Douglas C-124 Globemaster II
The Douglas C-124 Globemaster II was the United States Air Force's heavy strategic airlifter of the 1950s and 1960s, developed by the Douglas Aircraft Company from the C-74 Globemaster and first flown on 27 November 1949. Its clamshell nose doors, loading ramps and double-deck cargo hold let it carry tanks, bulldozers and other fully assembled heavy equipment that no other aircraft of its time could move without disassembly. Douglas built 204 C-124As and 243 C-124Cs, and the Air Force bought 448 in all. C-124s flew airlift in Korea and Southeast Asia, resupplied Antarctica, ferried Thor missiles to England and carried nuclear weapons for Strategic Air Command before the last were retired in 1974; the survivors are museum aircraft.
Why It Mattered
The Air Mobility Command Museum describes the C-124 as the first strategic long-range airlifter, and through the 1950s it was the United States Air Force's primary heavy-lift transport, serving the Military Air Transport Service until the C-141 Starlifter arrived. Its distinction was size used well: the Hill Aerospace Museum records that it was the only aircraft of its time able to transport heavy equipment without disassembly. In Korea that made it, in the AMC Museum's words, the only aircraft able to carry many of the Army's vehicles, and it held the same outsize-load niche alongside the C-133 Cargomaster until the C-5A Galaxy became operational.
Design Notes
Douglas developed the C-124 between 1947 and 1949 as a major redesign of its wartime C-74 Globemaster, creating the prototype from a C-74 and applying lessons learned during the Berlin Airlift. The double-deck fuselage opened at the nose through clamshell loading doors and hydraulic ramps, with an elevator under the aft fuselage serving a 77-foot-long cargo compartment fitted with electric overhead cranes that could traverse its whole length. It could handle such bulky cargo as tanks, field guns, bulldozers and trucks — up to 74,000 pounds of cargo in the AMC Museum's accounting — or carry 200 fully equipped troops in its double-decked cabin or 127 litter patients and their attendants. The C-124C added more powerful Pratt & Whitney R-4360-63A Wasp Major radials, wingtip combustion heaters and a weather radar in a nose thimble, and the improvements were later retrofitted to the A models. Crews named it for its behaviour in flight: Hill records that flight crews and passengers gave it the nickname "Old Shakey" for the creaks, groans and shaking that plagued it even in calm air.
Operational History
The first C-124 flew on 27 November 1949, the first operational aircraft were delivered in May 1950, and production ran through May 1955: the AMC Museum itemises 204 C-124As and 243 C-124Cs, while Hill records that the Air Force bought 448 C-124s in all. The type was operational during the Korean War and went on to fly airlift support across the Far East and Southeast Asia; the AMC Museum notes that a round trip from Travis Air Force Base to Tan Son Nhut in South Vietnam took 97 hours. C-124s resupplied Operation Deep Freeze in Antarctica and supported troop build-ups in Europe during the 1961 Berlin Wall Crisis. From 1959 to 1961 they transported Thor missiles across the Atlantic to England, Strategic Air Command squadrons used the type to transport nuclear weapons between air bases, and at Hill Air Force Base the 28th Logistic Support Squadron's primary mission was airlifting nuclear weapons and equipment. The type also helped with refugee evacuation in the Congo and mercy flights to Morocco and Chile. The Globemaster IIs remained in service with the Military Airlift Command until 1970, and with the Alaskan Air Command, the Air National Guard and the Reserves until 1974.
Afterlife
The last Air Force unit to retire the type, the Georgia Air National Guard's 165th Tactical Airlift Group, retired its aircraft in September 1974. The type's flying days ended on 9 October 1986, when a C-124C was flown nonstop from Selfridge Air National Guard Base to McChord Field for the McChord Air Museum, the last recorded flight of a C-124. The survivors are museum aircraft: the AMC Museum at Dover counts its aircraft one of only eight C-124s in existence and the only surviving A-model, and the Hill Aerospace Museum in Utah displays a C-124C it acquired in 1992 for static display.