I’ve probably seen and/or heard over 500 C-5 Galaxy cargo planes take off and I never heard one moan this hard a quarter of the way down the runway! I’ll bet multiple orifices were puckering and unpuckering rapidly on that take off roll! I wonder if the runway disappeared from the pilots view before he got airborne? This one is leaving Llopango Airport, El Salvador.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYVsotySupE
IS: I flew the very first KC135s to come off the assembly line, built in 1955. The powerplants were P&W J57WB, “Water Wagons”. Performance was so bad that we routinely used both overruns for takeoff perf. We’d back taxi onto the overrun at the takeoff end and use the 2000′ on the departure end in our calculations just to be “legal”. The High Bypass Turbofans we have now are infinitely better than what we had back then, much more reliable and powerful, but I was young and bulletproof and having the time of my life. Excellent video, by the way!
I looked at a pic of a C130 next to a C5 – I never knew the enormity of the C5.
I was going to post a size comparison chart but figured most readers wouldn’t know the size of various fighters or cargo planes either. The C-5 is about the size of a 747.
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How that thing gets off the ground is beyond me.
It looms like its going about 20 miles an hour in the air. How is that possible?
The latest C5 Galaxy — the C5M Super Galaxy has a maximum takeoff weight of 840,000 pounds, or 420 tons.
The Antonov An-225 Mriya has a max takeoff weight of 640 tons.
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That Antonov 225 was used to carry the Buran……….the Russian version of the space shuttle which only launched one time.
What are they carrying?
Hillary!s medical file.
This is pretty bad assed also. But, I’m guessing it’s photo-shopped
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forget to take off the parking brake.
ha ha
I’ve seen a few take off, never seen anything like that. Pilot released the brakes under full power, and that thing barely moved. Wonder what was in it?
pallots of cash, but that can’t be right, since it was headed back to the states. The pallots of cash only leave the country. Massive amounts of drugs? A cargo hold full of illegal aliens, I mean refugees?
Flew on c-130’s back in the early 60’s when they were new, into and out of grass strips in the wilds of nowhere. On more than one occasion we had to utilize JATO (jet assisted take off) boosters when loaded, to get back into the air. When those rockets kicked in, you literally jumped into the air. We just hoped that the wings would hang in there with all that added stress. Quite a few grass strip fires were started by using JATO, making us not to popular with the ground crews!
An extra heavy load. No Doubt the first load of dope for President Clinton.
Two Things: Never flew the C-5(C-141 and F-4), but it looks like the pilot forgot to complete the pre-takeoff checklist. The leading edge flaps were down, but the trailing edge flaps weren’t lowered until 3/4 through the takeoff roll. That’s what gives the wings all the lift at slow air speeds.
Also, with all the smoke at the end of the runway, could there have been a ‘blown tire’ that hindered the acceleration? The landing gear stayed down for quite a long while as ‘Fat Albert’ lumbered off into the distance. The checklist says to leave the gear down if that happens on takeoff to prevent (further) damage to the fuselage.
I’ve watched F=4s do that over-run to over-run. When empty B-52s and C-5s take off, they seem to lift like hydrogen balloons.
“IS: I flew the very first KC135s to come off the assembly line, built in 1955. The powerplants were P&W J57WB, “Water Wagons”.
—-ragman
I’ve got over 1,000 hours in the KC-135 in your timeframe. In just 18 months with most of it combat time over Laos refueling fighters going into North Vietnam. Hated it intensely. 4 fighters going in, 3 coming back. That kind of shit. Fucks your mind up. Next combat tour in Vietnam was me, myself, and I in an airplane. Never went back to a crew. Never.
For I_S. It’s Illopango, starting with an I, not Llopango. I spent another combat tour there in 1982 during the height of the Salvadoran Civil War. Lots of interesting war stories with which I won’t bore readers.
Surprised SSS didn’t chime in to correct the airport name: Ilopango.
I was leaving Hondoland when I arrived in Toncontin a little delayed. Undeterred, I hitched a ride from Tegus back to Palmerola with the Finance dudes. Back at the base, I found a buddy who put me on the next day’s manifest for a MAC flight back to the states on the C-5. It took about 5 minutes to forget I was flying backwards. Not sure if it was 8 hours or more from Palmerola to Travis.
My buddy Mike said that nowadays I would be court-martialed for failure to go.
Your graphic is very informative. I can see why they chose the 747; the shuttle carrier a/c was a Japanese plane, one of two, the entire interior was hollowed out and appeared to be big enough to house a football field. Referring to flying the 747, the crew chief explained that the bigger the equipment, the safer it is.
At one of the last open house airshows at Edwards. I invited my wife to go look inside this cavernous a/c. While we were walking through the line that went in one side of the a/c and out the other side, the crew chief asked if we wanted to look at the cockpit. The guy behind us said he wanted to go look also, but my buddy told him it wasn’t open to the public. To add insult to the poor sap’s injury, the crew chief offered us a beer from their cooler.
He knew I was from El Paso which was one of their stops on their route back to Florida.
Nowadays you can explore this a/c at the air museum on 25th east and Avenue P in Palmdale since it was retired in 2011.