How the C-5 Galaxy got so big

I see by the aviation news that NASA and the American military-industrial complex are reviving the idea of building an SST -- SuperSonic Transport -- since that worked out so well for the British-French consortium that built the Concorde. The contractor being given charge of the project is... wait for it... Lockheed-Martin. That's the corporate successor to Lockheed, who built the C-5 Galaxy, which was for a time the world's largest military transport aircraft. The picture below gives a good idea of the size of the thing. As Donald Trump would say, it's huuuuuuge!

The reason given for building this monster, according to the Air Force Fact sheet extant in the 1970s, was to "provide a vast capability for rapid deployment of both combat forces and their fighting equipment". Wikipedia tells us "The C-5 Galaxy's development was complicated, including significant cost overruns, and Lockheed suffered significant financial difficulties. Shortly after entering service, cracks in the wings of many aircraft were discovered and the C-5 fleet was restricted in capability until corrective work was completed." No surprises there, then.

Still the question remains, why was the C-5 built so damn big? John Kidner, author of The Kidner Report (Acropolis Books, 1972) provides an explanation which should be read (or reread) by the folks at the Pentagon and every other government department or agency planning the SST or whatever other Next Big Thing. The Kidner Report is a satirical look at bureaucracy. In the chapter headed "The Paper Criterion", the author makes a revolutionary suggestion...

I maintain that as long as there must be files, then let's make them more valuable from the standpoint of sheer volume as well as contents. That way, there won't be so much bellyaching about having to store them. This can be accomplished by using them as a standard -- a criterion. Before this is dismissed as a three-martini concept, let me point out that it may have already been tried.

There has been a good bit of speculation about just how the C-5 Galaxy...came to be as big as it is: six stories high and a block or so long.... I think that a PAPER CRITERION experiment is in progress and that it will be made known when it proves successful.

Rumor has it that back in 1950 an Air Force general, dismayed at the mountains of proposals he had to plow through, said to his aide, "By Gawd, Alphie! I wish somebody'd build an airplane big enough to carry all the Gawdamned paper it takes to get it built! That way we'd be able to carry all we needed to\" Knowing that a general's wish is a colonel's panic, I felt that something must have come of it.

I learned that the invitations to bid on the Galaxy were 1500 pages long. The five competing contractors responded in 240,000 pages. These were reproduced in 30 copies and distributed for review to 400 people. The significant point here is the weight of the paper -- 35 tons! 70,000 pounds!

Now comes the matter of costs. Thne original estimate was about 3.2 billion dollars but the final tab amounted to 5 billion, or about 60 percent over estimate. Acting on the assumption that the size of the aircraft would be proportional to the weight of the paper, I concluded that the costs would be related to the size in the same manner. Therefore we must add 60 percent of the original weight of the paper (70,000 lbs) which is 42,000; then 70,000 and 42,000 total up to 112,000 lbs. To this add 1000 lbs. for paper clips and staples and the total is 113,000 lbs. This is exactly the cargo carrying capacity of the C-5A, and is quoted in the fact sheet describing its characteristics.

It is not hard to envision the immense value the files will take on as they are used as standards for larger aircraft carriers, space stations, submarine fleets, and transports [including SSTs! Walt]. Bureaucracy will no longer have to fight for storage space, and fellowcrats won't have to blush over the file drawers pregnant with their creations. And the time will come when the old request -- "Can we get that in writing" -- will be given the honored reception it deserves.

MH370: Suppose it was a test...

Virtually nothing has happened since I posted "Latest developments in the MH370 mystery". There's a report going around the Net this morning that a Chinese search ship has detected a pulse signal of some sort somewhere in the south Indian Ocean. That's all.

Meanwhile, conjecture -- including the Diego Garcia theory -- intensifies. New possibilities keep emerging. In last week's Economist, "Lexington" writes about "remote warfare", e.g. drone operators shoot missiles or spy on enemies while safely seated at desks somewhere in, ohhhh, let's say Nevada.

He (or she) probably wasn't thinking about MH370, but consider the opening lines of the column:

Some time soon, it is possible to imagine, an American cyber-warrior will end a conflict, almost single-handed. With the right acts of digital sabotage, attack aircraft will be grounded, infrastructure disrupted and communications severed, reducing the enemy to a state of raging, pre-modern impotence. [My emphasis. Walt]

"Digital sabotage..." Hmmm... One of the theories advanced for why MH370 made almost a 300-degree turn away from it's northward course was that "someone" changed the programming in the aircraft's computer and navigation system. Hmmm... Just a few keystrokes would do it, they said, the implication being that the pilot or the co-pilot could easily have done it before or during the flight.

But what if it were done by remote control, from, ohhhh, Diego Garcia? The aircraft is (or was) a Boeing 777, designed and manufactured in the US of A by an American corporation, a part of the so-called US military-industrial complex. The plane is certified airworthy by the US government. Is it possible that US systems experts took over MH370 "by wire", just to see if they could do it? Hmmm...

It might not be Americans who did it. Skilled systems hackers live and work in other countries -- China, Russia, or even India. If the plane was diverted and/or brought down by the US military as a test of their capabilities, naturally they're not going to say anything. Readers will recall Walt's questioning of why the Prez hasn't made any comment on the deepening mystery.

But if another nation did it, the Americans would still say nothing, because they wouldn't want to admit the existence of the requisite technology, let alone the possibility that some other country has more advanced "weapons of remote destruction". Think about it while you wait for the new Chinese "sighting" to be confirmed...or not.

Wisdom about who really runs America, from someone who knew

Len here...again. Walt has been ill since 8 p.m. Montréal time last night, so I'm at centre hice for now.

Our post about the Afghanistan war -- "Reality check: the war in Afghanistan is LOST!" -- drew a terse and cryptic response from Agent 17, who wrote "Ike was right." Walt had to admit that he couldn't remember anything President Eisenhower had ever said, so asked for the reference.

Turns out our man in the souf was reading "Beware the Education–Industrial Complex", an article by Alan Singer published on the BeyondChron website in April of 2012. In the article, Mr. Singer picked a couple of very key points out of the President's farewell address to the nation on completion of his second term, in January 1961

"In the speech," Mr. Singer writes, "Eisenhower warned the American people of the growing power of a 'military-industrial complex', an alliance of the military with defense contractors that he saw as a threat to democracy."

The author's point is that America's transformation into an undemocratic, totalitarian state continues today. Mr. Singer puts it this way: "Democracy in the United States is now under a similar assault from an education-foundation-political-industrial complex."

The article is an attack on corporatism -- the subordination of the interests of the common people to those of big business -- written by one of the "progressive thinkers" who dominate the media. But the point is well taken, particularly in the US of A. You may think the maladministration of Al O'Bama is in charge, but it's really big business which drives government policy.

If you want proof, look no further than Obamacare. Why does America -- alone of all developed nations -- not have free (tax-funded) basic health care for all? Because the insurance companies and HMOs don't want to relinquish their obscene profits! Who screwed up America's financial system? The banks! Who insists on spending trillions of dollars on armaments we don't need and wars that can't be won? The military-industrial complex! I rest my case.

Click here to read the complete text of President Eisenhower's 1961 farewell address.

Military intelligence: the true story of Project X-Ray

Once the United States got (somewhat belatedly) engaged in World War II, it quickly became apparent that some Weapon of Mass Destruction [Did they really use that phrase, then? Ed.] would be needed to vanquish the treacherous Japanese. In 1942 the atomic bomb was barely a notion, so other options were considered.

The specs called for something that would inflict lots of damage on the Japanese home islands without loss of too many American lives. Dr. Lytle Adams, a Pennsylvania dentist, came up with an idea, perhaps while inhaling a bit of laughing gas. Bat bombs! Of course!!!

The experimental weapon consisted of a bomb-shaped casing with numerous compartments, each containing a Mexican Free-tailed Bat. (No, Walt doesn't know why they're called that.) Each bat would have a one-ounce timed incendiary bomb strapped to its wee chest. Dropped from a bomber at dawn, the casings would deploy a parachute in mid-flight and open to release the bats which would then land in the eaves and attics of Japanese buildings.

When the bats tried to fly away, they would chew through the straps so as to lighten their load for takeoff. The incendiaries would thus be ignited, starting fires in inaccessible places in the flimsy wood and paper construction of the Japanese cities. [Are you sure this wasn't actually Dr. Rube Goldberg? Ed.]

No, Walt is not making this up. But wait, it gets better... Dr. Adams happened to be a friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, who submitted to her husband the President, who approved it personally. So the US military-industrial complex [Did they really use that phrase, then? Ed.] went into action.

After two years spent on research -- not to mention rounding up a couple of million of the critters -- the US Army tested the bat bombs in New Mexico. During the testing, several bats escaped, setting fire to a large aircraft hangar and a fuel tank.

The Army cleverly handed the bat bomb project over to the Navy, which named it Project X-ray and passed the buck -- the bats, actually -- to the Marine Corps. Some military genius decided the trick was to freeze the bats into hibernation before dropping them out of the bombers. In another test run, the frozen bats remained asleep and augured into the desert sands without setting off so much as a spark.

More tests were scheduled for the summer of 1944 but the programme was cancelled by Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King when he was told the bat bomb would likely not be combat ready until mid-1945. By that time it was estimated that $2 million had been spent on Project X-ray, afterwards referred to by Dr. Stanley P. Lovell, director of the Office of Strategic Services as "Die Fledermaus Farce".

A couple of thoughts about war from Gwynne Dyer

Gwynne Dyer know something about war. Born in Newfoundland almost six years before it became part of Canada, he joined the Royal Canadian Naval Reserve at the age of 16. While still in the reserve, he obtained a BA in history from Memorial University in 1963. Later he earned an MA in military history from Rice University (1966) and a PhD in military and Middle Eastern history at King's College London (1973).

Mr. Dyer served in the Canadian, American and British naval reserves. He was employed as a senior lecturer in war studies at the Royal Military Academy (Sandhurst) from 1973 through 1977. In 1973 he began writing articles for leading London newspapers on the Arab-Israeli conflict, and soon decided to abandon academic life for a full-time career in journalism.

In the mid-1980s, Mr. Dyer created and hosted War, an outstanding documentary mini-series that aired on BBC and PBS. As so often happens, the series begat a companion book (Crown Publishers, New York, 1985).

In the latter part of the book, the author discusses the future of war and the role of the military in today's society. More specifically, he considers the likelihood of an all-out nuclear war which would lead to the annihilation of mankind. Here are a couple of quotes which I think worth passing along.

Since it is the professional duty of military officers to identify threats to the security of the state, they are constantly searching for potential dangers abroad -- and virtually every other state within military reach constitutes such a threat simply by virtue of having armed forces of its own. The planning reflex of general staffs provides governments with detailed and regularly updated scenarios for conflicts in unlikely places with improbably enemies (as late as the 1920s military planners in the United States and Canada were maintaining carefully worked out plans to invade each other), which on occasion can lend undue military importance to minor incidents and alarms.


There is a new common factor discernible in all the armed conflicts that ravage the contemporary world, and especially in the majority of those conflicts that are irregular in nature. Military power is becoming less effective in achieving decisive, politically satisfactory results at every level of conflict. This is as true for enemies fighting with conventional weapons as for the nuclear-armed great powers, and it is equally true for governments and for insurgents in the lower intensity irregular wars that now account for most of the world's actual killing.

Gwynne Dyer wrote those words in the 1980s -- before 9/11, before the Gulf Wars, before Iraq, before Afghanistan, before Libya and before whatever is coming tomorrow. He has been criticized for his "anti-militarism" and "pacifist tendencies" by many warhawks, including Conrad Black who discontinued publishing Dyer's columns in his newspapers. But Walt thinks War makes some good points. I suspect Ron Paul agrees. 

You can find the War mini-series on YouTube. Here's the link to Part I (of 6), and a search for "War with Gwynne Dyer" will call up the rest. Each part runs about 55 minutes.

Also on YouTube is a more recent (and shorter) commentary by Mr. Dyer on the wars in the Middle East. It's called "The Mess They Made" (2007). Here it is.



Conrad Black no longer owns any newspapers. Gwynne Dyer's insightful columns continue to appear in the Fort Mudge Weakly and other fine newspapers.