>> [MUSIC] The C-5 came along about the time
that the country was getting very
dissatisfied with the Vietnam War.
So if you're a military company or program,
in general, the public did not
like you because you were not doing good.
And the newspapers reported it that way too,
since they have to sell newspapers,
they sold it to what people want to read.
C-5 came along in
the early '60s when I did the early conceptual studies,
and I won't go into detail except
that they led to our successful bid
and award in September '65,
and we started the program then.
Now, this is an interesting situation in
that as the design progressed, the weight goes up.
It always does because you make
optimistic assumptions to get
a proposal. Boeing did the same thing.
So as the design progressed,
you need more thrust at
some point to maintain the performance.
So when we got to the point we needed more thrust,
we went to General Electric,
who was the engine manufacturer
and told them the problem and said,
we've been expecting you because they had been
working with airplane manufacturers for a long time.
We can give you additional thrust
you want for five million dollars.
We said, good. The chairman of the board,
Dan Hall said, "We'll do that."
So we then went to the Air Force office,
and they said, no way.
Your contract specifies the equipped weight empty,
and we're not going to let you let the weight go up,
even though we're going to maintain all the performance.
We went to the secretary of
the Air Force and he said no way.
I might note that there's
a reason for the Air Force's position.
Earlier, they wore the TFX,
a swept wing fighter contractor conveyor James Faught.
As that design progressed,
the weight kept going up,
and the Air Force let them increase the weight.
Whereupon Boeing said, well,
if you'd let us do that,
we would have turned out a better airplane,
so it's a big flap.
In fact, most of my friends in the Pentagon spent
most of the year over on Capitol Hill.
He said we're not ever going to do that again.
So we're going to fix everything to start with.
So their position is understandable.
The results were not nearly as good.
So we had to reduce the weight of the airplane in ways
that manufacturing it just drove them
mad to try to get every ounce of weight out of it.
The result was, of course,
that the fatigue life was reduced. [MUSIC]