The Lockheed Martin C5 - what a beast
 

Came across this article and thought I would share . I had the pleasure of performing production control on the C5 retrofit program at the Georgia facility . I never new its actual capacity until I read this article .

She is a beautiful beast at lest that's my biased opinion . A C130 parked next to a C5 looks like a toy ! And a C130 isn't tiny by any means . I am proud of serving in a support role on the F22/F35/C5 and C130 . I don't miss the hectic production pace but I do miss seeing the birds on a daily basis.

https://weartv.com/news/local/air-forces-largest-cargo-plane-arrives-at-nas-pensacola-for-historic-pickup

Thanks for taking care of our birds!

hell of a thing...

I've ridden in a C130 from a base near Tokyo to the northern most tip of the main island. No sound deadening, no insulation/heat to speak of, and sitting facing the rear of the plane. I was a kid so it was fun.
I've only seen C5s at air shows including JATO style take offs.
https://66.media.tumblr.com/20127e7d...xu8o1_1280.jpg

What a great photo!

It took me three attempts on C130s to get from Clark AFB to Diego Garcia back in ‘87. First flight was close to 2 hrs out when the plane lost its Nav system and we had to turn back. Second attempt we were on the runway when an engine caught fire. Never got off the ground luckily. Third time was the charm.

I remember 8hrs of torture in those jump seats, boxed lunch and sweat.

Holy carp! 8 hrs! Yeah, I think our flight was ~2hrs. Diego Garcia was one of the places that my dad could have been stationed, but he gave it a miss.

Ok, Quick Sea Story.

When I was at the Sikorsky Factory as the lead Government pilot, we started delivery of UH-60L's to Germany.

We'd fly them from Bridgeport to then Stewart AFB and load them into a C-5, fly to Germany and do the acceptance inspections with the Army.

The Army W-5 that worked for me was incredible, as solid as can be.

I did the third delivery since the W-5 was on another delivery flight in CONUS.

I think we did four UH's at a time.

The flight deck of a C-5 is really something: High off the ground, huge, with all the amenities, including bunk rooms and a Starbucks.

I have 30 minutes of wheel time on a C-5...or seat time: I didn't touch a thing:cool:

What a machine.

I remember seeing a C-5 take off from Los Alamitos once when visiting at my late in-law's who lived in Rossmoor. I'd gone to pickup a pizza from the shopping center that was right at the end of the runway.
Unreal seeing a plane THAT big going THAT slowly and still staying in the air, probably less than 300 feet over head. Then it banked left and went out towards the ocean over the Navel Weapons Station.
Loud too, as they really don't care about that sort of thing on military planes.

C5's and Rock Crushers
 

This was one of my projects, Chuck Zimmerman was the SME that made this happen.

https://www.militarynews.com/norfolk-navy-flagship/news/top_stories/seabees-expeditionary-rock-crusher-recycles-war-debris-rubble/article_c58e6a5a-86c4-5c39-b59a-1e43089de544.html

The unit listed below is nearly identical with the exception of unique NCF and Expeditionary Navy Requirements.

https://eaglecrusher.com/1200-25-cc/

Hey thank you . My last 10 years of my Lockheed Martin career were in aero division . The Marietta facility is an OLD facility but serves a very valuable purpose .

Ok, one of my salties. That was a hell of a trip in total. It was my first WestPac and they flew me back to Coronado from Pearl for an additional school. After the school finished, it was all about getting back out to the Enterprise which by that time was on station.

San Diego back to Pearl, out the Philippines, then to Diego Garcia. We weren’t allowed to leave the terminal at Clark and it’s not like there’s multiple flights to DG daily. With the aircraft issues, it caused me to essentially live at the terminal for two days eating box meals brought in.

Spent two weeks TAD in DG living in two man hootches. By the way that’s double the time needed to see the island, LOL. I helped build a sand volleyball court that was about 50ft from the beach. You can guess where we got the sand.

Boarded the USS Hector in DG which was a repair ship. Was told at the time that she was the oldest ship in the entire fleet. Believable because she was definitely old school. Spent a week plus TAD in the Comm shop till we sailed within vicinity of the task force. While on the Hector, I was running laps on the upper outdoor deck while a Frigate was coming alongside for repairs. The Collision Alarm sounded and I grabbed the nearest pipe inboard just before the Frigate came into us. Wasn’t too bad but, definitely swapped some paint! If ya gotta hit another ship, a full repair ship is your best choice.

Once we were in the vicinity of the E we took a flat bottom garbage scow from the Hector to the E with a boarding ladder down. It was maybe 1000-1500 yards and pretty calm seas overall but, you know flat bottom and a couple of the guys were puking,, Not me I can say with some pride,,, I loved big seas. :D

Was never so happy to get back to the ship as that trip,,,

CWO or Master Chief are guys who command respect. Every one I ever saw in real life did anyway.

That would have been cool! I worked in aerospace for 5 years and never got near a whole military aircraft (outside the Air Force Museum- I was there for lunch and a look-around 2 or 3 days a week). There was an airman attached to our lab who worked for the C-5 SPO, but was appropriately quiet about just what he was working on.

When we lived in Valparaiso, Florida, our house was in the flight pattern for one of the runways for Eglin AFB. I was 10 when we moved there and quickly learned to identify many aircraft. Every now and then, a C5A Galaxy would fly over. It made a loud whine sound and was absolutely huge. It always looked like it was barely moving, and I always wondered how the heck it was staying in the air???

Sent from my SM-S916U using Tapatalk

One of my buddies was a loadmaster on C141s (IIRC). Man he has some stories.

^^^ The size is just incredible , but then load 281,000 lbs in her and she can still take off ! Just an amazing aircraft . There are many miles of cables/tubing/hoses in her . The parts list just for retrofit is mind blowing .

The C5 must be a heck of an airplane. I see the C17 fly out of Charleston and they look huge and slow.

(more than 30 years ago) I spent a lot of time traveling on the C130. Cold and noisy... The toilet arrangement was interesting. :(

The C5 was a rare sight at the time. They dwarf remote airbases in Aus.

I spent 27 years of my aero career working for a company that supplied a bunch of components to Uncle Lockheed. We actuated all of the flight control surfaces on the !30 as well as the landing gear - all ball screws, no hydraulics. Later got into the cargo handling end of the aircraft - roller trays, lockboxes for auto release of pallets, ADS arm holding the ass end open and troop seat beams to hold those fancy seats. Missed a chance to fly a Lake Michigan loop on one as it conflicted with Road America. Those who went were quite impressed. plus, it was a work day excursion.

We also produced a few C-5 items including the locks for the nose of the aircraft.

Had meetings at Marietta and got to do a tour(F22 area excluded) and it was very impressive. There was a C5 outside on the tarmac for service and I was overwhelmed by the sheer size of the thing. Behemoth!

Fun fact- in the late 60's Lockheed was considering making a commercial version of the C5 . It was going to be called the L-500 and was going to be fitted to carry 1000 passengers !

But the Boeing 747 had much lower production and maintenance costs so Lockheed scrubbed the idea . I can only imagine how luxurious Lockheed could have made that aircraft .

Long ago we had a great air show here in Oklahoma City. The USAF brought in a C-5 and opened it for a tour. They also brought in a SR-71, and the Thunderbirds.

The Soviet Union sent over their gigantic Antonov An-225 Mriya. It was cool to tour all of them. One guy in the line asked the Air Force pilot whe the US does not have something like the Antonov. He replied, they have just one of those, and we have over 100 C-5s, and lots of C-130s.

It was a wonderful air show.

Had a nice C5 ride from the PI to Diego Garcia.
Next leg was a noisy C141 from Diego Garcia to Mombasa Africa sitting facing the tail loaded with pallets of bombs.

When 25th Infantry Division (Schofield Barracks Hawaii) turned out the lights and left Iraq in 2011 or thereabouts, the Commanding General decided it would be cool to return to Oahu on a Hawaii National Guard aircraft. He and some of the staff flew all the way on a C130. It was well more than 8 hours and multiple stops. I know a couple of guys that were unlucky enough to be on that flight. One of them is a bit of a 'Richard' so serves him right...

A friend of mine was a Navy C-130 pilot at VXE-6, which in those days flew folks to Antarctica from Point Mugu, California. They had aircraft in Christchurch, NZ as well.

After my first cruise I had two week of "basket leave" and my buddy asked if I wanted to fly to the ice.

I should have, but couldn't resist the opportunity.

It was the longest four aviation days of my life just to get to NZ. I honestly don't know which is worse, being a passenger in a C-130 flying over the Pacific Ocean at just over 300kts or crossing it on a Frigate.

Coin toss.

Happily, the base in Antarctica was weathered in and I flew home on a big ol' jet liner. Never got to the ice.:cool:

Got a round trip ride on Fat Albert the blue angel c130.
From San Diego to Pensacola.
Long, loud and no soft seats.
Best c130 ride was with the British parachute team.
At 10,000 feet they strapped me into the last seat before the rear door.
I watched as the big rear door opened and 40 skydivers ran out of the big rear door.

Ha! I’ll take the C130 for $500, Alex! Give me the Frigate any day!

I almost forgot my worst C130 flight. Iraq 'winter' 2006, just cool enough for a polar fleece. I was going from one place to the next and got a ride with the Aussies on a 130 medevac bird. I had no idea how they flew...

Take off relatively normal, maybe a little steep. Then we flew very low altitude, which kept the aircraft warm inside so I immediately regretted the fleece. A couple of pax knew the deal and just smiled as we had a very bumpy ride.

We get close to destination and ascended quite a bit in altitude. Then joy of joys, an overhead approach on landing. Essentially a death spiral over the airfield to avoid enemy fire (even though there wasn't any). Blood rushing to extremities and sweating even more. Finally and mercifully landed.

Oh I forgot to mention the medical patients on the aircraft.... they suffered more than me on that roller coaster ride.

When i worked for McDonnell Douglas, I wrote a report for contingency operations where the Space Shuttle couldn't make it to orbit. Which airport it could land at based on when it had a main engine failure, etc. Most of that was already figured out, but the hard part is that the SCA (Shuttle Carrier Aircraft - the 747 that carried the shuttle) required that the Shuttle be empty. Well, I worked on the Spacelab program and we had to figure out how to get the Spacelab equipment out of the shuttle (likely at some middle-of-nowhere air base in Africa or something) and back to the US.

The solution? A C-5! The entire payload of the shuttle fit into a thing called the Canister and the Canister would fit into a C-5. So...that was my plan...

Also, I worked on a project to modify a C-130 to mount a laser turret in it. It was my job to design the turret retraction system. The bad thing was that the turret extended farther down than the landing gear. Made the pilots nervous... :)

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1745928492.jpg

A C5 flew over my house yesterday. Tremendous beautiful beast.

One of my earliest memories was flying from California to the terrirory of Hawaii on a C-54 (DC-4) in 1959. We were seated, facing the tail. It was unpressurized, so we stayed under 10,000 feet, poking along at 190 mph for what seemed forever. Mom was dressed up like she was going to a wedding, and dad was in uniform. At one point I remember asking my mom if this is where we live now.

It is 2555 miles and a 13.5 hour flight. Nothing to look at but endless waves.