which is normally stored and launched from an underground silo.

The thinking was that is the Soviets initiated a first strike on the US many of the missile

silos could be destroyed before they could launch. However, if you could carry and launch

them from a plane, they would be virtually untraceable compared to a fixed silo site.

So, in October 1974 a 39 ton, 17-meter long Minuteman missile without its nuclear warhead

was loaded on a C5-A and flown to 20,000ft. Here the rear doors were opened and the missile

in its holding sled was pushed out of the aircraft, an operation that the crew described

as being like dumping a wheelbarrow full of water. It was dangerous due to the sudden

drop in weight and change in the aircraft's centre of gravity and also if it got caught

up on the way out. The parachutes opened and brought the missile

to the vertical position, the explosive bolts released the sled and when it was clear and

missiles position had stabilised, the launch motors were fired and it flew up just as it

would have done if it had been launched from the ground.

Although the test proved it could be done, the idea was dropped due to engineering and

security difficulties and though it was never officially recognised, many believe this was

used as a bargaining tool in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks or SALT II between the

US and soviets. That particular test aircraft, complete with

its number 90014, known as “zero-one-four” and its original paint scheme is the only

C-5 to have been retired to a museum and is now at the Air Mobility Command Museum at

Dover Air Force Base near Delaware. The C-5 has also been used on other unusual

missions including the ferrying around of partially dismantled versions of the then-secret

F-117 nighthawk, the worlds first operational stealth aircraft when it was being developed.

The C-5 was big enough to do this in secrecy leaving no external clue as to what they were

carrying. The C-5 was a candidate to carry the space

shuttle too but was dropped in favour of the Boeing 747 because is its low wing design

and also the C-5 would have remained the property of the USAF but the Boeings could be bought

outright and owned by NASA. Although the C-5 was originally designed as

a military cargo plane, there were plans drawn up in 1968 to develop it into a commercial

passenger and cargo plane much like how the Boeing 747 ended up.

The L-500 passenger plane would have in theory been able to carry up 1000 people, though

the cargo version was probably the more realistic of the two. There was interest from some carriers

but in the end, no orders were received due to the high operating costs caused by low

fuel efficiencies even before the oil crisis of the 1970s.

With its ability to transport oversized loads on short unprepared runways anywhere on the

planet, even to the US McMurdo Station in Antarctica, and with new modernisation efforts

in its communications, mission computing and air traffic management to meet FAA regulations,

the C-5M Super Galaxy is set to continue in active service well into the 2040s and if

the example of the B-52s are anything to go by, it could end up being even longer, so

maybe after a tricky start, it won’t have turned too bad after all.

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