Welcome back to The Daily Aviation for a feature on the largest military cargo plane in the US inventory, the C-5M Super Galaxy, and its massive nose that opens to load vehicles, aircraft and other cargo.
I walked through a C-5A at an air show. I stood under the tail looking up at the horizontal stabilizers about 3 or 4 stories up. The aircraft is colossal.
The C-5M Super Galaxy is a strategic transport aircraft and is the largest aircraft in the Air Force inventory. Its primary mission is to transport cargo and personnel for the Department of Defense. The C-5M is a modernized version of the legacy C-5 designed and manufactured by Lockheed Martin. Currently the U.S. Air Force owns and operates 52 C-5B/C/M. They are stationed at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware; Travis AFB, California; Lackland AFB, Texas; and Westover Air Reserve Base, Massachusetts.
Features
The C-5M Super Galaxy is equipped with five sets of landing gear, 28 wheels, four General Electric CF6-80C2-L1F (F-138) commercial engines, and a state-of-the-art maintenance diagnostics system. It can carry oversized cargo over intercontinental ranges and can take off and land on relatively short runways. Both the nose and aft doors open, allowing ground crews to simultaneously load and off-load cargo from both ends, reducing cargo transfer times. The full-width drive-on ramps at each end enable double rows of vehicles to be transported.
