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Anunta-ma cand e disponibil
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Roden 330 C-5B Galaxy 1:144 |
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| In the summer of 1985 the first newly-built aircraft, designated the C-5B, solemnly rolled out from the same plant in Marietta, where 17 years earlier its story had begun. It should be mentioned that the change in designation was not the only change in the new production batch. In contrast to its predecessor the C-5B received an upgrade in wing construction, new avionics, and an improved loading system in the fuselage. Although, adjusted for inflation, its unit price was not 60, but a hefty 120 million dollars, questions about the appropriateness of its construction were not even raised in the US Congress. All the 50 Lockheed C-5Bs ordered were completed by spring 1989, but the Pentagon decided an additional batch of C-5Bs would be misplaced. New, more modern types of cargo aircraft appeared, and although they did not have the huge capacity of the C-5, in a changing world geopolitical situation the total number of super heavy machines already built was more than enough. Apart from the Vietnam War and Yom Kippur the C-5's military career features many more major historical events of the late 20th and early 21st centuries; they took part in the first Iraq War (Operation Desert Storm), and in the second (Operation Iraqi Freedom). After the terrorist attacks of 2001, in the course of Operation Enduring Freedom against the Afghan Taliban, the C-5 conducted more than 4,000 missions to the country, transporting more than 210,000 tons of cargo. In addition, the C-5 repeatedly carried out missions of a humanitarian nature to areas suffering from large scale natural disasters, or dual purpose missions, as say, in 1994 in the post-Soviet countries, where according to political agreements they transported to safety the entire stock of unenriched armed uranium, averting the risk of this dangerous substance passing into the hands of global terrorism. In the late 1990s, almost all the C-5Bs were temporarily pulled out of service to upgrade their outdated avionics. It was also decided to replace its engines with more modern ones, and the new version was designated the C-5M. By then, the Galaxy had no longer been the largest aircraft in the world for a long time, since the appearance of the Soviet AN-124 and AN-225; but to this day the C-5 remains the greatest of all American military transport aircraft as it has been for nearly 50 years. | |||
