Boeing Delivers Last C-17 to US Air Force

Dean- Has been a really good aircraft, especially after they did the range extension on them.

 

There aren't nearly as many C-17s flying in and out of Charleston AFB as there were five or six years ago. Definitely an excellent aircraft that will be around for many years to come.

 

Sad to see. Photo from the LB Boeing plant...
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

Formerly the McDonnell Douglas plant...


Boeing is still making them for other governments though, aren't they?

 

I think that you can blame sequestration for that.....

 

It tapered off well before that. Mainly from winding down in Iraq, I suspect.

 

The Indians were buying ten or so last I heard

 

The building in Long Beach they are in was built specifically for the C-17 and is on the west side of the airport. The building that the aircraft was designed in was on the north side of the airport and no longer exists! (I worked there for 3 months back in 1987 as part of a Grumman subcontract team.)

 

As a side note.... I saw a Canadian C-17 the other day, who knew they even had them? I can only assume they use it for maple syrup deliveries around the world.

 

When I was still working at Boeing we had an opportunity to tour a C-17 at Mc Chord and we were all very impressed with the cleverness and good design in the entire airplane. It is a well done piece of engineering, does a stellar job, and should be around for a long time...and all Douglas.

 

As have been ALL the Globemasters...

 

Not really. The C-124, according to some of the pilots who flew it, was a nightmare in the air. Imagine in a steep turn feeding in opposite rudder and opposite aileron to maintain stabile flight. It did a good job in its time, I guess, if all the engines where running---which wasn't always. Hence the term, " Old Shakey".

 

Bob- Big article on the C-124 in one of the last issues of Air Force magazine. The good and the bad. They lost quite a few of them.

Funniest story was of an airdrop of a bulldozer with blade and dozer as separate payloads. Turns out they put the big parachute on the blade and the small parachute on the dozer. When they dropped them on the ice island where they were supposed to be used, the dozer went all the way through the island and the blade blew so far away, they never found it.

 

Taz, that is just plain funny, thanks.
Bob

 

Me again. I worked with two ex-Air Force majors who flew the C-124's and also a Boeing VP who was on board when they were flying some Bomarc missiles somewhere. They began losing engines in progression during the flight and barely made it to "a destination",
as it was put. I worked on B-50's and KC-97's and I was amazed that they kept the R4360's running as much as they did. If one can look at a working cutaway of that engine you will see what a complex piece of machinery it is...actually four engines coupled together, with gears and cams and all sorts of Monkey Motion that sometimes get a bit out of whack.

 

We get them up here quite regularly. They airlift supplies farther north too.

 

I haven't been to Las Vegas for some time, but there used to be a "survivor" C-124 parked at the airport there for quite a few years. Pretty impressive.

 

Yes... the C-124 is an awkward looking plane, looks top-heavy, and maybe it was.

Always looked like in the air it would be much happier upside down, with a high wing.

 

I always preferred the look of its predecessor, the C-74. That nearly became the first commercial DC-7; when the commercial version did not go through, they reused the designation later.

 

There's a lot of C-74 DNA in the C-124, and I agree that the former was a much more attractive airplane. I don't know anything about the development history, but it appears that specs for larger payload capacity and clamshell loading capability drove the need for the much larger (and more ungainly) fuselage.

 

They have a cut-away version of this engine at the Hill AFB museum and another at the science museum in Boston that I have had a chance to look at. I could stare at these things for hours if I didn't have other people dragging me off to look at something else. The cam rings and bevel gears driving shafts and other mechanical contraptions all working in concert to keep people and cargo in the air are beyond baffling to me. You used the term Monkey Motion. Exactly.

It fascinates me that a team of people were able to design this engine and build it all using manual design and machining techniques. I can not imagine what it took to assemble one of those things and get all those parts together in sync and safe to fly. Maintenance must have been a nightmare.

 

My uncle, who was in the Air Force and owned several early Bonanzas, told me a story about an early C-74.

It had twin, side-by-side bubble canopies for Pilot/Copilot. (Very unpopular and done away with after the first few planes.)

This plane did an emergency landing on a highway... as it rolled down the pavement, an overpass was ahead. They retracted the gear so it was on it's belly... not enough. The crew quickly dove for the bottom of the plane and the bridge took both canopies off... both were uninjured. Plane was repaired and flew again.

Not sure it's true, Uncle Bob was quite a story teller.

 

If I can add to my already lengthening life span, that term was borrowed from the steam locomotive era referring to the mechanisms that drive the wheels.
Early production of things like the R4360 and the airplanes on which they were installed was made possible by low wages, extremely skilled workers, dedication, and many hours of labor intensive work. Recently I looked at the boxes of all my templates, drafting instruments, dimensioning scales, technical pens, pencils, lead pointers, and some drawings and realized that none of it was useful now...like the owner. I got a good 7 year taste of the new digital tools like CATIA and could see how much more could be done with speedy accuracy if the managers had enough sense to apply it properly. The 777 program produced a masterpiece. The 787 could have followed in stride if the same business plan had been used. It will, hopefully, catch up.

 

Defense News reported today that Boeing was making plans to shut down the C-17 factory as soon as the Indian AF aircraft are completed. In most cases, they roll up the line as the last aircraft proceeds past each station.

Hope we do not need any more of them. Assume they will mothball the tooling for a period of time. They did that with the F-111 and rolled it out for additional orders of F-111Fs pushed through by Congress.