C-141 Starlifter - a support for air bridges

hello theater sky here and today we continue to learn how to transport cargo by air our today's hero is perhaps one of the most famous military transport planes a machine that has seen it all during the years of service from impressive humanitarian missions to chaotic evacuations from horrifying war zones this aircraft has already been retired but it still has a lot to tell us so let's salute the veteran the c-141 starlifter is a heavy military strategic airlifter that was created by the lockheed company in the early 1960s and served in the u.s air force up until the beginning of the 21st century being the first jet-powered heavy airlifter the c-141 had successfully replaced most of its predecessors and it set the foundation for a new evolutionary stage of this part of the industry the 1950s and the 1960s happened to be the time of a large-scale rearrangement of the entire aviation industry when piston planes were being rapidly pushed aside by their tuba prop and jet descendants obviously the military transport aviation followed suit and had also gone along with this trend and this change was even more relevant for the us military air transport service the guys from mats who were in charge of cargo transport for the air force were facing quite a complicated situation as they already had an enormous fleet of airlifters which all of a sudden became obsolete these had to be replaced with completely new machines whose creation turned out to be an equally complex task in 1956 douglas took into the sky their flagship transport plane the c-155 cargo master which was considerably superior to its predecessors but did not become a universal remedy these were quite complex and expensive machines that required a lot of attention and improvements and they did not shine with safety these factors limited both their delivery volumes and the extent of their use besides the cargo masters were powered by turboprop engines which limited their crew speed to just 281 knots or 520 kilometers per hour it was a big deal since already by the 1960s jet engines were showcasing their advantages and particularly their speed the military wanted to get a plane that would be easier to maintain would be more versatile and what's most important they wanted a plane that would fly faster the first solution to this problem was the boeing straddle lifter a freighter version of the legendary progenitor the prototype 367-80 which would become the starting point for many large boeings including the boeing 707 airliner the stratolifter was quite a decent machine it was reliable it was spacious and most importantly it was fast besides to a large extent it was unified with the kc-135 aerial tanker so the air force had an easier time operating it in the end m80s got 48 airlifters of this model all of which were actively used however in spite of all its advantages the c-135 was still an incomplete solution these planes were demanding in regard to airfields their fuselage would sit too high above the ground while the loading and unloading process had to be carried out through side doors because the c-135 did not have ramps this meant that working with bulky cargo would be almost impossible and neither would it be possible to carry out airborne operations as a result in 1960 the u.s air force had initiated the development program of an entirely new airlifter that would be able to get everything done efficiently it had to be a jet powered plane capable of flying three and a half thousand miles six and a half thousand kilometers with a payload of sixty thousand pounds or twenty seven tons at the same time it had to be on demanding to airfield infrastructure and be able to carry out airborne operations be it with cargo or paratroopers boeing general dynamics and lockheed took part in this tender while douglas preferred to stay aside as they were already completely busy with their transport plane lockheed got down to business with fervor on the one hand they already had a successful experience with military transport planes at least the c-130 hercules was showing some excellent performance on the other hand the new plane was much larger than the hercules and besides it had to be jet powered which basically made it the first of its kind at the time dubbed as model 300 the project had a configuration that resembled a lot of the new airlifters of that time a low sitting fuselage with a squatty landing gear and a high wing with engines obviously it had to have a large cargo door in the back the military loved the project and in 1961 the pentagon selected it as the winner of the tender fun fact the first document signed by the president john f kennedy after his inauguration was the procurement contract for the lockheed airlifters this transport plane was officially called c-141 starlifter a combination of the usual military index luck his passion for the world star and the fact that it was a lifter the contract included the creation of five prototypes for testing purposes and the guys from lockheed went an extra mile to deliver the first prototype as soon as 1963 just three years after the beginning of the program that year a rollout ceremony of the c-141a prototype was celebrated at the marietta plant in georgia which is where the mass production would take place well now let's take a closer look at the airplane they had created in terms of overall configuration the c141 star lifter can be regarded as a classic heavy military transport plane the fuselage had a rather simple shape with a circular cross section and it features four main doors one in front for the crew two behind the wing for the paratroopers and the large one with a ramp which was obviously meant for cargo naturally the aft section of the fuselage was a bit elevated in order to free up the loading area from the empire structures speaking of empinace it had a t-tail with a large horizontal stabilizer the solution was deemed to be quite successful and this configuration is still used on all american heavy lifters in one way or another the airplane was fitted with a slightly swept high wing with a span of 160 feet or 48.8 meters the high lift devices were classic as well each console featured ailerons huge expandable flaps and spoilers but no slats were used in this plane the guys from luck had learned from the mistakes douglas made with their c133 and kept them in mind when they were creating the star lifter in the construction of the airframe they used special aluminum alloys that were more resistant to micro cracking while the critical areas were reinforced with titanium patches the power plant was made up of four prett whitney tf-33 turbofans each of which was providing kilonewtons of thrust actually these are a military version of the jt3d engine thanks to this choice of engines the c-141 was easy to operate the u.s air force already had a lot of other planes with these engines including all the versions of the boeing 135 and the b-52 bombers these engines were rather reliable and efficient with their help the c-141a could reach a speed of about 493 knots at a range of 3600 miles or 6 600 kilometers when fully loaded and it had a ferry range of up to 5 400 miles as expected in an airlifter the landing gear was very low which allowed to place the entrance into the cargo bay sitting just 50 inches above the ground the main gear had four wheeled bogeys that were retracted into the fairings on the sides of the fuselage speaking of which the left fairing also stored the auxiliary power unit the nose landing gear was classic with just two wheels [Music] the usual crew consisted of five people two pilots a flight engineer a navigator and a cargo operator the cargo bay of the basic c141a was 3 meters or 10 feet wide 2.7 meters or 9 feet high and 21 meters or 70 feet long the reinforced structure allowed it to carry quite a wide range of cargo obviously the heavier was the payload the less fuel could be carried and the shorter was the range the usual payloads on this plane reached 32 tons or 70 thousand pounds and these could consist of both military equipment and people up to 154 soldiers 123 fully equipped paratroopers or 80 stretchers for wounded plus medics of course there were also special freights for instance the cargo bay of the c-141 was reinforced in order to carry the lg m30 minuteman ballistic missiles whose weight along with their containers reached 42 tons in fact in this instance the guys from lockheed had even taken things a bit too far with the reinforcement or did not go far enough with the dimensions actual practice had shown that the operators were mostly limited by the dimensions of the cargo bay rather than by its payload capacity in december of 1963 the plane made its maiden flight the 5 test planes were actively used by both lockheed and the m80s personnel the deliveries began in 1965 and in the end instead of the planned 132 planes the pentagon had extended the order up to 284 aircraft it was one fine plane and the vietnam war boosted the need for air bridges the entire batch was delivered already in 1968 in just three years considering the circumstances there was no time for contemplation and the c-141s were immediately sent to carry out their missions ironically the issue of the cargo bay being not large enough had emerged almost immediately and the military had no choice other than to use the c124 globemaster ii when they needed to carry bulky cargo in the end the final solution basically came only with the advent of the c5 galaxy however the starlifter did successfully accomplish most of its missions and has received its baptism by fire in vietnam where it got the respect of its operators it became even more famous after the large-scale evacuation of the american forces and refugees from the besieged saigon at the dawn of the war that was not the most glorious episode in u.s history but the plane had shown its worth the c-141 star lifter fleet had basically become the basis of the u.s military transport aviation from the 1960s up until the 1990s and it took part in practically every large-scale operation within that period of time as a result by 1975 each plane had already an average of 20 000 flight hours oddly enough during that time the military both american and foreign had changed their minds about the jet airlifters while in 1960s they were convinced that turboprops were just a temporary solution by mid-70s it turned out that in many regards the turboprops were better than jets at least in the middleweight segment so while the c-133 cargo master was sent to the scrapyard without regrets the good old c-130 hercules is still flying and it does not even think of seeding the way to its jet counterparts of course some of the key advantages of turboprop airlifters were the possibility of keeping the costs rather low and their ability to land on unpaved airfields most softly in such conditions the c-141 would land harder which would lead to all sorts of problems from the mundane pavement damage to a faster wear and tear of the airframe the wing in the central section would take most of the damage and their condition was already concerning by the end of the 1970s the maintenance and repairs were starting to be insufficient by then the air force had already initiated a modernization program for their c-141 fleet with the goal of both improving their performance and solving the wear out issues lockheed took advantage of this opportunity and proposed to go even further with the updates by introducing more substantial changes into the airframe in the end they replaced all the worn out components with new ones updated the on-board systems added the air refueling systems and solved the issue of an excessively small cargo bay by stretching the fuselage by 23 feet more than 7 meters this is how the c141b was born in fact the modernization would not imply the delivery of new batch of planes but precisely the modernization of the existing ones this is what had been done between 1979 and 1982 with 270 planes which was almost the entire fleet of those planes that were operated at the time after the modernization these planes kept on flying intensively up until the mid-90s when the terror and wear issues came back after the desert storm operation these airlifters were flown to such an extent that their lifespan was getting close to an end the military even had to limit the maximum allowed payload on these planes while lockheed suggested to carry out yet another series of modernizations in order to extend their life but the pentagon was not in a hurry anymore the cold war was over and all of a sudden there was much less work to do for the strategic transport planes there were budget reductions and the star lifter's successor the c17 globemaster iii was about to get approved for operational service in any case no one was going to carry out the likes of the large-scale works that were needed to upgrade the a version to b a modernization program was finalized in the end of the 1990s but it consisted only of small improvements and the replacement of aeonix with the inclusion of a glass cockpit now these planes could be piloted by a crew of two as a result 63 style lifters were modestly upgraded to become the c-141c another 13 aircraft were modified as part of the soul special operation low level project which made them capable of carrying out low altitude airdrop missions in contested zones of both equipment and paratroopers however these were already highly specialized airplanes which were mostly used by special forces in terms of incident rates the c-141 were not the culprit of safety but they were rather good nevertheless over the entire lifespan only 21 units were lost out of the 284 that were delivered when looking at these figures you need to keep in mind that they flew for several decades in quite harsh conditions of course the aviators fiddled around with these planes more than i have just told you what's interesting is that right from the start of the project in the 1960s lockheed was creating a plane that was meant not only for the military they also had their eye on the civil commercial market for this purpose they developed the l-300 super star lifter version without the military equipment with a stretched fuselage and fitted with the usual civilian onboard equipment a few cargo operators got interested in the project but unfortunately for lockheed they could not succeed in this field after all military transport is quite a specific thing and consequently even with all the modifications it turned out to be way too complex to operate and was not economically efficient for the civil market besides the problem of the cargo bay dimensions was even more acute here while in most cases the military had rather small but at the same time very heavy cargo on the civil market things would usually be the other way around the cargo was not all that heavy but it was bulky as a result they just could not compete with freighter versions of airliners so in the end lockheed assembled one prototype tested it and then decided to abandon the project and gave the plane to nasa nasa did accept the plane with arms wide open and for several decades it was used to carry out lots of experiments eventually the plane was converted into a flying observatory with the telescope installed in its fuselage it would make a lot of flights up until the mid 90s as the kuiper airborne observatory now the skies are observed by its successor the boeing 747sp fitted with an infrared telescope the renowned sofia stratosphere observatory of course the experimental aviators would not be themselves if they did not create something truly outstanding this outstanding would be the eclipse project that was carried out between 1997 and 1998. the idea was to get a military transport plane the c-141 to be precise to tug along another smaller airplane and save its fuel you might ask what's so special about it haven't you ever seen a glider yes but here instead of a glider they had an f-106 delta dart fighter in the form of the qf-106 drone and it actually flew this idea could grow into something even bigger in fact the aviators contemplated the possibility of using this method to lift a small carrier rocket that would be air launched something like spaceship 2 or stargazer on a leash but this was not meant to happen as you may imagine all this fun with the straddle lifters could not last forever they quit nasa and they also quit the us air force by 2004 the c-141 was basically retired and sent out to storage by 2020 all the planes have been decommissioned about 15 of them are now standing on static expositions in aviation museums while the remainder was stored at the davis-monthan mega parking in arizona or simply cut in pieces this is the story of one of the most prominent military airlifters in the world write down in the comments what you think about this jolly plane that has seen so much and subscribe to the channel fast flights and soft landings to you [Music] you

Channel: Skyships Eng

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Keywords: c-141, lockheed c-141, lockheed starlifter, starlifter, c-141 starlifter, lockheed transport, airlift, c-141 aircraft, c-141 history, c-141 takeoff, starlifter aircraft

Id: PfecTQBlS8Y

Length: 18min 48sec (1128 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 08 2020