C-5 Galaxy - the story of a flying whale

one of the largest and mightiest transports in the world a concentration of unusual technical solutions and the biggest american military aircraft that has been in service for 50 years hello theater sky here and today we will get acquainted with the titan that doesn't really need an introduction and try to figure out how a military transport aircraft could become the godfather of half of modern civil aviation today on the runway is the lockheed c5 galaxy in the 1960s the u.s military had an active presence in many locations around the world and a rather diverse fleet of aircraft was responsible for operational logistics between those locations the leader was the douglas c-133 cargo master a large turboprop transport capable of lifting as much as 50 tons of cargo and taking it to the right place the plane at its time was a champion but not without problems it absorbed a lot of innovations but many of the ideas of aviators were not realized in it the turboprop engine was reliable but limited the flight speed to 280 knots approximately 520 kilometers per hour quite enough for small transports the c-130 is proof of this but for a long-range strategic aircraft not so much the military having gained experience with various aircraft came to the conclusion that it was time to abandon half-measures and acquire jet transports the c-135 straddle lifter appeared in the flock good aircraft but limited in capabilities another half measure a complete solution in 1963 was the lockheed c-141 star lifter its carrying capacity was less than that of the cargo master but the speed was already decent and its reliability and flexibility were much better the problem was in the insufficient volume of the cargo compartment the cost for speed was a narrow fuselage but this satisfied the military the c-141 didn't have to be a giant and it successfully served in its niche for many decades but the c-133 did not make it as a giant at all its advantage the size and carrying capacity quickly became insufficient the equipment was getting larger and heavier this was felt even stronger after the appearance of information about the soviet un-22 also turboprop but much larger it became obvious that in order to effectively fulfill all strategic requirements a faster larger and more spacious aircraft was needed much larger and much more spacious [Music] the apogee of the wandering was the cxx program deployed back in the early 1960s which was supposed to determine the image of a machine capable of quickly transferring to anywhere in the world practically any type of cargo soldiers weapons equipment planes helicopters armored vehicles anything without any reservations in the style of this will fly and everything else takes the boat what was this plane supposed to be like so you understand this is the c-141 star lifter a new and quite advanced aircraft the future plane was supposed to be something like this the guys weren't being modest a huge cargo compartment which could accommodate more than 80 tons of cargo at the beginning as the concept developed ambition and performance rapidly grew and soon the desired payload was over a hundred tons in addition to the monstrous size of the plane there was another no less serious problem the engines the required flight speed is more than 430 knots which means it must be a jet except taking into account the size and weight it would need 6-8 engines of that time under the wing like the b-52 terrible for a large transport the answer to all questions was simple and colorful there must be four motors getting them is your concern the finale of all this research work in 1964 was the initiation of the heavy logistics system or cx hls program boeing douglas general dynamics lockheed and martin marietta while they were still apart took part in a tender for the creation of a new aircraft a separate battle was fought for the engine for the future aircraft in which curtis wright pratt whitney and general electric took part the race was tough and several participants dropped out of it pretty quickly the aviators presented several rather similar solutions high swept wings cargo doors both in front and in the back as well as cockpits at the top there were also many differences for example in the layouts of the upper decks tail surfaces and other nuances during this time pratt whitney and general electric were working on the engines and their task was just as if not more difficult but they found more or less adequate solutions which crystallized in two fiery hearts general electric tf-39 and pratt whitney jtf14 thrust was achieved by using a variety of advanced solutions both for individual elements and very large scale ones revolutionary for entire aviation we will talk about them a little later the pentagon announced the winners of the tender in 1965. the future heavy transport would be made by the guys from lockheed and general electric would supply the engine for it this is how the lockheed c5 galaxy was born it's time to look at the outcome of this whole race lengths 75.3 meters wingspan's 67 67.9 meters height 19.8 meters climbing on top of the t-tail you find yourself on the roof of a six-story building inheriting the overall look of the starlifter the c5 makes it clear why it was named galaxy the huge fuselage is not round in cross-section as it was done before but resembles a pair with a wide expansion at the bottom and a narrow part above the reason for this is the unusual layout and filling the main element of a military transport aircraft is the cargo compartment the dimensions were declared by the customer who wanted to place almost the entire range of weapons here and be able to drop it on a parachute in flight 5.8 meters wide 4.1 meters high and a whopping 37 meters long it is more than the distance the wright brothers plane traveled on his first flight naturally the deck floor is reinforced there are fastenings for fixing cargo and equipment as well as retractable roller lines for placing containers you can load six apache helicopters or five bradley fighting vehicles or two abrams tanks here the cabin of course is pressurized so soldiers can be accommodated here up to 270 people not counting those on the upper deck the problem of the huge cargo compartment was access to it one tailed door is not enough so it was decided to add another way in front a set of hydraulic drives lifts the nose section up and the ramp lowers below the way through the tail is less exotic a large flap rises at the top a ramp lowers at the bottom and the large double door opens in between plus a vertical hermetic door inside rises to the ceiling as a result when all the doors are open the cargo compartment of the c5 turns into a huge two-way hangar making the loading and unloading procedures easier since the dimensions of the cargo compartment were fixed by the customer and they didn't want to make the plane itself too gigantic all the auxiliary elements were moved up so the c5 got a second deck stretched over the entire fuselage like a spine meanwhile the center wing box divided this deck into two parts in the front is the cockpit part of the aircraft equipment as well as crew restrooms in the back behind the wing there is a kind of passenger cabin where in seats in the three plus three layout up to 80 people can be accommodated like in a conventional airliner except without windows there are kitchens in both parts behind the passenger cabin is an extruding section with a lot of empty space called the hayloft here are the cargo hatch doors service corridors and the load-bearing structure holding the t-tail a big thing that puts out decent loads so there are a lot of elements of course the plane is not limited to large gates the crew will not open them for any little thing small doors for people are on both decks in front and in the back on the port side and in the back on starboard the cockpit was made quite spacious here four people work two pilots a flight engineer and a navigator in the beginning with modifications the navigator was no longer needed the number of the entire crew varied quite a lot because there are also aircraft commander cargo operators plus sometimes another shift the front upper deck is designed for 15 people the aircraft received extremely advanced flight instruments equipped with state-of-the-art automation navigation and a bunch of other features including for example a continuous monitoring radar system with 600 sensors scattered throughout the aircraft all critical elements are duplicated the c5 is equipped with four hydraulic systems working in parallel the cockpit glazing is quite minimalistic lockheed used the scheme almost the same as that of their own c141 the designers of the c5 landing gear were faced with the task of making a structure capable of holding a 380 ton aircraft not only on a concrete runway but also on grass runways the result of their work was large powerful and complex the main landing gear is equipped with four big legs with bogies on which six wheels are installed in pairs the pair of rear legs can rotate which reduces the turning radius of the aircraft in a limited space of the airfield and all these mechanics have to be closely packed inside the aircraft in flight so when retracted the bogies first turn 90 degrees and then go into their niches like into pockets closed by sliding doors of large fairings the steering nose landing gear is also not without nuance with a single leg and a bogey with four wheels in a row meanwhile the nose of the aircraft is narrowed so the niche of the leg forms a small hump and the doors do not swing open as usual but move to the sides in addition the landing gear has a kneeling function the main gear legs contract lowering the fuselage the front leg is partially retracted and the plane in a way lies down on its belly in this position loading and unloading operations are greatly simplified the landing gear does its job the c5 works quite efficiently in let's say a wide range of conditions it took 28 large wheels for all this but it seems to work it even managed to fly to antarctica one of the most difficult tasks which as we will see later luck had solved not immediately was the wing the c5 combines enormous size equally enormous mass and high flight speed and deviators had to create a design that could withstand an incredible operational load the galaxy's wing has a span of 67.9 meters and an area of about 580 square meters which is two times the wing area of the boeing 707 in this parameter it was second only to the user's hercules to accomplish this task it was necessary to apply all available technologies and solutions the wing mechanization is highly developed each console has a slat extended almost to the tips on the trailing edge there is a group of 12 separate retractable flaps separated by powerful drive pylons and on top there are also 12 spoilers plus of course large ailerons it looks complicated but it was necessary for more precise control reducing loads and improving takeoff and landing performance if you think that a heavy wide-body transport the size of a building is a serious challenge you haven't seen the engines yet in the early 1960s aviation jet engines were already quite decent and were actively used with diameters up to one and a half meters and temperatures in front of the turbine reaching as much as 900 degrees celsius the bypass scheme already existed allowing a slight increase in thrust saving fuel the bypass ratio was about 1.4 to 1. any engine builder of that time would say that this is quite decent improved the performance by 15 and there's a new generation for you but we know what the new aircraft required and the engine builders seeing these requirements decided to innovate putting it politely but in fact they totally went breaking bad let's look at the general electric tf-39 the main step towards a breakthrough in thrust was to increase the volume of air passing through the bypass duct which became physically much larger the challenge here was to create a much larger fan that would be capable of pulling and holding serious loads the pressure increased even more due to the installation of the second fan a slightly smaller one was placed in front of the main one a bonus was the flaps along the radius of the air intake feeding the engine at low speeds the task was completed the bypass ratio reached eight to one eight of course this was not enough and almost everything was a breakthrough the overall pressure ratio jumped from 15 for conventional engines to 25 here operating temperature 900 degrees celsius you say now you get 1 370 degrees this may not be very impressive in our time but in the 1960s it was simply incredible general electric put all the technologies they could into the engine the latest materials and alloys cooled blades sophisticated controls everything thrust the fiery heart of the c-141 the tf-33 engine delivered just over 90 kilonewtons the tf-39 on the c5 was capable of 193 kilonewtons more than twice as much such performance looked especially funny when the engines were passing flight tests under the wing of a flying lab based on the b-52 bomber the stratofortresses were mostly powered by the j-57 engines with a thrust of 46.71 kilonewtons and when the big guy was put in cruise mode the aircraft could barely compensate for the thrust imbalance in fact it turned out that instead of eight old engines only two new ones could be installed on a plane and the bomber would fly just fine to the big c5 this power plant gave exactly the performance that was needed the aircraft had a cruising speed of around 450 knots 850 kilometers per hour and a service ceiling of around 10 11 kilometers average for a large jet but certainly much better than turboprops considering that the landing distance of the aircraft had to be made as short as possible the engines received the powerful cascade type thrust reverser mechanism in the 1960s on the ground of course no one wants to disturb these monsters to provide energy at the airfield an auxiliary power unit is used two apu units are installed in fairings below just behind the niches of the main landing gear [Music] the c5 is a strategic transport aircraft and whatever is carrying capacity it would have little use without range which means it had to be able to fly 10 to 11 000 kilometers or 5 500 miles across the oceans with large loads of course less but not by much with all the specific efficiency of the power plant the appetites of the engines were huge and there had to be a lot of fuel 12 tanks with a total capacity of 193 600 liters were placed inside the wing more than 150 tons a fully equipped and fueled boeing 757 is lighter moreover the tanks are integral there are no separate containers in them the fuel goes straight into the internal volumes of the wing in flight these volumes as fuel is consumed are filled with nitrogen stored here to meet strategic range requirements the c5 also received an aerial refueling system it was very useful both for increasing the flight range and for more tricky maneuvers for example taking off with a larger load and less fuel and adding it up in flight did you think only the blackbirds indulged in such things the c5a prototype was presented in early 1968 at the airfield of the marietta aircraft factory in georgia a vivid impression when a building was rolled out of the building already in the summer the plane made its maiden flight and locksheet finally entered the testing phase of their revolutionary brainchild [Music] [Laughter] [Music] the work was carried out quite vigorously and the first serial c5a galaxy began to be transferred to the military at the end of 1969. as soon as the c5s entered service they were immediately thrown into action the vietnam war was in full swing the aircraft transported everything to vietnam from bullets to tanks despite the many difficulties in operation the superiority over the old machines was obvious the history of the c-133 practically ended in 1971 they were all withdrawn from service alas vietnam did not go without losses for the c5 during the evacuation of children from saigon an explosive decompression occurred on board causing a partial loss of control the crew turned the plane around and tried to make an emergency landing but the plane did not reach the air base and crashed into a field of the 314 people on board 138 did not survive the fall it was one of the worst disasters in the history of american military transport in the history of the c5 however it was not the only one during the entire period of operation six planes were completely destroyed of which four in the 1970s mostly without human losses mostly another large-scale transport story of those years was operation nickel grass when the group of c5 and c141 supplied israel with weapons during the 1973 yom kippur war at the height of the fighting the transports carried into the country more than 22 thousand tons of weapons armoured vehicles helicopters and planes given the gravity of the situation who knows perhaps israel owes its existence to this whale such operations on one scale or another were carried out by the c5s quite actively and are still being carried out after a couple of decades of wandering the pentagon nevertheless found a normal military transport the most fun for engineers began in 1974. remember the story about the ideas of the soviet military to launch ballistic missiles from neon 22. well the pentagon also thought about it but these guys decided to try the c5 in flight over the pacific ocean dropped a 39-ton minuteman icbm from its cargo compartment without a warhead of course in free fall the missile started its engine rose several kilometers and then fell into the sea completing the test american aviators and rocket scientists came to the same conclusion as their soviet counterparts and did not continue the work why did they need to launch a missile for this why not alas the history of the big plane was not without big problems the aircraft turned out to be incredibly complex it was difficult to work with there were constant problems with various systems and especially with engines the c5 in addition to the name galaxy received the nickname fred an acronym that stood for ridiculous economic disaster the plane was admired by everyone who worked with it but as they say from galaxy to fred there is one step naturally lockheed tried to maintain aircraft production by finding new markets quite quickly the l500 project was born a civilian version in cargo and passenger options capable of carrying as many as 1 000 people but fred appeared for a reason and the airlines knew about this nickname it was obvious that such a complex aircraft in commercial aviation would be uncompetitive and with the advent of cargo versions of the boeing 747 this issue was basically closed they were also actively pestering nasa with proposals to create special versions for them in particular it was about transport platforms for carrying oversized cargo and space shuttle orbiters it was logical at least one could look at colleagues from the ussr who easily carried anything on the backs of their giants however it did not work out with the shuttles nasa chose as carriers the modified boeing 747 yes again however the agency did not completely refuse the c5 in the early 1980s aviators took two basic c5as and by clearing the upper deck behind the wing and replacing the tail hatch increased the volume of the cargo compartment this was necessary to accommodate large cargo such as spacecraft inside the plane this is how a pair of c5a scm space cargo modified or simply c5c planes appeared it was almost impossible to sell the original military transports although in the mid-1970s iran which became the exclusive customer of the f-14 tomcat fighters also wanted to become the exclusive customer of the c5 transports negotiations were held but ceased after the 1979 islamic revolution the world did not see a non-american galaxy lockheed put a lot of effort into solving the problems of their brainchild but when it seemed that the initial issues were resolved new ones surfaced which were much more difficult to handle when it comes to advanced solutions and innovations in any complex technology the word risk always appears this word becomes especially dangerous when the manufacturer for the sake of winning the tender promises a lot of things and in a short time tries to fulfill those promises in particular this affected the huge wing which they tried to make as light as possible composite elements aluminum honeycomb filler the latest alloys as well as design optimization a minimum of parts with minimum weight the problem was that some of the latest solutions due to them being the latest were not tested that much in practice and the optimized design left almost no margin of durability in 1969 while the wing was tested for maximum loads it broke which is fine it was broken on purpose the problem was that it was supposed to break at 150 percent of the allowed maximum but it broke at 128 percent bad sign the second bad sign appeared during resource tests it turned out that during active operation fatigue cracks begin to appear in a number of elements of the wing structure and they appear quite quickly lockheed came up with a plan to make minor changes that could be implemented during the maintenance process but it turned out that they were practically useless an especially bad part was that it all became clear when the c5 was already mass produced and delivered that is the giants already flying in the air force risked falling apart in flight and in order to avoid tragic news it was necessary to urgently limit the load hence the performance of the aircraft the maximum cargo weight was reduced from the promised 100 to 86 tons and only when it was really necessary in practice the epic giants flew half empty to say that the customer was unhappy is an understatement scandals and disputes began up to the start of an investigation by congress not only was the cost of the program well above the plan but the resulting aircraft was far from what everyone expected lockheed had fallen on hard times in 1973 after the delivery of a series of 81 aircraft production was stopped the financial burden of the company started to become crushing in addition to expenses for the transport c5 expenses for the passenger l-1011 tristar which had just recently taken off were also piling up but the company was too big to fail the pentagon was well aware that its bankruptcy could bring even more problems that it already has so the government smacked locksheet with one hand and saved it with the other [Music] there were no options in the late 1970s it was decided to completely replace the wings of most aircraft with new and seriously redesigned ones plus modify and boost the engines such re-winging lasted until 1986 touched 77 planes took several years and cost about one and a half billion dollars about seven billion by modern measures this solved the problems of the wing and restored the initial capabilities even with a slight over fulfillment the load capacity increased by about 9 tons the problem was solved but everyone had more gray hair now production of the c5 was put on halt back in 1973 and many believe that after the modernization of the existing fleet the production line would be completely closed but history is full of surprises after moving into the white house the newly elected president ronald reagan began in his own way to revive the power of the us military apparently it was weak the c-17 globemaster iii program was still in its very early stages while the revamped c5 seemed to be quite decent in addition in the soviet union its main counterpart the heavy transport n124 ruslan or the nato name condor took to the skies being close in design it surpassed the c5a in a number of specifications those who wanted to revive and modernize the lockheed giant received another argument in cabinet disputes it was decided to resume production and order a new batch of upgraded c5b transports by the way at the same time in the same format the b1b lancer bomber received a second wind the c5b received improved avionics and optimized design and updated engines the changes were not particularly drastic but the aircraft was much easier to operate and the performance was again slightly increased the load limit was now at 118 tons the first plane entered service in 1986 and by 1989 the military received 50 units they did not have to sit idle because it was time for the largest mission in the history of the c5 desert stole after saddam hussein's attack on kuwait the united states and allies began moving forces to the middle east the group of c5 c-141 c-130 and kc-10 aircraft delivered 534 000 people and 542 000 tons of cargo to the region in a little more than a month compared to that the berlin airlift feels like home delivery of pizza the flock of giants served in this program until the end of the 1990s when it was decided to make an upgrade the amp of the onyx modernization program was exactly that the c5 fleet received new glass cockpits with digital interfaces new navigation autopilots and other systems this work was completed in 2002 in 2006 the remaining c141 starlifters went into retirement replaced by the new c-17 globemaster iii at the same time it was decided to optimize the entire fleet of transport aircraft and another rerp reliability enhancement and re-engining program was launched the task of which was to increase the reliability and efficiency of aircraft primarily through applying the new engines the c5 received general electric f-138 ge 100 which were in fact the military versions of the ge cf6 engines which at one time were created as a civilian version of the tf-39 the circle of life the new engine was not as exotic as its progenitor but it was much more modern efficient and reliable in addition unlike the unique base engines the cf6 similar in components was installed on many wide body aircraft making it cheaper both in production and in maintenance the f-138s were much more powerful than the older tf-39s putting out as much as 230 kilonewtons of thrust this made it possible to increase the payload mass to 127 tons finally a little more than that of the basic on124 no need to be embarrassed anymore equally important was the improvement of fuel efficiency which increased the range the new aircraft could fly 8 900 kilometers with a load of 54 tons and empty with full tanks as much as 13 000 kilometers nearly 7 000 miles a quarter more than before the takeoff and landing distances have also been seriously reduced now only 1 650 meters long runway is enough for work and this is a colossus weighing 381 tons thus was born the c5m super galaxy version that is relevant to our time in total 49 version b aircraft two version c and one version a aircraft were driven through these programs they were already a little old and were gradually being decommissioned by 2017 there were no c5a left in the fleet deliveries of the upgraded aircraft were completed in 2018. the c5m versions according to various estimates should fly for another 30 to 40 years and will be almost as long-lived as the grandfather b-52 in total through two series of production 131 aircraft were assembled 81 c5a and 50 c5b now in service in the c5m version there are about 50 grey whales the c5 galaxy became a milestone in american military history and had a major impact on the world of heavy transport aircraft but its impact on the aviation industry although not direct is much larger because it is the cx-hls program that is in a sense the beginning of such a thing as a wide-body airliner how the aviation community was very interested in the birth of the giant aircraft yes there were already large machines with white fuselages but it was in the process of creating a huge jet transport that the airlines watching it were convinced a plane could be much larger than what they had at that time and what range can such an aircraft provide what comfort and what capacity not to mention that this is a clear solution to the problem of overcrowded airports ah how tempting demand creates supply when boeing lost the cx-hls tender they were immediately approached by representatives primarily of pan-american with the question is it possible to create a similar large and long-range aircraft but a civilian one the answer to this question was the boeing 747 the world's first white body airliner which turned the entire transportation industry on its head a queen with cult status 50 years of serial production and over one and a half thousand aircraft delivered to dozens of airlines against 131 aircraft supplied by lockheed to the military this is what you can do with the ability to overturn even a defeat and this is just the 747 the rest followed dc-10 and l-1011 in the usa in europe the a300 was born the first airbus and in the ussr the ill-86 and all within literally five to six years it is quite difficult to imagine the modern air transportation industry without wide-body airliners and all the current big guys one way or another came from the desire to stuff a couple of tanks into a plane and the second innovation that has affected the industry practically on a total scale is engines when the c5 was created it required a power plant that combined huge power and decent economy to meet this requirement engine builders made a real breakthrough by creating the world's first large turbo fan engines the tf-39 won the tender and took to the wing but general electric could not deny themselves the pleasure of creating its civilian modification and so the gecf6 was born the losers of the tender pratt whitney just like boeing did not lose heart and putting away the military jtf-14 made a civilian version on its bases this is how the jt-9d engine appeared this company was a huge breakthrough in civil engine building and the key to wide-body aviation without them such large aircraft simply wouldn't be able to fly it was they who became the basis of the fiery house of most early wide-body planes and it is their concept and solutions that are the basis of civilian jet engines to this day the history of galaxy began half a century ago and will continue for several more decades the epic nature of this giant is hard to overestimate as is its impact on the aviation industry let's wish good luck to the great whale and hope that it will not have to fly to hot spots with tanks in its belly at least not too often and this is where our story ends like and subscribe to the channel so as not to miss the continuation of the great transport saga and if you want to watch the videos early see some exclusive behind the scenes content or just support the channel consider joining our patreon community fast flights on large planes and soft landings to you [Music] you

Channel: Skyships Eng

Views: 52,297

Keywords: lockheed, lockheed c-5, c-5 galaxy, lockheed galaxy, c-5 galaxy history, c-5 galaxy documentary, lockheed fred, tf39 engine, usaf, us army, transport aircraft, airlift, heavy tralsport, c-5 aircraft, galaxy aircraft, lockheed airlift

Id: TEIy99fQJcY

Length: 37min 6sec (2226 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 04 2022