50 Incredible C-5 Galaxy Facts

One other fact, on a hop over seas, it always had hydraulic problems with the landing gears, thank God there is an island called Midway. But they did carry a spare, Spare engine that is.

Flown on them, loaded them and picked up the pieces of one that crashed.

Once while I was at USAF OTS at Lackland, back when dinos and mastodons trod the Earth, and pterodactyls winged their way over Neanderthals in the Devonian Ice Age, I'd been on the track running, when I heard REALLY loud engines, over I think at Kelly, which was quite close...I stopped and looked to my right, and saw a SERIOUSLY HUGE GYNORMOUS airframe lifting off at an INSANELY steep angle...there was condensation on the top of the airframe, I'd heard about the lifting body design of the C-5 fuselage, the roar was absolutely incredible, the ground quite literally shook as I stood on the track, about maybe 10 miles away, from what I could judge, it just literally BOUNDED upward, I could see it just before it lifted off, how I don't know, I had a reasonably clear view from where I'd been standing, I'd never seen anything even remotely like that, I later hopped flights on C-130s and C-141s, also C-9 Nightingales and LearJet type aircraft, that was the only time I ever saw a C-5 lift off, though, to this day it lingers in my memory as one of the truly most incredible things I ever saw, honest....