The Aluminum Overcast

The sequence of pictures in this post, taken from the tower at Lemoore Naval Air Station, are not particularly interesting in their own right but they do remind me of a mildly interesting event more than 30 years ago and provided a few of the many details I had forgotten. And, the little bit of research I did on Fat Albert and the Hueys highlighted at least one apparent discrepancy in the tale as I've always related it. The story itself has two parts: the first, relating to the airplane's arrival, took place before the sequence of pictures and the second, relating to its cargo, took place afterwords. So I'll tell the story and sprinkle the pictures in just give you a feel for the setting.

It's 247' 10" long, 65 feet high, and has a wingspan of 222' 9". Because of its size it's been referred to as "The Aluminum Overcast" and, occasionally, as "the box the C-141 came in". Until the Russians built their big Antonov's, the C-5 Galaxy was the largest airplane in the world. I believe it still holds a number of world records and, though its complexity and its sheer size make it a difficult plane to maintain, a modernized cockpit and new engines will go a long way towards correcting its deficiencies. (Sorry, my persona switched from air traffic controller to engineer for a moment. The C-5 fleet is currently being upgraded for the US Air Force by Lockheed Martin.)

Anyway, it's big. When you're used to scanning your airspace, looking for something the size of an A-7 Corsair or an A-4 Skyhawk, it's really easy to see a C-5 Galaxy. Of course, that's part of the problem. Especially if you've never worked (or even seen) one before. The other part of the problem is that none of your rules of thumb work because of the scale of this one player.

We saw this guy that seemed to be parked south of the airport just above the horizon long before approach control called to tell us about him. He was clearly inbound and I had to think about how I was going to work him in with my VFR traffic. After eyeing him for several minutes with no call from radar, I called down and asked about him, only to be told that he was still 20 miles out. That should have given me a clue. Hulking there on the horizon, he brought with him a feeling of impending doom - my very own Sword of Damocles.

As I recall, I was working three to five A-7's in the VFR touch and go pattern on 32L at regular speed and the C-5 was coming straight in to 32L under radar control, seemingly at half speed (or even slower). In the normal scheme of things I would work my traffic until radar's inbound bird became "a factor" then I'd adjust my pattern to accommodate the radar traffic. In this case, the C-5's size made him a factor as soon as he showed up. When radar finally told us he was at 10 miles, he looked like he was at five. I figured radar had called me late and started to extend my VFR traffic downwind to follow the big guy. The first A-7 I tried to extend asked me, "Tower, are you wantin' to put me behind that guy?" When I told them that was indeed my plan, he told me, "Tower, he's still way out there. You could probably turn my whole squadron in in front of him."

Now, on occasion, when you're going down the tubes, a savvy pilot can subtly take control of the pattern and things will work out alright. Usually, however, if you let a pilot take control of your pattern, you'll find you're being led down the Primrose Path. Against my better judgment, I went ahead and turned the first A-7 in front of the C-5 and cleared him for a touch and go. He asked for a full stop, so I cleared him to land. I don't remember what happened to the others, whether I let them sneak in in front of the Galaxy, or they suffered in an extended pattern - past five points on the upwind and past Westhaven on the downwind. Or maybe they just vanished - I couldn't say. In any event, everyone made it through unscathed.

While I was fretting over my options, the tower supervisor suddenly thought about all the problems this guy could engender once he was on the ground. Were the taxiways wide enough? Was there room between the ops building and the hangers to taxi across to the transient line? Was there room for him to turn around anywhere?

What a mess! Even writing about it 30 years later there are more factors involved than I can deal with. The sequence of photos suggests that after he and I screwed up my pattern he ended up making a circling approach to land on 14L. That allowed him to roll out to the end of the runway with a minimum taxi distance to the transient line and keep the tower supervisor out of trouble. Radar could have helped us out a lot if they'd let us know this guy was coming. Oh well...

So he parks at the transit line at the base of the tower and they start unloading his cargo. The first thing down the ramp is a UH-1 Huey helicopter. They tow it over to the edge of the apron and park it. Next off, another Huey - park it over there by the first one. When they pulled the third Huey off, we started taking bets on how many UH-1's a C-5 could hold. Nobody guessed more than six and, in the end, they offloaded seven! (I remembered nine, but my research online suggests that I was mistaken.) Anyway, about nine o'clock that night the helicopters had been fueled and serviced and departed Lemoore in a gaggle, headed for Houston.

I like this last picture best of all. Directly over the C-5 there's a T-34 on approach to runway 32R. It's N1410Z, one of two T-34's the base aero club operated. My first flight in a T-34 was in that plane when I rode down to Long Beach with my instructor to pick up some spare parts for the aero club. All I can say right now is that it was an adventure, and Steve and I were both pleased to have survived it.