The last two C-141 StarLifters assigned to the 305th Air Mobility Wing at McGuire AFB, New Jersey, were retired in ceremonies 16 September, closing the aircraft's thirty-nine-year career with the active duty US Air Force. The C-141, the world's first jet transport, served as the backbone of strategic airlift for the Air Force since entering service.
The StarLifter began its operational career in August 1965 with missions to Vietnam. It could carry either 138 troops or approximately 62,000 pounds of cargo. And it cut the travel time from Travis AFB, California, to Tan Son Nhut AB, South Vietnam, in half compared with its predecessor, the piston-powered C-124. On return trips, the C-141A could carry up to eighty litters plus attendants on medevac flights. Some 6,000 medevac flights were flown on StarLifters from 1965 until 1972.
The Air Force, recognizing the C-141 often filled up well before reaching max cargo capacity, increased usable volume almost seventy-five percent in 270 C-141 aircraft by adding two plugs in the fuselage. The first modified aircraft, designated C-141B, was flown in 1977. It could carry 200 troops, 155 paratroops, 103 litters and fourteen attendants, or 68,725 pounds of total cargo.
StarLifters were recently used to fly suspected terrorists to the detainment facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and have borne the brunt of aeromedical evacuation flights from the Middle East, and later Iraq, since Operation Iraqi Freedom began in 2003.
More than thirty squadrons with ten active duty Air Force, Air National Guard, and Air Force Reserve Command units flew the aircraft. The C-141 fleet has accumulated more than 10.6 million flight hours.
First flight of the first C-141A occurred at Lockheed Georgia Company in Marietta on 17 December 1963 — the sixtieth anniversary of the Wright Brothers' first powered flight. The first C-141A for McGuire AFB, nicknamed Garden State Airlifter, was delivered 8 August 1967. That aircraft, now a C-141B, will remain at the base as a static display. Before ceasing operations at McGuire, the StarLifters were flown by active duty crews from the 6th Airlift Squadron and Air Force Reserve Command crews from the 514th AMW, the Reserve Associate unit. Both will convert to the C-17 airlifter.
The C-141 will remain active at two Air Force Reserve Command units, the 452nd AMW at March ARB, California, and the 445th Airlift Wing at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, until summer 2006. Of the total 285 StarLifters built between 1963 and 1968, twenty aircraft remain in service.
Jeff Rhodes is the associate editor of Code One.
