The ‘radical’ nuclear missile test that made history | CNN (2024)

CNN —

For more than four decades it has ranked among the largest, most useful planes in the Pentagon’s arsenal, but a C-5 Galaxy has never been retired to any museum. That’s about to change.

The behemoth nicknamed Zero-One-Four arrived at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware Wednesday, where it soon will be handed over to the Air Mobility Command Museum. The giant jet with 90014 painted on its tail made history in 1974 when it became the only aircraft ever to drop and ignite a live, Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile.

Yep, that’s correct – it launched the Cold War weapon that was designed to wreak unspeakable nuclear annihilation. Of course, this particular missile was unarmed.

If it seems odd that a plane would unleash a gigantic hammer like a Minuteman – well, it is. These missiles weren’t supposed to launch from airplanes. They were supposed to blast off from underground silos.

NASA's Super Guppy —

NASA's Super Guppy hauls giant cargo ranging from smaller airplanes to components destined for the International Space Station. Click through the gallery for more images of big planes.

Inside the Super Guppy —

The Super Guppy includes a hinged nose that opens at more than a 200-degree angle. Its cargo hold measures 25 feet high, 25 feet wide and 111 feet long. Maximum payload: more than 26 tons.

World's largest plane: Antonov Mriya —

The six-engine Antonov An-225 cargo jet is widely acknowledged as the largest plane in the world. It's been spotted recently in Houston, Texas, Moses Lake, Washington; and over Chicago.

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Boeing's 747 Dreamlifter —

A modified 747, the Dreamlifter was developed by Boeing to ferry giant aircraft assemblies for the 787 Dreamliner. Photographer Paul Carter caught it during takeoff from Paine Field in Everett, Washington.

The Pentagon's 'air freight terminal' —

Billed as the Pentagon's largest and busiest "air freight terminal," Delaware's Dover Air Force Base hosts the 436th Airlift "Eagle" Wing, which flies C-5 cargo jets and other aircraft to more than 100 countries around the globe.

The giants of Dover —

Dover's fleet includes the C-5M Super Galaxy, a four-engine, 65-foot-high behemoth that can tote quite a load: 270,000 pounds, to be exact. This thing has wings spanning 223 feet and 28 wheels to help it land smoothly. Its distinctive T-tail makes it easy to identify.

C-5: Wheels up —

A C-5B departs Massachusetts' Westover Air Reserve Base in this 2007 photo snapped by Paul Carter.

Skyking of military hauling —

The C-5, seen here in Afghanistan, moves entire units of fighting forces and their battle machines such as helicopters, trucks and tanks around the world at jet speeds around 518 mph. Its nose opens the full width and height of the cargo bay for quick, easy loading.

Cargo hold —

The C-5's cargo hold reaches 13.5 feet high. Its length stretches 143 feet, nine inches -- about 23 feet longer than the length of the first flight by the Wright brothers.

C-17 Globemaster III —

Another giant airlift jet stationed at Dover is the C-17 Globemaster III. You can also find this titan at Air Force facilities in Alaska, Mississippi, Hawaii, California, Washington, South Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Oklahoma, according to the Air Force.

The Globemaster co*ckpit —

Unlike the C-5, with its seven-member crew, the Globemaster III flies with a crew of three: a pilot, a co-pilot and a loadmaster.

First deployed in 1993, the Globemaster III is among the Air Force's youngest airlift jets. Boeing is completing work on the final C-17, the Air Force says, which will be delivered later this year. The plane has been featured in Hollywood's "Transformers" and "Iron Man" films.

Largest passenger airplane —

The gigantic four-engine Airbus A380 is the world's largest passenger airplane. It's not too difficult to spot, if you're near its six destination airports in the U.S.: Washington's Dulles, New York's JFK, San Francisco, Los Angeles' LAX, Houston Intercontinental and Miami International.

Longest passenger aircraft —

Measuring 250 feet, Boeing's 747-8 Intercontinental holds the title of world's longest passenger aircraft. Boeing makes them and tests them at its facility in Everett, Washington.

Airplanes: The big ones

“It was radical,” said nuclear weapons expert Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists. “It broke with anything that had been done with ballistic missiles before – or since.” The idea of launching Minutemen via airplanes was an attempt to protect U.S. missiles from being destroyed by enemy missiles, Kristensen said, because the Soviet Union would have had a hard time targeting Minutemen traveling aboard airplanes like the C-5.

With three stages, the Minuteman measured 56 feet and weighed 86,000 pounds. Never before had the C-5 – one of the biggest planes in the world – ever dropped such a heavy load.

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On October 24, 1974, at Utah’s Hill Air Force Base, airmen and crew from manufacturers Lockheed and Boeing, boarded Zero-One-Four.

Among them, Chief Master Sgt. James Sims, who watched the whole thing from the C-5’s cargo hold – the best seat in the house.

“There was inherent danger in it,” said Sims, describing the mission. The Minuteman was attached to a special cradle designed to be released on a track leading out the plane’s rear cargo exit. Parachutes would drag the missile out of the plane and then point it upward. A timer, Sims said, would spark the rocket’s fiery engines.

The risks were significant. If the Minuteman exited the plane incorrectly it could dangerously push the C-5’s nose upward, making it difficult to control. Another risk: the missile could accidentally become wedged in the aircraft’s infrastructure, shifting the plane’s center of gravity and – in a worst-case scenario – trigger a crash.

As the C-5 reached its test range off California about 20,000 feet over the Pacific, its four powerful jet engines were singing their signature whine. With the drop zone only eight minutes away, the huge rear cargo door opened, exposing Sims and his crew mate, Technical Sgt. Elmer Hardin, to the roaring wind.

Soon it was go time. The missile and its cradle were released. Parachutes dragged the 43-ton payload along its track down the 121-foot cargo hold until it toppled off into oblivion. Hardin felt the giant plane begin to tip.

“You did come off the floor a bit,” he told the Air Mobility Command Museum Foundation’s “Hangar Digest” magazine. “It was like dumping a wheelbarrow full of water.”

The chutes tilted the missile vertical as it fell thousands of feet and disappeared into the clouds underneath.

Then, nothing.

For a minute Sims thought something was wrong.

Suddenly from below, Sims saw plumes of smoke and flame. “It came blasting through the clouds and you got a good view of it,” Sims said. It rocketed to 30,000 feet – 10,000 feet above the C-5, as Sims remembers it. “It looked like a missile launch from Cape Canaveral,” he said. It burned for about 25 seconds, he recalled, and then “cascaded into the Pacific Ocean.”

“Everything worked as advertised,” he said. “I was elated. … It was special.”

YouTube has Air Force film of the test

Although the mid-air missile launch worked, the Pentagon never adopted the concept. Skeptics likely would have seen the project as “a little crazy,” Kristensen said, because it was technically very risky and would have been operationally very expensive to implement on a wider, more permanent scale. It was a “wild card dream,” he said.

At the time, the idea wasn’t really outside the box, said Fritz W. Ermarth, a nuclear strategy expert, ex-CIA analyst and former adviser to President Ronald Reagan. Pulling a missile out of an aircraft “on a sled with parachutes was far from rocket science,” Ermarth said. But war planners of the era were expected to invent new options to protect the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal.

Kristensen credited the project to a “sort of Cold War euphoria in those days that spurred people to come up with these sort of ideas.”

Many wonder if the C-5 Minuteman demonstration was simply a stunt intended to show strength at a time when the Soviets were negotiating with Washington over a proposed nuclear arms treaty.

It wasn’t ever officially announced, said Pat O’Brien, an engineer on the project, “but we felt they were trying to use this as a bargaining tool for the SALT II (Strategic Arms Limitation) Talks.”

Retired Air Force crew chief Rodney Moore, who helped maintain Zero-One-Four during its Dover heyday, wanted to go on that mission. He asked to take part, but was turned down. “I was disappointed,” he recalls. Even all these years later, Moore says he still wishes he had pressed harder for permission.

“I loved that airplane,” said Moore.

As its primary crew chief, Moore inspected the aircraft before each flight. He marshaled it to Dover’s runways and then watched it take off. “For a very short period of time, I was a part of that airplane’s career,” Moore says. “And it was a major part of my life.”

Moore, who hasn’t seen Zero-One-Four in 30 years, looks forward to the jet’s dedication ceremony, set for this fall. “I’m going to have some emotions about it,” Moore admits. “I know I’m gonna feel pride.”

“It’s going to be like a reunion with an old friend.”

Journalist Jeff Brown contributed to this report.