If there are people, equipment, or supplies in the US Air Force that need to be moved from one place to another, chances are the Air Mobility Command is on it.
One of the Air Force’s major commands, or MAJCOMs, the Air Mobility Command was activated in 1992 and serves four core missions: airlifting, air refueling, air mobility support, and aeromedical evacuation.
The Air Mobility Command Museum, located on Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, displays over 35 aircraft that carried out these missions.
“All the cargo planes and inflight refuelers, humanitarian, medevac, presidential support — all that stuff falls under AMC,” Michael Hurlburt, operations manager at the Air Mobility Command Museum, told Business Insider.
I visited the Air Mobility Command Museum in May. Here are the coolest things I saw.
The Air Mobility Command Museum is located on Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.
Even though it’s on an active base, the museum has its own entrance and is open to the public. Admission is free.
My first stop at the museum was the cab of Dover Air Force Base’s old air traffic control tower.
The 103-foot-tall air traffic control tower, in service from 1956 to 2009, was staffed 24 hours a day.
By the 2000s, the aging tower was operating near its capacity, handling over 40,000 operations each year. A new $16.2 million tower with improved equipment and increased capabilities was completed in 2009, and the old one was turned into a museum display.
The tower exhibit, which is 39 feet tall, overlooked the museum’s outdoor display of historical aircraft and provided views of the active base in the distance.
A case at the bottom of the stairs displayed the key to the Space Shuttle Discovery.
Dover Air Force Base was an alternate landing site for the space shuttle.
“The fire department here at Dover kept that on hand all the time just to help get the astronauts out if they ever landed here, but they never did,” Hurlburt said of the key, which opened the shuttle’s hatch.
The actual Space Shuttle Discovery is displayed at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia.
This VC-9C flew as Air Force One and Air Force Two during multiple presidencies.
The VC-9C, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32, primarily served as the vice presidential plane from 1975 to 2011. It also transported other VIP passengers, including first ladies and Cabinet members.
It occasionally flew as Air Force One when Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush needed a smaller aircraft.
Measuring 119 feet and 5 inches long with a wingspan of 93 feet and 5 inches, the plane featured a communications compartment and a spacious stateroom with a fold-out couch.
The C-141B Starlifter, known as the “workhorse” of the US Air Force, carried troops, vehicles, and cargo from the Vietnam War through Operation Iraqi Freedom.
C-141 Starlifters operated from 1965 to 2006, when they were replaced by the C-17 Globemaster III. The C-141B could carry up to 68,000 pounds of cargo, including up to 13 290-pound 463L pallets, and fly at up to 500 miles per hour.
I also got to see a C-130 Hercules, the military aircraft with the longest continuous production run in history.
Dozens of countries use the C-130 to transport cargo, troops, and humanitarian aid, as well as to conduct aeromedical evacuations, natural disaster relief, and aerial firefighting. They can also be configured as gunships and outfitted with skis to land in icy conditions. It’s no wonder that Lockheed Martin has been building C-130s for over 70 years.
The Air Mobility Command Museum is the only place in the world with a C-5A Galaxy, the largest aircraft in the US Air Force, on permanent public display.
C-5s are strategic lifters that haul tanks, missiles, helicopters, and other cargo.
The C-5A Galaxy, which entered service in 1970, measures 247 feet long and has a wingspan of over 222 feet. It could carry enormous amounts of weight — up to 264,440 pounds of cargo plus 73 passengers. There’s room for seven UH-1 Huey helicopters, or two M-1A1 Abrams tanks.
The museum’s C-5A Galaxy was also the first and only aircraft to launch an ICBM in flight.
The C-5A was retired in 2017 and modernized into the C-5M Super Galaxy and other C-5 models.
Before the C-5A Galaxy, there was the C-133B Cargomaster, the Air Force’s largest turboprop aircraft built to carry missiles.
The cargo compartment of the C-133B Cargomaster measures 13,000 cubic feet and could hold 110,000 pounds of cargo.
At 97 feet and 4 inches long, it was also large enough to transport fully assembled Thor, Jupiter, or Atlas ballistic missiles.
The museum showed off the plane’s spacious cargo bay by displaying a 1972 Ford Custom used by wing commanders at Charleston Air Force Base and a 1956 International Harvester fire truck parked inside the aircraft.
The C-133B Cargomaster entered service in 1957 and retired in 1971. It was replaced by the C-5A Galaxy.
My tour of a KC-10A Extender, an aerial refueling aircraft, offered a rare view of a refueling operator station.
KC-10A Extenders could transfer up to 56,154 gallons of fuel to aircraft such as bombers, fighter jets, and cargo planes while flying in midair.
KC-10s entered service in the Air Force in 1981, and the last one retired in 2024. The Air Mobility Command Museum exhibits the first KC-10A Extender ever built.
Inside the plane, visitors can see the joystick used to maneuver the extended gas pump, known as a boom, at the refueling operator station.
The museum had an older version of a KC-135, which is still in use in the Air Force as an aerial refueling aircraft.
The KC-135E Stratotanker could carry 200,000 pounds of transferable fuel. It could also airlift 83,000 lbs of cargo, or up to 80 passengers. Like the KC-10A Extender, the KC-135E Stratotanker featured a boom for transferring fuel to other aircraft in flight.
The last KC-135E Stratotanker was retired in 2009, but the Air Force still uses modernized versions such as the KC-135R and KC-135T that are more fuel-efficient and less expensive to operate.
Each KC-135E Stratotanker costs $39.6 million, according to the Air Force.
I wasn’t allowed to photograph some of the most fascinating things I saw.
Dover Air Force Base houses the 436th Airlift Wing, which operates C-5M Super Galaxy and C-17 Globemaster III airlifters, and Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations, which handles the dignified transfers of fallen service members.
The parking lot featured signs forbidding photos and videos of the nearby base — an indication of how closely the museum is connected to today’s military.
Read the original article on Business Insider
The post I visited an Air Force museum on an active base. Here are the most fascinating things I saw. appeared first on Business Insider.
