A Unique Large Cargo Aircraft

Today I'm going to share an aircraft that I have worked on only about a dozen times. This aircraft is the USAF largest air cargo transport, the C-5M Super Galaxy.

Well my normal workday ended at 4:30 p.m.on Friday. We had to come back in a little later to offload this aircraft in the evening. It was a simple offload just 3 cargo containers and 15 passengers. This is the first time I seen this aircraft being so under utilized. If it was an all pallet load this aircraft can take 36 of them. To be prepared for this aircraft the following equipment had to be in place: aircraft loader (25K K-loader), bus, stair case truck, refueling trucks, boxed truck (for loose baggage), and some ground maintenance equipment.

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As you can see compared to other aircraft it is gigantic. In the first photo you can see a white aircraft in the back ground, thats a 707 airframe. The other photo is it alongside a C-17 which I have shared plenty of times here. I had to borrow this imagine as I don't have any side by side comparisons.

A little bit about this flying barge. It's over 247 feet long, just over 65 feet tall, and has a wing span just over 220 feet. Powered by 4 General Electric engines that gives it plenty of thrust power to get it off the ground rather quickly.

Well the aircraft arrived just before 6:00 p.m. and it usually takes a little bit of time for the crew to get ready for cargo operations. Since this aircraft was coming from overseas nothing on our part can be done until it has been processed through customs. This process alone nearly took 50 minutes. Most of the time was waiting for them to arrive to the aircraft 😡 Once they arrived it took about 20 minutes for them to do there thing.

Oh an aircraft of this size has a pretty big footprint. In all there are 28 tires with four on them on the nose gear and 24 scattered towards the back. Would you like to change these tires?

Once customs was done the first thing that needed to be done was to pull up a staircase truck to the aft ramp so the passengers could get off the aircraft. The passenger are upstairs in the passenger compartment. I didn't get many opportunities to take pictures once aboard the C-5, the crew was a little corky. Well they did just fly 10 hours getting here and were in a hurry to get out of here to fly back to their home station. Their crew duty day was coming up and they didn't want to spend the night here.

Anyways, a little bit about the passenger compartment. Upstairs is 73 look alike commercial airline seats. You get to fly in comfort in this cargo transport. It is bit different as all the passenger seats face towards the tail of the aircraft.

The flight deck holds 6 crew members, 7 additional relief crew, and 8 more seats for either cargo couriers or dignitaries. Also there is two bunk rooms with 3 beds each.

Getting on and off this aircraft involves climbing ladders. If you look at the first picture you will see the ladder to the passenger compartment right behind the baggage on the floor. A line was formed near the baggage all the way down to the bottom of the staircase truck to get the baggage off the aircraft. Once that was done it was time time to line up aircraft loader with the aft ramp and push the pallets onto it.

I took a picture towards the front of the main cargo floor to give you an idea how large the cargo bay is. Behind me is the front ramp. If you haven't figured it out this aircraft can be loaded from both ends and can be done at the same time. Because of this a standard crew usually has at least 3 loadmasters.

Let's talk about it's sure size when it comes to the cargo compartment. The cargo floor is almost 144 feet long, the width is 19 feet, and the height is 13 1/2 feet. With those dimensions a lot of stuff can fit inside. Weight wise it can handle up to 281,000 lbs of cargo.

Usually pallets go through the aft ramp while rolling stock (wheeled equipment) goes on the front ramp. We didn't use the front ramp but I included a work photo from a few years ago taken by a co-worker so you could see it. The nose of the aircraft lifts up so access can be available. This aircraft can kneel down as well, which is a sight to see. I have always wanted to drive a vehicle into one end and out the other. Just seems like something fun to do. Who can say they drove through an aircraft without damaging it? Haha.

The number of C-5 aircraft is smaller than what it use to be. An aircraft of this size that has all these capabilities has a lot of mechanics. This increases it's overall dependentacy rate. It's no surprise hearing a C-5 is broke. After all this one was suppose to be here Wednesday, haha.

I hope you enjoyed another day of me doing my job. Take care, be safe and enjoy.