Originally Posted by
JW411
After ten years of throwing all sorts of stuff out of the back end of an Argosy, I was delighted to learn that the Belfast had no air drop capability.
Going back to the bunks; they were pretty comfortable. I seem to remember that with two crews, a 42-hour crew duty was contemplated. I only ever got involved in part of one of those. Crew A flew from Tengah to Gan whilst Crew B took to the bunks. At top of drop into Gan, Crew B took over and Crew A took to the bunks. Crew B did the turn around at Gan and then flew to top of drop into Masirah when Crew A took over again.
We were supposed to do another swop-over at Akrotiri but to everyone's great relief, there was a slip crew already there so we didn't have to operate the last leg back to Brize.
This was just as well for I, for one, had become uncertain as to whether my ar+e was bored or countersunk. For the life of me, I can't remember why we did such a thing.
The longest flight I can remember in terms of time aloft was one crew flying Masirah to Brize direct and that was something like 15 hours 15 minutes.
My longest in terms of distance was Cold Lake, Alberta to Brize and that was 4303 nms (which I think was a Belfast record). That took us 13 hours 30 minutes.
Good to hear the USAF wasn’t alone with this scurvy idea. It was tried in the early C-5 day’s; crews revolted and never again.
Oil turned out to be the ultimate limit in the C-5, too. KSAV to HCMM, engine running off-load, to Cairo West was about 27-ish hours of engine running and low oil press lights on descent and landing.
GF