- This is the C-5 Super Galaxy, the largest aircraft in the
United States Air Force. It can carry two M1 Abrams
tanks, six helicopters, and over 280,000 pounds of cargo. It's an absolute beast. Well, today I'm out here
at Travis Air Force Base, California, home of the
22nd airlift squadron to learn as much as we
can about this airplane, including flying inside the flight deck during a real life training mission to find out what makes
the C-5 Super galaxy one of the most fascinating
aircraft ever built. (upbeat music) - Let's go. - [ATC] Lights on, green
contact check please. - [Pilot] Roger. - Now the C-5 exists for a
singular, very important reason, transport, but not just any transport. You see, back in the
1960s, the US Air Force was looking for an aircraft capable of carrying all
of the oversized equipment and vehicles used by the US
Army, Navy, and Marine Corps. Tanks, helicopters, artillery, things you wouldn't normally associate with putting in the back of an airplane all of a sudden needed a
quick way to be transported all across the world. The Air Force needed something big, so enter the C-5 Galaxy. In fact, at the time of its
first flight back in 1968, the Lockheed Martin C-5 Galaxy was the largest aircraft in the world. And over half a century later, it continues to be the
workhorse of heavy transport for the US military. So with all that in mind, I say we start with the most
iconic feature on the C-5 right here at the nose.
(upbeat music) ♪ Tear the whole thing down ♪ ♪ Alright alright ♪ At first glance, the front end of the C-5 may look like a standard aircraft, a lot larger of course, but it does have similar characteristics to other jumbo jets. However, it's not until it
comes time to load the aircraft that things get interesting. To fit large oversized cargo, you need a large oversized opening and to up the efficiency of both loading and offloading all of that cargo, the idea was to create two openings, your standard aft or rear cargo door, as well as an opening right at the nose. The only problem, well, the flight deck. To solve this issue, the C-5 has a massive
nose called the visor that swings open above the flight deck, allowing cargo to be
accessed from the front without affecting the crew. All right, so I've seen
this thing open and close a few times now and it's
surprisingly pretty quick. I'd say only maybe 45 seconds, a minute for the entire thing to open, not too bad. Just the visor alone
weighs over 6,000 pounds and is 20 feet in diameter. After swinging open roughly 60 degrees and rotating into place, the crew then has two
large scale entrances allowing for what's called
drive-through loading, meaning you can load cargo
in the front at the same time you're loading or offloading
cargo in the back. I'm here with Technical
Sergeant Jose Rosado, a Loadmaster on the C-5 Super Galaxy and Rosado, tell me about
the Loadmaster position and what makes working
on this thing so unique? - So the Loadmaster position, Sam, our job is to load the aircraft safely and get this cargo where it needs to go. And what makes this aircraft
unique in my opinion, is an engineering marvel, Sam. We have the visor open right now and this aircraft can actually kneel. And when it kneels it looks
like stuff that can't fit can make it fit like glove. - So when it comes to cargo transport, the Air Force has two other platforms, the C-17 and the C-130. How does the cargo carrying
capacity of the C-5 compare to the other two? - So Sam, the C-5 actually
carries 36 pallets. That's double that of the C-17 and six times that of the C-130 making us the true heavyweight
champion of the cargo world. - Now if it's okay with you, I
wanted to play a little game. I'm gonna name off some things and I want you to tell me if
they can fit inside the C-5. We'll start out easy, maybe
we'll get a little bit harder. - All right, you have to try hard. - Alright, so here we go. Up first, a school bus. - School bus? Depending if it's a big
school bus, maybe three. And if it's a short bus, too many, too many.
(Sam laughing) - A helicopter? - A helicopter? All day.
- Easy, right? Okay, an army tank. - An army tank, only by special requests. (Sam laughing) - Two M1 Abrams, I think, right? - So I've been told, so I've been told. - An 18 wheeler semi-truck. - 18 wheeler semi-truck, yes. - A US Navy boat. - A US Navy boat, multiple. - A NASA satellite. - We have specially modified
C-5s for that as well. - A submarine.
- A submarine? You could throw a subway
into submarine, Sam, we can get to it all. - An eight lane bowling alley. - Eight lane bowling alley, yeah. - A C-130.
- A C-130? Take the wings off, fits like a glove. - A blue whale, the
largest mammal on Earth, may I remind you. - You could throw the blue
whale, the mama whale, the papa whale, Sam, it fits. - And last but not least, I
have no idea where I heard this, but apparently a C-5 can
hold 3.2 million tortillas. Can you confirm that? - I can't confirm that, and I don't know who
wants that many tortillas, but if they order it, Sam, we can take it. - So safe to say the C-5
can literally fit anything. - Anything.
(upbeat music) ♪ Maybe we're just animals ♪ ♪ Winding up and letting go ♪ ♪ Chasing down the good life ♪ ♪ This is what it feels like ♪ - So I'm now inside the cargo
hold of the C-5 Super Galaxy and this area measures 19 feet
wide, 13 and a half feet tall and an incredible 121 feet in length. And just to put that
length into perspective, that is one foot longer
than the entire distance the Wright brothers traveled
on their first ever flight. Technology and engineering
has come a long way. Heading up the stairs near
the front of the aircraft brings you to the forward upper deck. This area seats a flight crew of six, a relief crew of seven, and room for eight additional
passengers or dignitaries depending on the specific mission. There's also a lavatory, galley area, and two bunk rooms with three beds in each so the crew can rest
on long haul missions. - I'm Captain Kyler Chern,
pilot of the C-5M Super Galaxy. What sets this aircraft apart from every other military
aircraft is obviously the size as you saw outside and you'll
see on your flight tomorrow. We can carry more cargo
and we can carry it farther than any other air lifter in the world. And on top of that we
can carry all the troops that other air lifters can carry. - Dude, I mean it's probably
the biggest flight deck I've ever been in and
there's a lot going on here, can you kind of walk me through this? - Yeah, of course. So, we're kind of... This cockpit's kind of the
size of a small office, right? So, one obvious difference
is right up front with the throttles. Most airplanes will
have one set of throttle shared by the pilot and the co-pilot but this is such a wide body airplane that we have two sets of throttles both mechanically linked as
you can see when I move that. - Yeah. - Up front we have a glass cockpit, which was a newer upgrade sometime in the last 10 years or so. 'Cause the C-5 itself has
been around since late sixties and then newer ones coming
around the late eighties, but they upgraded it in
the mid two thousands to get a glass cockpit, new engines that are seven feet in diameter. I can fit inside of those and they give over
50,000 pounds of thrust. So this thing can get up
and get going in a hurry. - So as a pilot when
you're flying heavier cargo versus like a lighter payload, what kind of differences do you feel from up here in the flight deck? - That's a great question. So this plane can take off with a 400,000 pound difference. So we can take off as light
as somewhere around 400, 420,000 pounds, all the
way up to 840,000 pounds and that'll shift your center
of gravity forward and back. It makes landings and taxi a lot different and more challenging. So you have to be ready to fly a whole bunch of different ways and it can change just
on the flight going, taking off from maybe the
west coast and going to Japan you can burn hundreds of
thousands of pounds of fuel and that can change how
you took off dramatically to how you're gonna land. - So this being an Air Force jet, do you guys have any countermeasures? - We do have flares like
a lot of other planes and some other systems, you know, maybe not as robust as
a fighter but we are, we're not exactly alone
when we're going down range. - Okay, not alone. I'm sure you can't share too much, but I imagine with the cargo
you guys are are carrying, definitely wanna protect that. - Yeah.
(upbeat music) ♪ Let's move ♪ Now also unique to the C-5 and only a handful of
other air force aircraft is the flight engineer. Two flight engineers sit
inside the flight deck with the pilots and are
expected to know everything about the aircraft systems
and how to fix them if something goes wrong. - So as a flight engineer, you're the system's expert on board. When you're flying, you're
running normal checklists but if should any emergency comes up, you're there to assist the
pilots in troubleshooting. The most enjoyable part of my job has gotta be pushing the mission. We deal with a lot of issues on the road. So being the systems expert and navigating through those
issues is really rewarding 'cause we get to push that mission and that mission takes
us all over the world. So definitely traveling the world as well. So when I joined the Air Force, I actually didn't even know
this crew field existed. I was a C-130 J crew chief and
I did that for a little bit and during one of my deployments
I had a C-5 come through and I had to check out the jet because it was three
times the size of C-130. So I talked to the crew and
I met the flight engineer and he told me all about his role and I just thought it was the coolest job. So as soon as I could, I
put into cross training. (upbeat music) - Moving on now to the back of the C-5, these stairs allow you to
access the rear upper deck or more commonly known
as the troop compartment. This area contains 75 additional
seats that face backwards and can be used for
additional passengers or crew. There are two additional
lavatories back here as well as another galley to prepare food during long flights. Now behind these hatches
is a secret passageway and it's pretty tight but come with me 'cause I'm
gonna show you something cool. (upbeat music) ♪ Okay ♪ ♪ All right ♪ ♪ I see you there feeling
good looking fine ♪ Welcome to the very top of the C-5 T tail. I am 65 feet high right now and if you're wondering
why there's a ladder to even get up here, well
it's for maintenance. Should something break, they can come up this ladder
and fix it from up here. Which speaking of maintenance, if you look out in the distance, you'll see some massive airplane hangers. When you have one of the
world's largest aircraft, you need one of the world's
largest aircraft hangers. And what happens in there is arguably one of the most
important missions on the C-5. So I'm gonna find my way down and then I say we go
learn what it takes to fix the C-5 Super Galaxy.
(upbeat music) ♪ Let's move ♪ ♪ Let's move ♪ So right now we're standing on
the wing of the massive C-5, both of which span just over 222 feet and weigh over 40,000 pounds. And I'm joined here with
Staff Sergeant Hoops, he's one of the crew
chiefs on this airplane. And dude, what's it take to
work on such a massive aircraft? - [Hoopii] It takes a lot
of teamwork, dedication, attention to detail, given the nature of
our aircraft's mission. - Now every aircraft in the air
force requires a crew chief, but I imagine something
like this is a lot different than an F-16 or a fighter jet. How do the two compare? - On this jet, given the nature of size, requires more manning, we also rely heavily on
different specialties such as avionics, jet troops,
hydro, simco, sheet metal and aerial repair who does
a bunch of rigging jobs. - There's a lot of people
that get the job done. Heading underneath, just
like on any airplane you'll find the landing gear. But on the C-5 it's a bit different. There are four sets of main
landing gear called bogies each with six tires, as well as a four wheel nose landing gear that controls the steering. That makes a total of 28 tires, each of which are four feet in diameter. But while the number of
wheels is impressive, it makes sense, it's a large airplane. How they work though
is a whole other story. Now the landing gear I
wanted to ask you about is this front one right here
'cause I just saw it earlier, it has this pretty cool feature
where it can like kneel down and be optimized for loading. How does that work? - Yeah, so I can definitely
show you on the other side here. So the additional feature that we do have is this kneel pad actuator with the nose. All it really does is
what the kneeling process, nose landing gear retracts slowly, kneel pad actuator is gonna
hold it in that proper position. So I mean we have three
different types of modes. We have aft kneeling where you
see the aft then kneel down, forward kneeling, which
the forward comes down and then level kneeling, everything is coming down simultaneously. - And the whole point
of the kneeling system is really what, to make
the loading easier? You know the aircraft's so high that I guess what the ramp
can't reach the ground? - Yeah, so like let's say
we're level kneeling, right? We have two different
types of loading modes. So we do have truck-bed and drive-in, more specifically drive-in. When we level kneel, the ramp, it needs to touch the ground. And the only reason why we do that is 'cause you don't want
to add such a high slope and you don't wanna damage
the other heavy vehicles that we're trying to load in. We wanna make everything easier. We also wanna make the
loading process safe and I mean safety is
our main top priority. - It just amazes me that all that weight, hundreds of thousands of pounds can just be supported on
this system right here. - Absolutely, I mean that's thanks to the main landing gears
we see in the back, so... - Pretty crazy. - Because the main landing
gears, they're so big, they can't just be swung
inboard and stowed. They actually have additional steps, unlike the nose landing gear. So what happens is in order to retract the entire bogey is gonna
rotate 90 degrees horizontally and it's gonna go ahead
and follow this track and stow it perfectly
inside this little bay area. - There's just so many unique
features on this aircraft, like we've already talked
about some earlier. It's like what do you do when
you have such a huge airplane? You make everything work in unique ways. So rotates, fits in it. - I mean I could explain further, right, but it's gonna sound like a class, so...
(upbeat music) ♪ I see the way you shine ♪ ♪ I see the way you climb I do me ♪ - So, at this point there's really only one
thing we have left to do and that's experience of
flight aboard the mighty C-5. There's actually a mission
taking off here in a few minutes and we got the jump seat reserved. Got my bags packed, snacks ready to go. Let's get to it.
(upbeat music) ♪ Give another one the pieces ♪ ♪ So we're the new kids in town ♪ ♪ I break your bones blowing bridges ♪ ♪ I leave in ruble I go wrecking ball ♪ So what's it like taxiing this aircraft? I mean it's so big, I imagine there's a lot
you need to be aware of. - Yeah, it's a big airplane. From wing tip to wing tip we're about 223 feet, just under it. And so you have to be really
aware of your surroundings and your obstacles around the airfield to make sure you do your homework
before you start taxiing. So we also have scanners
(bell dinging) on board, who, they
look through the windows just to back us up. But taxiing is one of the
hardest things to do in the C-5 with AR as well. - And I know you have a cool feature where you can kind of like turn
on a dime, like 180 degrees. How does that work? - Yeah, so we have a
caster on this airplane. So the aft bogies actually
caster up to 20 degrees and it tightens turns for us. So when we do a 180, we can
do a 180 within 150 feet, which is pretty spectacular
for the size of this airplane. - It's pretty amazing, can't
wait to see it in action. - Yeah, it'd be cool.
(upbeat music) ♪ See I will roll again ♪ ♪ Wo wo whoa ♪ - All right, we are airborne here in the Mighty C-5 Super Galaxy. I'm here with Captain Jason
Feys, our aircraft commander and Captain Kyler Chern.
(controls beeping) We've also got the flight
engineers in the back making sure the systems are
working and we're safe here. But yeah, so Captain Chern, can you tell us a little
bit about the flight plan, what we can expect? - Sure thing, so we just
took off outta Travis and then took a southwest turn. We're gonna do a VFR route across the bay. Right now we're coming
up on the Bay Bridge, that'll be off of your left side and then the Golden Gate Bridge
will be right off the nose. Alcatraz will be coming over west. So we're gonna do a nice
tour around the bay, around San Francisco, somewhere
around 2000, 2,500 feet, low enough that you get a good view but not too low that you're
with the smaller airplanes. (controls beeping) After that, we're gonna take
a right turn up the coast, go up past Oregon, then hit our AR route, rendezvous with a KC-10
Tanker for about an hour, do some aerial refueling, come on back around and
then land at Travis. - Sweet, well I'm gonna
get a look at these views. This is crazy man. The fog's rolling in
the Golden Gate Bridge, best seat in the house. - Yeah, you're lucky, you got
a pretty good weather day. (upbeat music) ♪ I am growing in now we're taking place ♪ - So Captain Chern, what is the typical mission for you guys? You know, how often are you flying? - Sure. So one thing that's
unique about this plane is that the type of
cargo that it can carry. So we're here for out-sized
and oversized cargo, which means we can take a lot of stuff, a lot of different places. We'll typically pick up something somewhere in the United States, whether it's army, navy equipment and then fly it somewhere
to another country. So if you're going east,
maybe pick it up in Kentucky, stop over in Spain or
Germany for gas and rest and then take it over to the Middle East. If you're taking off outta here, you get your cargo from almost anywhere, but then you'll maybe go up
to Alaska, down to Hawaii, get some gas, go to crew rest, and then fly it over to the
Pacific, whether it's Guam, Philippines, Japan, Korea, and
then you'll come back home. All of that should take
about a week or less. - Yes, I know with AR, aerial refueling you can pretty much fly unlimited, which we'll talk about in a sec, but just on a single tank of gas, how far, how many miles can you guys go? - Yeah, so we actually carry
more gas than most tankers, about 330,000 pounds of gas
or roughly 50,000 gallons. - [Sam] Wow. - So a little bit more
than my Corolla back home. That can take you anywhere depending on how much car you have. 'cause we can carry up to
about 180,000 pounds of cargo. So, empty or full will
decrease your range. But you know, it's in the
neighborhood of 12 to 16 hours, which is somewhere in the
neighborhood of a few thousand, 5,000 miles or so,
somewhere away from here. So we used to take off outta
Dover and go direct Turkey, fully loaded. That'd take about 13 hours. - So 13 hours. How many pilots would you bring
on like a mission like that? What's it like to be, you know, flying this thing for that long? - With that long of a mission,
you'd bring three pilots, three loads and two engineers typically. It's nice that this plane has bunks. You know, we have six beds on here, we can rotate in and out pilots, but it's still a pretty long
day flying for that long 'cause you'll do two
in the seat at a time. One will go back, take a nap and you'll kind of rotate them in and out. So at the end of that day
you're still pretty exhausted. And then other days we'll
fly maybe for shorter legs, but for 24 hours total, and you're pretty,
you're pretty darn tired at the end of a 24 hour duty day. - So do you have like a favorite mission or favorite place you've been? - My favorite mission would probably be one where
we spend some time in Tokyo and that was mainly
more for the crew rest. But some of the more
rewarding missions we've done, I've taken some oil spill cleanup supplies up to the Philippines or
some water filtration systems down to Hawaii when they needed it. So there are more rewarding ones and there's some where we
get a little more time off in some pretty nice spots. - So there you go, join the Air Force to work or fly one of the
world's largest airplanes, fly to Tokyo, it's pretty sweet, huh? - And get paid to do it, not bad. - Exactly.
(upbeat music) So I decided to get up and
stretch my legs for a little bit and check out the cargo
area here on the C-5 while we're in flight. And while the C-5's mission
today is almost entirely cargo and troop transport,
back in the day, the C-5 was actually
used to perform airdrops. It wasn't uncommon to see
the rear ramp door open while in flight. Something you'd expect
in a C-17 or a C-130. And in fact there's
one story in particular that's pretty crazy. In 1974, the United States Air Force airlifted an intercontinental
ballistic missile and then dropped it out
the back of a C-5 Galaxy over the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The ICBM then fell through the air before kicking on its rocket
in time to ascend to altitude. This was a test by the Air
Force to see if it was possible or even practical to launch
an ICBM out the back of a C-5. Funny enough, the Air Force
proved it could be done, but operationally, to this
day it hasn't been necessary. - [Pilot 1] All right, confirm
right inboard system two. - [Pilot 2] Right, on. - [Pilot 1] Confirm left
inboard system three. - [Pilot 2] Confirm. - [Sam] The C-5 Galaxy was
the first transport aircraft to incorporate in-flight
refueling capability as an original design feature. The ability to refuel while in the air allows the C-5 to stay
airborne indefinitely with crew endurance being the only thing that limits the aircraft's range. - Alright Sam. So yeah, we're coming in
- [Computer] Check altitude. - on our aerial fueling here,
we're visual with our tanker. We're gonna be on a steady
glide path all the way in then. So if you can see where we're at, we're climbing up about a thousand feet to meet them and then we're one mile out. So for every 0.1 miles
that we're coming in, we're looking to go up one other 100 feet. - So at this point are you feeling, because you're not at altitude with them, there's no like turbulence
from their engines or I guess when you get up
there, do you kind of feel that or you just, you're too
low so it's not a factor? - Yeah, we're not gonna feel any of that until we're about within 70 feet of them, which is actually a pretty good indicator. We start feeling that out
their number two engine. At that point, it's just kinda
a steady, steady increase. And then for AR the key is like, slow is smooth, smooth is fast. So that's the kinda way
that we try to teach, really smooth controlled closures, you know, that allow you to kind of just get right
up into the envelope and keep everything
steady and in controlled. At this point, we're gonna
just proceeding visually. You can start picking
up different references that we trained to and yeah, at this point it's really
just all working on the hands and you know, using that, the pilot skill. - I imagine like weather
plays a big role in this. I mean doing it in the clouds or you know, turbulent weather. How does that play a factor? - Copy, that is definitely a big part is coming up with a plan and then immediately flexing the plan when you start running into
things like, yeah, clouds or turbulence, other things like that. So it's definitely a teamwork exercise between the two aircraft
to come up to something to be able to get this
training knocked out 'cause we don't get to do it all the time. So any opportunity that we have, we kind of like try to pull all the stops and then make it work
in whatever way we can. - Sweet, well, this is
just an amazing view. Seeing the KC-10, right from the air man. - Oh yeah. It only gets better, it's pretty unreal. I mean there's only a few
people I imagine in the world that can kind of say,
like, "Hey, I get to go up and touch another airplane while flying." So, as an aviator, it's pretty sick. - It's a flying gas station, man. ♪ See I will roll again ♪
(upbeat music) ♪ Wo wo whoa ♪ ♪ I am growing in now we're taking place ♪ ♪ Wo wo whoa ♪ ♪ We'll bring in the soul here we go ♪ ♪ Won't you all, wo wo whoa ♪ ♪ See I will roll again ♪ Guys, that was an incredible experience. A huge shout out to the
22nd airlift squadron and the entire team out here
at Travis Air Force Base. This is an aircraft I've
been fascinated with for a long time and it's
awesome getting to see the team that fixes it, flies it, and
makes the mission happen. I hope you learn something new
and I'll catch you next time. ♪ See I will roll again ♪
