There's only one place in the world where you can see a C-5 plane on permanent public display: the Air Mobility Command Museum on Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.
Any C-5 would be impressive enough. As the largest aircraft in the US Air Force, C-5s are designed to haul tanks, missiles, helicopters, and other cargo anywhere they need to go.
But the museum doesn't have just any C-5 on display. The C-5A Galaxy was the first and only aircraft to ever launch an intercontinental ballistic missile in flight.
I visited the museum in May to tour the one-of-a-kind plane with Michael Hurlburt, the Air Mobility Command Museum's operations manager and an Air Force veteran. Take a look inside.
C-5s, the largest aircraft in the Air Force, are strategic lifters designed to move large amounts of cargo anywhere in the world.
"You name it, it'll take it," Hurlburt told Business Insider. "Anything from a small pallet full of food to M1 Abrams tanks, helicopters, missiles — it can take, carry, transport just about anything that will fit."
The first iteration of the C-5, the C-5A Galaxy, entered service in 1970.
The C-5A Galaxy could carry up to 264,440 pounds of cargo in its freight compartment, plus 73 passengers in its upper passenger compartment.
Measuring over 247 feet long with a wingspan of over 222 feet, its maximum speed was 601 miles per hour.
The Air Force now uses a modernized version of the C-5 Galaxy, the C-5M Super Galaxy.
Beginning in 1998, the Air Force's fleet of C-5s, including C-5 Galaxy As, Bs, and Cs, underwent modernization.
The Avionics Modernization Program upgraded the aircraft's communication, navigation, and autopilot systems, among other features, from analog to digital. The Reliability Enhancement and Re-engineering Program also added new, quieter engines that provide 22% more thrust, allowing the aircraft to climb faster and carry more cargo further, according to the Air Force.
The Air Force's last remaining C-5A Galaxy was retired in 2017, and the modernized C-5 A, B, and C Galaxy models were reintroduced as the C-5M Super Galaxy.
The C-5M Super Galaxy can hold a maximum cargo load of 281,001 pounds and is one of the few airframes capable of transporting a 70-ton M1 Abrams tank.
The Air Mobility Command Museum on Dover Air Force Base remains the only place in the world to see a C-5 on public display.
The museum's C-5A Galaxy, serial number 69-0014, was assigned to Dover Air Force Base in 1973. It became the first C-5 to be retired to a museum when it was added to the Air Mobility Command Museum's collection in 2013.
C-5s can occasionally be seen at pop-up air show exhibits, but the Air Mobility Command Museum still has the only C-5 on public display.
At the museum, the C-5A Galaxy's cargo bay is open to visitors.
The cargo bay is open for guided tours. The cockpit is accessible only on Open Cockpit Days, held between March and November on the third Saturday of the month, because the museum needs to borrow a special stair truck from Dover Air Force Base to access the 65-foot-tall plane's upper deck.
Museum admission is free.
My tour started with the landing gear, which pivots and swivels to allow the colossal plane to maneuver more efficiently.
With a wingspan of over 200 feet, the aircraft would typically need an enormous amount of space just to make a U-turn. Yet because the gear swivels, the plane doesn't need much more area to maneuver than it already occupies, allowing C-5s to operate on runways as short as 6,000 feet.
An intercontinental ballistic missile was displayed nearby, recognizing this particular C-5A Galaxy's status as the first and only aircraft to launch an ICBM in flight.
On October 24, 1974, the C-5A Galaxy displayed at the museum dropped a Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, over the Pacific Ocean in a feasibility test conducted by the Air Force. The test was successful — the ICBM's rocket engine fired and carried it 20,000 feet, showing that the missiles could be launched from the air.
The Air Force didn't continue the program, but the US used this proven missile capability as a bargaining chip in Strategic Arms Limitation Talks with the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
The first thing Hurlburt pointed out upon entering the C-5 was a model of the Wright brothers' plane hanging from the ceiling.
The Wright brothers' first successful flight with a powered airplane lasted 12 seconds in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903.
Then, he pointed to the American flag on the other side of the cargo bay. The space between the two is the distance of the Wright brothers' first flight: just shy of 120 feet.
At 143 feet and 9 inches, the C-5's cargo bay is longer than the Wright brothers' first flight.
"The Wright brothers could have done their flight inside of a C-5 if it had existed," Hurlburt said. "And it was only about 60 years between that flight and the first flight of the C-5. So we made huge leaps and bounds over the course of 60 years."
The museum offered visual aids to help contextualize just how large the C-5 is and how much it can hold.
C-5s can hold six full-size commercial buses, seven UH-1 Huey helicopters, two M-1A1 Abrams tanks, or, most amusingly, 25,844,746 ping-pong balls.
During presidential trips overseas, a C-5 usually drops off the presidential helicopters, known as Marine One when the president is on board, ahead of Air Force One's arrival.
The plane's insulated walls also encase the 103 miles of wiring that keep the aircraft running.
"To put that in perspective, the state of Delaware is 97 miles long from top to bottom," Hurlburt said. "It's a small state, but still, the C-5 has more wires than the length of the state of Delaware."
Vehicles can simply be driven onto C-5s via ramps at the nose and aft doors.
With cargo openings at the front and rear, C-5 planes can be loaded and unloaded simultaneously.
Chains hooked into the floor are used to secure large vehicles during flight.
Larger chains can hold 25,000 pounds, while smaller chains can hold 10,000 pounds.
Any cargo that doesn't have wheels is loaded onto pallets like this one, which can weigh up to 10,000 pounds each.
The C-5's cargo hold has space for 36 standard aircraft pallets, which could contain "anything from beans to bullets," Hurlburt said.
The pallets are rolled onto the plane via tracks in the floor that can be raised or lowered.
"You can flip these over in a matter of minutes and have the whole airplane configured for either rolling stock or for cargo, no problem," Hurlburt said.
Elevated platforms along the plane's walls provide space to walk when it's too full of oversize cargo.
If the plane is loaded with square pallets on tracks, it's easier to leave aisle space for walking between them. It's not as simple when the plane is loaded with tanks or helicopters.
Back on the ground, the museum displayed a C-5A Galaxy outboard wing section to give visitors a look at its internal fuel tanks.
The C-5A Galaxy stores fuel in its wings. Its 12 internal tanks — six per wing — hold 51,150 gallons of fuel.
The rare chance to explore a C-5 up close makes the Air Mobility Command Museum worth a trip to Dover Air Force Base.
Of the 52 C-5 aircraft in service in today's Air Force, 18 are assigned to Dover Air Force Base. If you're lucky, Hurlburt told me, the museum's historic planes are parked close enough to the base to see their modern counterparts in action.
"You can come out of that C-5," he said, pointing to the Galaxy C-5A we'd just walked through, "and then watch one take off right afterwards."
