Navigating The C 124 Globemaster

The C-124 Globemaster--a U.S. military heavy-lift transport in service 1950 through 1974--barreling down a runway was an awesome sight. The aircraft's four 3800 hp piston engines (the largest ever mass-produced), mounted on its 174-foot wingspan, could carry a 69,000-pound payload of tanks, artillery or other cargo, or 200 fully equipped troops, at more than 300 mph. The flight crew, perched three stories above the landing gears in an unpressurized cockpit, relied, like Magellan, on celestial fixes to navigate over oceans. With a world-wide mission delivering troops and materials to such destinations as the Congo, Vietnam, Thule, Greenland and Antarctica, the Globemaster lived up to its name and was foundational to what Time magazine publisher Henry Luce termed the "American Century." Drawing on archives, Air Force bases, libraries and accident sites, and his own recollections as a navigator, the author details Cold War confrontations and consequent strategies that emerged after Douglas Aircraft Company delivered the first C-124A to the Military Air Transport Service in 1949.

The C-124 Globemaster--a U.S. military heavy-lift transport in service 1950 through 1974--barreling down a runway was an awesome sight. The aircraft's four 3800 hp piston engines (the largest ever mass-produced), mounted on its 174-foot wingspan, could carry a 69,000-pound payload of tanks, artillery or other cargo, or 200 fully equipped troops, at more than 300 mph. The flight crew, perched three stories above the landing gears in an unpressurized cockpit, relied, like Magellan, on celestial fixes to navigate over oceans. With a world-wide mission delivering troops and materials to such destinations as the Congo, Vietnam, Thule, Greenland and Antarctica, the Globemaster lived up to its name and was foundational to what Time magazine publisher Henry Luce termed the "American Century." Drawing on archives, Air Force bases, libraries and accident sites, and his own recollections as a navigator, the author details Cold War confrontations and consequent strategies that emerged after Douglas Aircraft Company delivered the first C-124A to the Military Air Transport Service in 1949.

The documentation about the development of air navigation in West Germany after 1945 explains the continuation in the further development of the establishment of military tactical air navigation services units beginning under the military governments of the victorious powers and the succeeding allied occupation forces in Germany. This transportation service of the first decade after the end of the war constitutes the cradle of modern european air traffic control (ATC) as the major part of the overall air navigation services system. It closes with the partial reconstitution of air sovereignty in West Germany (FRG) in 1955 and the end of the supervision on the re-established german federal air navigation system administration (BFS) by the Allied Civil Aviation Board - CAB of HICOM by mid 1956.

Issues for include Annual air transport progress issue.