C-5A lands nose gear up at Rhein Main Air Base-August 15, 1986

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flyfallridesail417@reddit

I’ve flown with a number of FOs who are former C5 drivers and they all commented on what a maintenance nightmare that airplane is…all had stories about being unexpectedly stranded for a week - sometimes in cool places, sometimes not so cool.

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kimpoiot@reddit

Is that why the crew always carry golf clubs all around? I've read/heard stories of C-5s getting stuck for extended periods of time in Ramstein and the pilots walking off the flightline lugging their golf bags muttering "sucks to be me" with a slight grin.

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RealPutin@reddit

Golf clubs, fishing gear, surfboards, skis, you name it

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FixergirlAK@reddit

With an aircraft that big you can probably bring your moose rack back after you get stranded at Elmendorf.

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PuzzleheadedDuty8866@reddit

You can bring whatever you want as long as it fits through the crew entry door

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FixergirlAK@reddit

Somewhere, someone has a list of things they've seen freighter crews bring along as personal baggage.

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PercySnowsHandgun@reddit

Extra ho's

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flyfallridesail417@reddit

Haha yes!! Several commented that they’d bring along golf clubs, fishing poles etc because even if they didn’t have a ton of scheduled downtime, there was a decent chance of breakdown.

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Prisefighter_Inferno@reddit

I was a C17 guy. We always joked that the C5 crews got to be broken in all the cool places/

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Magooose@reddit

My neighbor was a P-3 engineer. He said that they always seemed to break in Hawaii and would have to layover for a couple days, but worked flawlessly in Adak.

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ChugHuns@reddit

Lol well have you seen Adak??

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SporesM0ldsandFungus@reddit

Holy shit, just looked up where Adak is / was. Talk about remote.

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slapdashbr@reddit

sir our engone exploded we need to fix it

nah lets blow this shithole

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Gumb1i@reddit

Every flight I took through Rota on C5 they broke down for days. Though I never heard anyone complain.

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ChugHuns@reddit

They broke every.single.time. Also a C17 guy and we would always have a C5 living in one of our hangars.

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Deep-Adeptness4474@reddit

Only the nice places. Somehow they never managed to break in kandahar.

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swim_to_survive@reddit

Can confirm. BIL flies one. He’s telling me basically something breaks every time he takes off or lands. Still bad ass knowing he’s flying something big enough to build a house in.

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captain_ender@reddit

Yeah.... That looked expensive haha

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lael8u@reddit

I mean, those planes is more than 50yo.

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RealPutin@reddit

And they've been an MX nightmare that whole time

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TorchedUserID@reddit

I rode on one as a teen in 1984.

I remember when they started the takeoff roll like a pint of water cascaded out of the ceiling into the center aisle.

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MountainMan17@reddit

Former tanker nav here. I can't tell you how many thousands of gallons of fuel we dumped due to Fred being a no-show...

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psunavy03@reddit

Good Lord. I flew off carriers, and I figured our fuel-dumping shenanigans were bad. One of your fuel loads for a FRED would be like the entire air wing . . .

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jmbf8507@reddit

I was flying space A from Rammstein and after boarding, our plane was waved off. We flew out the next day on the same plane.

We all joked that the plane was fine, the crew just wanted an evening in Germany.

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Kuriente@reddit

Were thrust reversers not deployed? I can't see them in the video but it seems odd that they wouldn't use them in this situation when you'd probably want to avoid heavy use of the brakes.

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PuzzleheadedDuty8866@reddit

Thrust reverse and spoilers cause a nose-down force on the airplane. So they aren’t used if the nose gear isn’t down

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rocketrex504@reddit

The foam runway would cause some serious FOD

Side note I miss the camo FRED'S

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Kuriente@reddit

Good point!

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Isord@reddit

That pilot could make me believe the C5 doesn't have a nose gear.

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SoothedSnakePlant@reddit

Someone else already mentioned this in a different comment chain, but the wing actually raises the nose when the speedbrakes are applied on high wing aircraft, so they touch down super lightly on the nose wheel regardless.

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PuzzleheadedDuty8866@reddit

Not on the C-5

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BurlHam@reddit

Pilot absolutely knew that and probably didn't even skip much of a beat. One of those things that's far more visually impressive than hard to do.

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Orderly_Liquidation@reddit

Seriously. What was this guy flying before? A U-2?

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syringistic@reddit

Lol would love to witness a real life attempt where a flat hed truck matches the speed and lets the nose settle on that.

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John_Q_Deist@reddit

This guy Dragon Ladies.

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Zolkrodein@reddit

What do you mean? the C5 never had a nose gear

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lssong99@reddit

It makes me believe C5 uses anti-gravity at where nose gear should be.

Very skilled pilot, minimizing the damage.

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hotfezz81@reddit

That pilot decides how much gravity he's going to use. Wtf.

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reddituseronebillion@reddit

Or at least has it marked as expendable

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BrewCityChaserV2@reddit

That's a skilled pilot.

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jghaines@reddit

That went much better than I expected

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countingthedays@reddit

High wing benefits

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whiskeytown79@reddit

What does that do here? Ground effect?

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North-Significance33@reddit

I think the air brakes being above the CG means it applies a torque lifting the nose up. If they were lower than the CG, it would torque the nose down.

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cvnh@reddit

That's not really significant, and the Galaxy doesn't have ground spoilers to begin with (you can see in the footage). Although the wing position matters, the effects of spoilers have to always be balanced to create a smooth response regardless of whether the wing is holigh or low, otherwise it would upset the aircraft in flight.

The reason the pilot managed to keep the nose up long was that he progressively pitched up and trimmed nose up, you can see the elevator fully up at the end. And maybe they were in luck to not be in a forward CG position as well.

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PuzzleheadedDuty8866@reddit

The C-5 does have ground spoilers. They didn’t use them because they push the nose down

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TheDoughGothamKneads@reddit

There are ground spoilers, you just don’t use them in a NLG up landing. They would produce a strong nose down moment. Which is undesired here.

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cvnh@reddit

Right, I forgot the Galaxy is from the time of manual ground spoilers. I'm not with you on the effect of ground spoilers, their effect can go both ways and often the behaviour is different when up and away compared to in ground effect.

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TheDoughGothamKneads@reddit

I have C-5 experience so I’m just telling you how it is for a NLG up landing. Cheers.

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llamachef@reddit

Lol "C-5 experience", aka you're the only redditor and pilot with C-5 NLG landings in real life

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cvnh@reddit

I'm sure they followed the Lockheed procedures, what I wrote is that there is no general rule on that.

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TheDoughGothamKneads@reddit

Gotcha.

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UW_Ebay@reddit

Above the CG or center of rotation?

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North-Significance33@reddit

Is there a functional difference in this situation?

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gulgin@reddit

Once the rear wheels touch down, yes.

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North-Significance33@reddit

But if you apply the brakes it still applies a torque, even though the braking force is applied at zero distance from the "center of rotation"

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gulgin@reddit

That is not how torque works. When the aircraft is in the air it rotates around the center of mass/center of gravity, but when it is on its wheels the torque is applied to where the landing gear is hinged.

The wings being higher has even more of an effect when it is rolling on the wheels, especially given the center of mass is probably quite high on the C5 when it isn’t fully loaded. Big caveat there, but the assumption is that most flights use the huge volume more than the carrying capacity.

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UW_Ebay@reddit

Prob not much.

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countingthedays@reddit

Wings are where the gas is, so the further the engines and wings are from the ground, the less likely they are to be ripped off while you slow down.

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whiskeytown79@reddit

oh, good point.. nice.

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Ok_East_6473@reddit

Almost every aircraft has the center of lift forwards of the center of gravity, with the horizontal stabiliser providing an opposite force to cancel it out. Not really for this situation but it means on loss of power the aircraft goes nose down rather than nose up.

There are exceptions.

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anactualspacecadet@reddit

The engine doesn’t hit the ground and explode

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countingthedays@reddit

I don't understand why this is downvoted lol. That's literally the reason. It's not a surprise that airplanes intended for rough field use are designed with high wings. The amount of people looking for some aerodynamic benefit is silly.

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anactualspacecadet@reddit

People are dumb, this is literally what they told me in C-17 PIQ, if you’re gonna land gear up you turn off #1 and then you’re pretty much guaranteed to not explode with the high wing.

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countingthedays@reddit

I think it's on the checklist of every airplane I've ever seen. Once the field is made, less fire is good.

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brennons@reddit

Yes exactly this. Also because high wings are less obstructed and use the fuselage to create lift.

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countingthedays@reddit

Not at all. Wings are where the gas is, so the further the engines and wings are from the ground, the less likely they are to be ripped off while you slow down.

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chewychee@reddit

Doesn't scrap the wings open where the go juice is stored.

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Vidzzzzz@reddit

I assume most low wings would drag engine, or get shit sucked up in them

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Tysonviolin@reddit

Elevator full up

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TheDoughGothamKneads@reddit

The CG is between the mains, so the aircraft is pretty easily balanced on landing rollout. The pilots will avoid using the spoilers due to the nose down moment they would create, and brakes are avoided until the nose is “flown” gently down to the runway before losing rudder authority. TR’s can be used throughout the landing roll as they provide stopping force without the downward pitching moment caused by ground spoilers.

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CorrectingEverything@reddit

I mean, any pilot in that position should be able to do exactly what this one did.

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Apitts87@reddit

Incredible job.

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SpaceSpass@reddit

They really didn’t wanna have to grind metal but I think they realized he was running out of runway so they did what they had to do.

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Stoneman57@reddit

Absolutely greased that thing in

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csbsju_guyyy@reddit

Dude should fly for the air force!....wait

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ryan9991@reddit

And cameraman

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JaviWonderz@reddit

It's probably the penguins from the Madagascar movies. They let planes down gently.

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A_Ms_Anthrop@reddit

Clearly not a Navy pilot… 🤣🤨

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antariusz@reddit

I’ve seen worse landings with all gear functioning.

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koalasarentferfuckin@reddit

Best in the Galaxy

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Wooden-Cartoonist762@reddit

Tadum-dish good one lol

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InvestNorthWest@reddit

Best case scenario

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taft@reddit

looked like it was designed to land without nose gear

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Money4Nothing2000@reddit

Yeah holy crap that was an amazing landing.

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pheldozer@reddit

They called him the Rain Man of Rhein Main

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Shoddy-Inevitable-50@reddit

What was it? All I could see was wheels and a few sparks. 🫥

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RecentAmbition3081@reddit

Impressive the amount of lift the wing has, kept it up longer than I expected.

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Sad-Bus-7460@reddit

I'm all for the C-17 big plane love but my god C-5 is just fuckoff big

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Merr77@reddit

You think they would make a stairway down to the main front gear that you could crank down if possible. Those things are so big

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GuessEmergency8211@reddit

Masterful real world soft field landing on display here.

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niks_15@reddit

That stick must've been jammed back. Great work by the crew

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Glittering-Gap-1687@reddit

What’s the backstory to this? Why did the pilot do/have to do this landing?

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Thebraincellisorange@reddit

well, plainly the nosegear was broke and would not come down.

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Glittering-Gap-1687@reddit

Thanks for explaining! I’m not very insightful into planes and what should be there or not be there. I am here because I live near an aviation base and are friends with a lot of pilots.

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Time_Literature3404@reddit

Amazing.

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TrevBundy@reddit

That was not at all how I expected it to go after reading the title, great job by the pilot.

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MonkeyCobraFight@reddit

Rumor has it that plane is still there on jacks 😬

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droopy_ro@reddit

That late Cold War paint scheme was so good looking.

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CassassinCatto@reddit

Two things that amaze me about this footage; 1) the landing and 2) that T-Tail is taller than my house!

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kaizermattias@reddit

Basically an XL mechanised grey puffin.

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Cold_Flow4340@reddit

great job of piloting keeping the nose up until the speed was drained off.

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Ctrlplay@reddit

Wow for a while I thought he didn't even need the nose gear

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itsaride@reddit

Glad this was before mobile phones and portrait mode, even if it is 480P in 1.25:1

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caaper@reddit

I always laugh at the camouflage livery on the C5. Of all the man-made objects on earth, the C5 is among those that is the most pointless to attempt to be sneaky.

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HortenWho229@reddit

It’s selection bias. Think of all the C-5s you haven’t seen because they were camouflaged

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svideo@reddit

Holy shit, I don't see any C-5s RIGHT NOW they must be everywhere

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Ajnabihum@reddit

Most airplane camouflage should be designed for them to be not visible on ground.

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JMHSrowing@reddit

I see it as a lot like that on naval warships.

You sure as hell aren’t actually trying to hide totally (with a few notable exceptions), but you’re trying to make it harder to see from far away exactly what you are.

Like with how big and valuable these are, breaking up the silhouette a bit so it maybe gets mistaken for a smaller C130 from a distance or something could be useful.

Even just making it slightly harder to tell say how far away on an air field might be useful in not getting destroyed

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Dieppe42@reddit

That is an amazing amount of elevator authority.

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the_trees_bees@reddit

Crazy they were able to keep the nose up for so long. At what point were the brakes engaged?

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HapsTilTaps@reddit

Brakes are not touched on a nose up landing in a C5. Source: prior C5 pilot.

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ReptilianTapir@reddit

How do you judge the present manoeuvre? Mad skillz or on par for training?

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Wooden-Broccoli-7247@reddit

Crazy there was no emergency vehicles around

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Johannes_Keppler@reddit

Who do you think was filming... You can hear the first responders in the background.

Also who know what was in that plane. Probably had a good reason to stand back a bit.

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JimboSlice_95@reddit

Seems like the video was shot from around emergency responders. You can hear someone say “get ready to roll”

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Ltcayon@reddit

There almost certainly were waiting on the taxiway. You don't enter the runway until the plane stops usually.

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Wooden-Broccoli-7247@reddit

I’d just expect to see them in the shot somewhere. Like chasing the plane down the runway so they could put that fire out. I don’t see any anywhere. Other footage I’ve seen like this they are spraying fire retardant on it almost immediately.

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GSDer_RIP_Good_Girl@reddit

From the video it appears the brakes were engaged, hard, as soon as the nose touched.

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the_trees_bees@reddit

I'd expect the nose to dive straight down if that were the case, but I could be wrong. Sure that's not just the foam getting kicked up?

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Old-Simple7848@reddit

Yeah, the brakes would induce a forward rotation force as a reaction. The pilot did a good job letting drag slow the plane down until the nose hit.

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InevitableFly@reddit

That pilot held that nose up right to the bitter end

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lueckestman@reddit

They told all the Marines in cargo to move as close to the ramp door as possible. Or at least that would be funny if they did.

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Ceskaz@reddit

Is it a joke about them being fucking dense?

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PigpenD27870@reddit

Close, but not quite. You see, all the Marines in the back were pushing down on the rear portion of the hold.

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LurpyGeek@reddit

And the ones in front were pushing on the ceiling?

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WhoCaresBoutSpellin@reddit

🎶 C-130 rolling down the strip!

Gonna push on the ceiling so the nose don’t dip! 🎶

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No_Relief_5514@reddit

…It’s not a C-130 though

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sniperhippo@reddit

Would marines know the difference?

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Jolly_Line@reddit

They’re right, it’s an f-14

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ThePrussianGrippe@reddit

Close! They held their hands on the ceiling and blew downwards to create lift.

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Rampaging_Bunny@reddit

In the navy we pushed down the rear portion a lot……… I’ll see myself out

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Mach_v_manchild@reddit

As a Marine, I fucking laughed real hard.

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PigpenD27870@reddit

I’m glad man. Former 82nd myself, with Marine family members that I love to razz! Carry On!

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Mach_v_manchild@reddit

Carry on brother, save the best flavored crayons for me 😂

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ghjm@reddit

Choke on your crayon?

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looselyhuman@reddit

First real laugh I've had on reddit today. Lol.

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PigpenD27870@reddit

Nice! I’m glad to have helped.

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Own_Donut_2117@reddit

It worked didn’t it? And PT is better than tots and taters.

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KoBoWC@reddit

They gave out crayons as a snack to calm them down.

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JDepinet@reddit

Fun fact, on the c5 the passenger cabin is facing backwards, and above the cargo compartment on the second story.

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jonquil_dress@reddit

That’s not what this schematic shows? https://old.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/w19gfu/lockheed_c5_galaxy_xray_view_diagram/

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Condurum@reddit

That is literally what the schematic shows. Both between the wings and further back, seats are facing backwards.

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jonquil_dress@reddit

Sorry, I didn’t see that section. I was looking at the seating on the lower level, labeled 57.

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eykei@reddit

thats exactly what the schematic shows, a passenger cabin above the cargo hold, facing rearward. what are you seeing?

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jonquil_dress@reddit

Ah I see that one now. I was looking at the passenger seats on the lower level on the left side of the image.

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stupre1972@reddit

They told them that's where the crayons are stored

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Battlemanager@reddit

The butter end.

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captain_ender@reddit

Military pilots of all classes really are the platinum standard

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InevitableFly@reddit

Smoother landing than student pilots I’ve seen

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DrNinnuxx@reddit

High wing benefits

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stevehokie52@reddit

A long time ago in a Galaxy far, far away...

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stopthemadness2015@reddit

When I flew I’m them we always had to turn back due to mechanical failures so this didn’t surprise me. Smooth ride once we got airborne though,.

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rasterpix@reddit

Sheet metal shop put in some time after that one.

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GrumpyIAmBgrudgngly2@reddit

Well held, well held.

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JaakTamm@reddit

Amazing core strenght

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AccomplishedPlankton@reddit

Where’s that Nissan Frontier when you need it?!

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looselyhuman@reddit

Yes! A ballsy airman in a humvee could've totally pulled that off.

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JaviSATX@reddit

Shit, where’s a HEMTT when you need one?

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Patient_Ranger_4817@reddit

Old school aircraft paint

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Human__been@reddit

Feels like if the runway were long enough (and any cargo balanced to the rear) they could have come to a complete stop without the nose ever touching!

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PunkyB88@reddit

Yeah it looked like you could do a touch and go if you had to, not that anyone would want to do it

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percussaresurgo@reddit

Ever?

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DoIEvenPost@reddit

Did it fly again or was it a write-off?

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scrollingtraveler@reddit

That guy is called Ace. By many of his coworkers. Prob just needed to change out some sheet metal and some paint. Done.

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indiearmor@reddit

Holy WOW!!

Nice work by the flight crew.

Thanks for sharing.

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Axe_Care_By_Eugene@reddit

Absolute text book landing without nose gear deployed

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jay_in_the_pnw@reddit

https://asn.flightsafety.org/wikibase/312561

video here of ARFF foaming the aircraft down immediately on landing

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Narwhale654@reddit

So many kids on board! I was not ready for that

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Horn_Flyer@reddit

I LOVE the C5! I had the pleasure of being stationed at Dover AFB for 4 years and fell in love with that big beautiful bastard

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BlackDiamondDee@reddit

That’s some fine piloting.

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LeoBram59@reddit

What was the point?

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DrSendy@reddit

Wooo hoo, looks at that PFAS fly!

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DecisionFit2116@reddit

So, was that aircraft repaired? Is that sort of damage too extensive? Did it ever fly again?

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sgtalbers@reddit

Was flown until 2004 and scrapped in 2012. Tbh the damage done here isnt that bad after all.

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Thebraincellisorange@reddit

no doubt it was repaired and put back into service.

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Aggravating_Speed665@reddit

That's gonna look good on the cv

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mar_kelp@reddit

https://www.upi.com/Archives/1986/08/15/USAF-jet-makes-forced-landing-no-injuries/7847524462400/

And a comment from a similar post two years ago (maybe u/1forcats/ will chime in):

I watched this play out on the flight line that day. He stayed in the pattern for \~6 hours. That time was used not only to burn fuel but he tried some high bank angle maneuvers to release the gear. There were also a few low passes over the flight line for observation; that was an awesome sight.

You may notice he sat the nose down long after the foam. We posited the fire department didn’t expect him to grease it in. The AC was promoted to Lt. Col. for his efforts. The plane was flown out within 24 hours with the nose gear down on a one time flight waiver…straight to depot.

Thanks to the OP for the memories

edit: check out the trim on the horizontal stab

https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/13dp1dn/flashback_c5a_lands_nose_gear_up_at_rhein_main/

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BigDaddyCosta@reddit

So, how much stick back would need to applied here? Is it full stick the slower it got?

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collinsl02@reddit

I know it's a cop-out but "as much as the wings would support without taking off again". Essentially you want to put in enough input to keep the plane level, but you don't want to nose up and have a tail strike, and you don't want to nose down until the last possible moment to minimise damage.

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gotfanarya@reddit

That’s why Air Force pilots are best. Right there. And why nobody died in Hudson bird strike.

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collinsl02@reddit

That’s why Air Force pilots are best.

AF pilots definitely get a lot of training, but it's all personal - you get some bad pilots and some good pilots. The AF is much more likely to wash bad pilots out though but it does happen.

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ThatOldMeta@reddit

Sucks for the guy stuck in the belly turret.

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collinsl02@reddit

No one landed/took off in those ball turrets in WW2, in fact they were usually retracted for takeoff/landing IIRC. The gunner got into them for the shortest time possible because it's so uncomfortable.

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Dapper_Translator855@reddit

That pilot pilots

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Waste-Internal-1443@reddit

Alls Cargo in the back ?

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Effect-Kitchen@reddit

That looks painfully expensive. But shoutout to the pilots to keep the nose on the air as long as possible.

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Impressive_Algae4493@reddit

The pilot's control was insane, keeping that massive bird level without nose gear takes serious talent. Makes you wonder how much training goes into handling a worst-case scenario that smoothly.

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Monksdrunk@reddit

mmm tasty PFAS chemicals

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patizone@reddit

Why should there be especially PFAS? What parts do you mean? The foam?

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EggplantCommercial56@reddit

Yeah the Aircraft fire fighting foam has PFAS in it. I never really got the foaming the runway parts, does anyone have any good stories of it actually doing something?

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Brillica@reddit

Civilian ARFF guy here; at least in my part of the world we no longer foam runways. Like, you want to potentially reduce the plane’s ability to brake and control itself in an already atypical landing?

And as you can see in this video, the plane smoked and flamed a little anyways.

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getthedudesdanny@reddit

Yeah. I’m by no means an expert, I literally went to ARFF school because I had a seasonal gig at a mountain airport and everyone full time on airport ops had to go, but even in 2016 we were taught not to foam the runway. I think it’s passed its time.

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Mand125@reddit

Well, in this case you can see the nose of the plane melting and causing flashes of extremely hot material. Having it going through firefighting foam makes it much less likely that the rest of the plane catches fire.

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reddituserperson1122@reddit

I think it’s very much a “if it doesn’t seem to do anything it’s working” type situation.

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WestDuty9038@reddit

Better than dying, fortunately and unfortunately.

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Wooden-Broccoli-7247@reddit

Where are all the emergency vehicles?

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Thebraincellisorange@reddit

on the taxiways waiting for the aircraft to stop.

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WolfThick@reddit

I've actually flown in these backwards the seating arrangement faces the rear I remember landing in saunderstrom and Labrador as cold as it was they opened the back of the plane up . My question is does anybody out there know why he didn't do this since it seems to help slow the blame with that vacuum effect in the rear. Not criticizing cuz I don't know enough to do that just want to understand. From my perspective did an excellent job saving that bird.

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