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Air-Attack.com > Military Systems > C-5 Galaxy

The Lockheed C-5 Galaxy is a heavy logistics military transport aircraft designed to provide world-wide massive strategic airlift. The CONUS based fleet can provide delivery of palletized, oversized and outsized cargo, as well as passengers or combat-ready troops, anywhere in the world on short notice. The aircraft can takeoff and land in relatively short distances and taxi on substandard surfaces during emergency operations. The C-5 also plays a limited role in the airdrop and special operations arenas.

This enormous aircraft, first known as the CX-HLS (Cargo Experimental-Heavy Logistics System) transport, was required to carry a payload of 125,000 pounds (56,700kg) over a distance of 8,000 miles (12,875km), or twice that load over a shorter distance. It also had to be able to operate, at maximum weight capacity, from the same runway lengths and semi-prepared runways as the C-141A (8,000 feet (2,438m) takeoff / 4,000 feet (1,219m) landing). Another major requirement, and the most controversial, was the design-life factor for the wing; it must survive for 30,000 flying hours.

The design competition was between Boeing (which entered its initial designs for the Model 747, before it was incorporated as a commercial passenger carrier), Douglas and Lockheed-Georgia. Lockheed won the contract in October 1965 with a design that was an extension of the company's Hercules/Starlifter series. With a gross weight of 764,500 pounds (346,771kg), Lockheed's Model 500, later designated C-5A Galaxy, dwarfed not only other Air Force transports but also every other type of aircraft in existence.

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Specifications