Open Wide, pt 3 - C-5 01.jpg (1/1) [Archive]

Miloch

June 29th 18, 05:00 PM

In article >, Mitchell Holman
says...
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Happy 50th birthday to America's biggest military airplane

more at
https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/29/politics/c5-galaxy-largest-us-military-plane-50th-anniversary/index.html

Marietta, Georgia (CNN) — One of the largest airplanes in the world -- a jet
that forever changed America's military and airline industry -- is turning half
a century old.

When you see a C-5 Galaxy on the ground for the first time, the first thing that
strikes you is... it's freakishly huge.

Length: 247 feet. Wingspan: wider than a Boeing 747-400. The pilot sits about
three-and-a-half stories high in the cockpit, and the plane's T-tail stands as
tall as a six-story building.

The transport jet certainly must have turned heads on June 30, 1968, when it
first took off from a runway at Lockheed Martin's historic factory north of
Atlanta. Until the 1980s, it reigned as the world's largest airplane.

For the first time, the C-5 made it possible for 70-ton tanks, fighter jets,
multiple helicopters or other huge cargo to go just about anywhere in a matter
of hours instead of weeks aboard a ship.

It made the Pentagon more nimble. More flexible to quickly shifting events. And
it redefined how military forces — and lifesaving humanitarian aid — could be
deployed.

The C-5 is credited with spurring the development of new engine technology that
benefits virtually all air travelers today.

More about that in a second. First, let's talk about this plane's superpowers:

•Its landing gear can kneel toward the ground to make it easier to load
•The C-5's nose lifts up, revealing a huge cargo hold that can be loaded and
unloaded from the front and the back
•Its cargo hold is 19 feet wide and 143 feet long -- longer than the Wright
brothers' first flight back in 1903.
•The plane has an upper deck with airline-style seats that can carry around 73
troops, or other passengers

Birthday party

Hitting the big 5-0 usually calls for a celebration. So last Tuesday, at the
same Georgia site where it flew for the first time, politicians, Air Force
generals, business executives and assembly-line workers gathered under a big
tent to mark the jet's golden anniversary.

A newly upgraded C-5M, the big bad belle of the ball, sat nearby, filling up the
background, standing on its 28 wheels, holding its T-tail proudly in the air and
acting all nonchalant about those four beautifully gargantuan engines hanging
off its wings.

"This airplane has served as an ambassador of the skies -- both for both war and
for peace," Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal told the crowd.

much more and pics at
https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/29/politics/c5-galaxy-largest-us-military-plane-50th-anniversary/index.html

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