February 2015 25 runways—so short they are better suited for a small, single-engine Cessna, not an aircraft that is big and strong enough to carry an M1 Abrams tank, the main battle tank of the U.S. Army that weighs in at about 129,000 pounds (58,500 kilograms) empty. The engine exhaust of the C-17 is directed onto large flaps, which extend into the exhaust stream. This allows the C-17 to fly a steep approach at a relatively low landing speed. It’s one of the many innovations engineers with McDonnell Douglas, a Boeing heritage company, designed into the C-17 Globemaster III, the most versatile military airlifter ever built, according to those who fly and take care of it, on the ground and in the air. It also can back up, even on a twodegree slope, using the directed-flow thrust reversers. And because it can back up, a fully loaded C-17 can turn in a small radius, making a 180-degree “star turn” in only 80 feet (25 meters). “It’s awesome. We can land this baby even on dirt,” says Lt. Col. Derek Leckrone, with the 313th Airlift Squadron at McChord, another of the Reserve pilots on the Moses Lake training flight. In April 2005, the same year Leckrone was flying C-17s in and out of Afghanistan, he took part in a much different kind of mission. Two of the McChord airlifters, with crews from active duty Air Force and the Reserve, air-dropped 63 barrels of fuel, specially packaged in 55-gallon (208-liter) drums, to scientists with the National Science Foundation near the North Pole. The C-17s made the drop at 1,000 feet (300 meters) above the ice. It was the first Arctic airdrop by a C-17. Lt. Col. Kevin Welin, operations Photos: (Clockwise from far left) Airmen check a C-17 engine on the flight line at Joint Base Lewis-McChord; Capt. Teycee Merritt, an Air Force Reserve C-17 pilot with the 728th Airlift Squadron, prepares for a flight; U.S. Air Force major command logos on the side of a McChord C-17; a close-up of one of the C-17’s four Pratt & Whitney engines. Bob Ferguson | Boeing
Frontiers February 2015 Issue
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