lockheedc5

There isn't quite enough detail in this photo to nail it down for certain, but this is plausibly (perhaps even probably) a photo from the first flight of the first C-5A, June 30 1968. Only two C-5As ever flew with the instrument nose boom, airframes 0001 (AF66-8303) and 0002 (AF66-8304). There was only one nose boom, and it was used on 0001 from June 30 1968 until the airplane was accidentally destroyed in a flight line fire on October 16, 1970. After that date, the nose boom was transferred to 0002 to complete flight testing. Although this could be either one of those airplanes, also noteworthy is that there is a Lockheed T-33 in the image. There was a T-33 used as a chase plane on the June 30 1968 first flight of airplane 0001. It's not possible to read at the level of resolution in this scanned image, but the original may have enough detail to reveal the identifying numbers. The USAF serial number is of course on the tail, the Lockheed airframe number is dimly visible (but not legible) as a dark smudge just aft of the radome in the grey area of the fuselage. (Nose boom trivia: after C-5A flight testing, the boom was stored for a few decade. It was pulled out for use again on the first C-5M in 2006. The nose boom was -not- used during C-5B flight test.)

The dark upper wing indicates that this airplane has gone through the C-5A wing modification program, but the black radome indicates that it's still equipped with the original Norden Multi Mode radar system. The replacement color weather radar system would likely have been installed during scheduled depot maintenance at Kelly AFB, at which time the rest of the airplane would have been painted in the three-color Euro 1 paint scheme.

We see drums in the cargo hold. I know very little about aviation but it always impressed me that C-5s had drums of military specification hydraulic fluid in the cargo hold. They had to top off the hydraulic systems because of leaks. When I asked a (rightly-proud) C-5 crew member about the drums, he asked what I would expect from an airframe with miles of hydraulic lines.