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The C-141, Lockheed's High Speed Flying Truck
StarLifter
The C-141, Lockheed's High Speed Flying Truck
by Harold H. Martin
EVER SINCE man first left his cave to travel and trade and fight,
he has sought some better way to transport the goods and the weapons he has needed
on his journeys. His first platform was his own back, or preferably that of his
wife. Then the more docile pack animals-the burro, the donkey, the horse, the
llama, the elephant, and the camel-took the place of the human being with his
A-frame and shoulder pole. And after the animals the wheeled cart and the sailing
ship came into use, and in time there evolved the steamship, the freight train, and
the truck.
It was not until man learned to fly, however, and mated the
lifting power of the aerodynamic wing to the tremendous thrust of the fanjet
engine, that his cargo-carrying capability began to match his needs and dreams. And
this is where the C-141 Star-Lifter, built by Lockheed for the Air Force in 1963 as
a fast, long-range freight-hauler, came on the scene. It was the breakthrough
plane.
It was not the biggest airplane ever built, nor was it the
fastest, and it could not carry the heaviest loads. But it could carry larger and
heavier loads faster and farther than any other plane then flying, and it could do
this day after day, mile after mile, with a minimum of down-time for service and
repairs.
It thus became the prototype, the forerunner, of all the huge
airfreighters that have come after-the C-5 Galaxy, the world's biggest winged
vehicle, and its commercial version, the L-500, and of all the gigantic cargo
carriers now on the drawing board which in time to come will "see the heavens
filled with commerce," as Tennyson prophesied, as it now is filled with passenger
planes.
The seaborne freight-haulers have always had their poets. John
Masefield, laureate of a seagoing nation, proved that there can be beauty and
mystery and romance in the grubby trade of cargo-hauling no matter what the burden
may be. In his poem called "Cargoes" he sang of the romantic
and of the
But he saw an equal romance and he wrote with equal eloquence of
the
The droop-winged StarLifter has carried its own share of exotic
cargo, including a Buddha from Bangkok to New Delhi, and more gold bars than any
stately galleon ever carried, airlifted from the U.S. to England during the banking
crisis there. No apes and peacocks so far, but an elephant, from Cambodia to
California, and a trained whale, carried in a huge wet sponge to Hawaii, and war
dogs for Vietnam, and penguins for stateside zoos from the frozen shores of
Antarctica, and astronauts, heading home to Houston from their journey to the moon,
and moon rocks more precious than any emeralds or diamonds or amethysts ever seen
on earth.
No poet has yet arisen to celebrate these exploits, which is just
as well, for the StarLifter's impact on its time goes far beyond these occasional
lifts of unusual cargo. Carrying its more prosaic burdens, the StarLifter in its
purely military function is setting the pattern for an airlift revolution that
inevitably must affect all the trading nations of the world. Ancient land and sea
routes followed since the beginning of civilization will diminish in importance as
more and more cargoes travel on paths marked only by the vapor trails of unseen
planes. Old port cities grown rich on ocean shipping will find their historical
function as ports of entry lessened radically as globe-girdling fleets of cargo
carriers overfly them to huge new inland terminals.
New patterns of transport, within nations and between nations,
will inevitably bring about broad changes in political, social, economic, and
diplomatic relationships. It is to be hoped that these will be in the direction of
greater understanding. Thus the StarLifter, as the pioneer plane in a great
oncoming fleet designed to haul anything, anywhere, any time, may serve as an
instrument of peace. It also can play another role. . . .