The See Five

The Lockheed C-5 Galaxy is an American military transport aircraft built by Lockheed. It was designed to provide strategic heavy airlift over intercontinental distances and to carry outsize and oversize cargo. The C-5 Galaxy has been operated by the United States Air Force since 1969 and is one of the largest military aircraft in the world.


The C-5 is a large high-wing cargo aircraft. It has a distinctive high T-tail, 25 degree wing sweep, and four TF39 turbofan engines mounted on pylons beneath the wings. The C-5 has 12 internal wing tanks and is equipped for aerial refueling. It has both nose and aft doors for "drive-through" loading and unloading of cargo.


The C-5 features a cargo compartment 121 feet long, 13.5 feet high, and 19 feet wide, or just over 31,000 ft³. The cargo hold of the C-5 is actually a foot longer than the length of the first powered flight by the Wright Brothers' flyer at Kitty Hawk. The nose and aft doors open the full width and height of the cargo compartment to permit faster and easier loading. Ramps are full width at each end for loading double rows of vehicles. The volume of unusable space in a C-5's tail assembly (aft of the ramp) is larger than the available cargo space of a C-130 Hercules.

It has an upper deck seating area for 73 passengers. The passengers face the rear of the aircraft, rather than forward. Its take off distance is 8,300 ft and landing distance is 4,900 ft. Its high flotation landing gear has 28 wheels to share the weight. The "kneeling" landing gear system that permits lowering of the parked aircraft so the cargo floor is at truck-bed height to facilitate vehicle loading and unloading.


The C-5 has a MADAR (Malfunction Detection Analysis and Recording), a system that records and analyzes information and detects malfunctions in more than 800 test points. The C-5 is also known as "FRED" (Fucking Ridiculous Economic/Environmental Disaster) by its crews due to its maintenance/reliability issues and large consumption of fuel. The C-5 requires an average of 16 hours of maintenance for each flight hour based on 1996 data.

The Galaxy is capable of carrying nearly all of the Army's combat equipment, including bulky items such as the 74 ton armored vehicle launched bridge (AVLB), from the United States to any location on the globe.

SOURCE: Wikipedia