I was transported across the Pacific in a C5 during my Vietnam years. We sat in these rickety chairs that were strapped (I kid you not) to the middle of the aircraft. It was simply immense, like flying in a cavern. And Loud as heck.

I’ve loaded my unit’s equipment onto C-5’s many times; including going to war 3 times.  Weight restrictions that are in place during peacetime, literally go out the window in Wartime.  In fact, loading C-5’s at Nuremberg for deployment in support of OPERATION PROVIDE COMFORT was an uncommon experience; our load plan print out stated we were overweight, not overweight under peace time restrictions, BUT 10,000lbs over the wartime requirements!  The loadmaster told us army guys we had to “loose 5 tons.”  I was only a 1LT and went to the pilot, an LTC, I pointed out the other 3 C-5’s, all broken and going nowhere and asked how long before they would go “wheels up”?  His reply “Days” caused my my head to swim.  His loadmaster told him we were overweight and had to download to make weight.  Abjectly ignoring his statement he asked how many pallet positions were still open;  it was either 3 or 4.  He looked at me and my Sergeant and said “it looks like we are the only ones in the game so go find some pallets and pack ‘em in.”  Fast forward 4-5 hours and as the aircraft smashed onto the runway(it was more like a carrier landing,  it without a tail hook) at Incerlik Air Base, our landing roll seemed to take forever.  After the engines stopped screaming with the thrust reversers, we could hear the emergency vehicles’ sirens, apparently we cooked the brakes! They were so hot they were ready to combust!  But that grossly overloaded C-5 that was also cubed out, performed its wartime mission of getting a huge chunk of a Special Forces battalion from Germany to Southern Turkey in order to begin saving Kurdish lives.