FRED

I was at Warner Robins Air Logistics Center, Warner Robins, Georgia this week.  They repair and perform maintenance on the C-5 Galaxy airplane there, so I would like to spend a few minutes recounting C-5 jokes and stories.  I think at least one of them I’ve mentioned in a previous post, but what the heck; it’s not like old people can’t repeat themselves.

If you fly into a base and see two C-5’s and one of them is up on jacks what does that mean?  There is only one set of jacks on the base.

The C-5 has 28 wheels in its landing gear.  In the early phase of the test program, it was demonstrating its capabilities to a congressional supporter, Senator Strom Thurman.  On landing, about four or five wheels came off and when rolling down the runway.  Senator Thurman turned to the press and said: “That’s why they put so many wheels on the thing.”

The C-5 program has the distinction of being the first program with a 1 billion dollar cost over-run.  That means they spent a billion dollars more than they planned to.  (Wikipedia)

When I was a new lieutenant at Dyess there was a C-5 accident in Oklahoma.  The C-5 had a hydraulic fire in the landing gear and was trying to make it into Tinker (its home base).  The fire was getting worse and they set the aircraft down on a small (3,000 ft) runway a few miles short of the Air Force Base.  They tore up the asphalt runway and as the slid to a stop the airplane sanded itself down to the flight deck.  The airport got a new runway and I think the farmer whose field they ended up in got a very expensive high tech barn.

How do you know you’ve landed your C-5 with the gear up?  Using the brakes doesn’t slow you down.  (proven by two pilots flying out of Travis AFB, CA)

My family and I were going on vacation one year and we were going to fly space available (free(ish)) from Travis AFB, CA to Hickam AFB, Hi.  When our names came up on the list we were given a choice of C-5 or C-141 and I made the mistake of taking the C-5.  We made it as far as the ramp where the airplane was parked.  As we drove up I saw the flight engineer and a maintainer looking up at the tail.  When they said to get off the bus I told my family to keep their seats.  Everyone got off and started walking to the airplane but the flight engineer, who said we wouldn’t be leaving that day because the tail didn’t look right, stopped them.  They all came back to the bus.

FRED = Financially Ridiculous Economic Disaster