Lockheed C-5 Galaxy

When the C-5 first flew in 1968 it was the largest aircraft in the world, and for decades nothing else could do its job: swallow two M1 Abrams tanks, six Apache helicopters, or any piece of Army equipment ever made, and fly it across an ocean. The nose hinges up, the tail opens wide, and vehicles drive straight through — loading at both ends simultaneously.

The airframe kneels. Its 28-wheel landing gear can lower the cargo deck to truck-bed height, one of the details that makes a 380-tonne aircraft genuinely usable in the field. The high wing droops visibly at rest — anhedral, the opposite of an airliner's upswept dihedral — and the T-tail stands nearly 20 metres up.

Fifty-two survivors have been rebuilt as the C-5M Super Galaxy, with new GE CF6 engines from the 747 world and modern avionics — good enough that the type has set dozens of records and is planned to serve into the 2040s, an eighty-year career. Its only rival for outsize cargo was the An-124, and at 75.31 metres the Galaxy remains the fifth-longest aircraft ever built.