Navigating the C-124 Globemaster

<p> The C-124 Globemaster--a U.S. military heavy-lift transport in service 1950 through 1974--barreling down a runway was an awesome sight. The aircraft's four 3800 hp piston engines (the largest ever mass-produced) mounted on its 174-foot wingspan could carry a 69000-pound payload of tanks artillery or other cargo or 200 fully equipped troops at more than 300 mph.</p><p> The flight crew perched three stories above the landing gears in an unpressurized cockpit relied like Magellan on celestial fixes to navigate over oceans. With a world-wide mission delivering troops and materials to such destinations as the Congo Vietnam Thule Greenland and Antarctica the Globemaster lived up to its name and was foundational to what <I>Time</I> magazine publisher Henry Luce termed the American Century.</p><p> Drawing on archives Air Force bases libraries and accident sites and his own recollections as a navigator the author details Cold War confrontations and consequent strategies that emerged after Douglas Aircraft Company delivered the first C-124A to the Military Air Transport Service in 1949.</p>