Remembering An Unsung Giant

A comprehensive history of the Douglas C-133 Cargomaster transport aircraft: historical, political, technical, military and human. Profusely illustrated.

In 1962, a unique transport aircraft was built from the parts of 27 Boeing B-377 airliners to provide NASA a means of transporting rocket boosters. With an interior the size of a gymnasium, "The Pregnant Guppy" was the first of six enormous cargo planes built by Aero Spacelines and two built by Union de Transport Aeriens. More than half a century later, the last Super Guppy is still in active service with NASA and the design concept has been applied to next-generation transports. This comprehensive history of expanded fuselage aircraft begins in the 1940s with the military's need for a long-range transport. The author examines the development of competing designs by Boeing, Convair and Douglas, and the many challenges and catastrophic failures. Behind-the-scenes maneuvers of financiers, corporate raiders, mobsters and other nefarious characters provide an inside look at aviation development from the drawing board to the scrap yard.

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 tales convey the individual and collective search for equality in education, housing, and employment; struggles against racism; participation in unions and the civil rights movement; and pain and loss that resulted from racial discrimination. By featuring the histories of blacks living in Detroit during the first six decades of the century, this unique oral history contributes immeasurably to our understanding of the development of the city. Arranged chronologically, the book is divided into decades representing significant periods of history in Detroit and in the nation. The period of 1918 to 1927 was marked by mass migration to Detroit, while the country was in the throes of the depression from 1928 to 1937. From 1938 to 1947, World War II and the 1943 race riot profoundly affected the lives of Detroiters. In the decade from 1948 to 1957 the beginnings of civil unrest became apparent.

ÒIÕm happy to have been a part of history, however small my role was.Ó The words of Wardiman Djojonegoro reveal Indonesian history the way only a man who worked alongside Ali Sadikin, B. J. Habibie and Soeharto can. The modest 85-year-old, a former education minister and current foundation chairman at the Habibie Center, recalls the younger days of a Òbig villageÓ Jakarta and says it was the countryÕs third president who taught him the keys to national development. This is what Peter Zack, a reporter for the Jakarta Globe, wrote on 18 April 2009. In the present English translation of his 2014 memoir, Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: Reminiscences of Working with Three Great Indonesians, 1966Ð1998, Wardiman invites us to take a walk down memory lane and in so doing he tells us something about his life and career, as well as sharing his thoughts on a lifetime of public service under three great Indonesians. He also tells us about his secrets of how to age gracefully and his thoughts on the future of Indonesian education. The bookÕs core theme can be summed up in his reply to a high school student who asked him about the key to his lifetime success: ÒWherever you are placed, do your best!Ó