- Hi, I'm Tracy LaTourette, Colorado's First Lady Fighter Pilot.

Call sign, Jackie'O.

We're here at Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum in Denver, Colorado.

We're getting an inside look at the Super Guppy!

The origins of the Super Guppy trace back to the 1960s, a time of rapid innovation in the space race.

- We choose to go to the Moon in this decade, and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

- As a kid, I watched Apollo land on the Moon.

It's just amazing to me that I'm allowed to fly an airplane that is also carrying spacecraft that will go to the Moon.

- I knew this thing was big, but in person, it's enormous.

- Flying this airplane for the first time can be a handful.

- We're burning down the runway, and I see an issue with one of our engines, I'll call "Abort, abort!"

- Five Super Guppys were built, and today, this is the only one still flying.

It's time to go "Behind the Wings"!

Ray, you're the pilot of this massive Super Guppy.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got here?

- Basically, I'm the Chief Pilot and I'm also in charge of all aviation operations at the center.

- This is one of the most unusual aircraft I've ever seen.

Can you introduce us to the Super Guppy?

- The Super Guppy was designed for oversized cargo.

Like a lot of airplanes, it's big, but it just can't carry the weight that maybe a military transport could.

So we talk about oversized aerospace cargo, things like spacecraft and rockets, things that are large but relatively lightweight for their size.

- Big, very important cargo, that's what you're carrying.

No pressure.

- No pressure at all.

I actually carried a $2 billion spacecraft in this Super Guppy one time, and I had to sign for it, so we were very careful.

- I hope you got it there in one piece.

- I did.

- So clearly, nobody's getting this kind of aircraft straight out of pilot training.

It looks like it takes a lot of experience to fly.

I can only imagine.

You must be avoiding the crosswinds like the plague in this thing.

- Yeah, we have to be very careful about the weather.

It's got a lower crosswind limit than a lot of other airplanes because of the huge side area of the aircraft.

And certainly, we have to stay out of icing because there's a lot of the airplane that doesn't have any anti-icing or de-icing capability.

- So it's kind of like the Frankenstein of all airplanes, with pieces and parts from Air Force, Navy platforms all combined to create the Super Guppy?

- Exactly, they pulled things off the shelf to make this aircraft.

It's got parts from various aircraft, but it's a pretty neat airplane.

- We're going to walk around and, yes, we're going to see it fly.

But first, let's find out how this unique aircraft came to be in the first place.

The first large airplane and the first multi-engine airplane was built by Igor Sikorsky in 1913 when Sikorsky was still living in Russia.

Now we know Sikorsky for helicopters, but he started out building airplanes.

The Sikorsky S-21 was so big that a lot of people felt it could never leave the ground.

It was huge for 1913, about the size of a classic DC-3 that would come along more than 20 years later.

Airplanes got larger and faster as aviation technology developed, but so did the loads they could carry.

By the end of World War II, Boeing B-29 bombers could carry 10 tons at about 300 miles per hour.

After the war, Boeing made an airliner based on the B-29.

The Stratocruiser was a luxurious airliner that carried up to 114 passengers in smooth, pressurized comfort at altitudes that stayed above most of the turbulence and weather.

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy made the bold claim to land an American on the Moon by the end of the decade.

- We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

- But an aircraft big enough to transport Saturn V rocket components had never been built.

So the engineers at Aero Spacelines got together to build the largest aircraft the world had ever seen.

Take us back to the beginning.

What was the need for this kind of aircraft to be developed in the first place?

- We started to put together a space program, and there was a booster that was gonna take people to the Moon, called the Apollo Saturn V. Parts of the Saturn V were actually built in California, and to get those parts to Florida, they had to go through the Panama Canal.

As part of that, they would actually take them up to Mississippi, to Huntsville, Alabama, do a test firing of the engine and then put it back on the barge to continue the journey to Kennedy Space Center.

As this process went along, we realized that it was taking too long and if we couldn't shorten the process, we would never get to the Moon by 1970.

- Then one simple but brilliant idea changed the course of history.

A California Air National Guard pilot named Jack Conroy had the idea of expanding the fuselage of a Boeing Stratocruiser so it could carry the third stage of the Saturn Moon rocket, which was 18 feet in diameter and 40 feet long.

They christened this prototype the Pregnant Guppy, named for its signature bulging fuselage.

Besides the Saturn S-IV upper stage, the Pregnant Guppy could fly other large rocket components and oversized cargo.

One of the first people to ever fly the Pregnant Guppy was Test Pilot Clay Lacy.

- Aviation's been great to me.

I've seldom met an airplane I didn't like.

I had a great time flying jet fighters and everything.

Great people in the National Guard.

First person I practically met was Jack Conroy.

He had more flying time than anybody in the Guard.

He had 10,000 hours.

Conroy became, you know, one of my very best friends and we did a lot of things.

We were flying C-97s at that time.

A guy had proposed a big airplane to carry things for NASA.

And Jack started building the Guppy at Van Nuys Airport.

You could tell how much money he had by the sound of the rivet guns.

Normally, it would just be (mimics the sound of a rivet gun) Just busy as heck.

When things would get down a little bit with money, you hear (mimics slower rivet gun noise) - The Pregnant Guppy was so big, many people at the time doubted the unusual design would even fly.

- Jack asked me to fly with him the first flight.

There were people predicting bad things that it just would hardly fly, because of too much drag.

First time we take off from Van Nuys, the city had gotten police stationed all over the valley and around.

And we flew it to Mojave and landed.

And then next day, I picked it up with another friend of mine in the Guard, and we did some testing to be sure it was really okay and safe to fly.

The airport wasn't crazy about it, the FAA wasn't, but it just immediately was one of the very most important things for the space program.

But then we flew down to see Wernher von Braun, and he'd been up here twice while it was being built.

- We have been given the scientific knowledge, the technical ability, and the materials to pursue the exploration of the universe.

- He liked the idea, you know, for sure.

Could see how much time it could save him.

Because they were just getting into the Apollo program.

It was being built in California.

But they were gonna ship it through the Panama Canal.

It took 30 days, and the Guppy could fly down in two days.

- For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the Moon, and to the planets beyond.

(audience applauding and cheering) - They would never have done it if they had to ship everything by land.

About three years later they made the Super Guppy.

It was a very innovative and important airplane.

- The idea worked so well that Conroy's company, Aero Spacelines, built an even larger version that became the Super Guppy.

The radial piston engines were replaced with turbo props, and the Super Guppy could carry loads up to 25 feet in diameter.

There was enough demand for hauling large items, that Aero Spacelines built a second operational Super Guppy in the 1970s.

So without the Guppy, Apollo may have never launched in time.

- That's exactly right, Tracy.

If we had not used the Guppy series of aircraft to move these large aerospace vehicles over the air rather than by barge or some other way, we would not have made it to the Moon by 1970.

- By July 16th, 1969, with the help of the Super Guppy, Apollo 11 was ready to launch the first human to set foot on the Moon.

- [Mission Control] T minus 15 seconds.

Guidance is internal.

Ignition sequence start.

Six, five, four, three, two, one, zero.

All engines running.

- At 9:32 AM, the Saturn V's giant engines sent the Apollo capsule and its crew on a course to make history.

With millions of people around the world watching, Mission Control gives the go for landing.

- CAPCOM, we're go for landing.

- [Mission Control] Eagle.

Houston.

You're a go for landing.

Over.

- [Neil Armstrong] Tranquility Base here.

The Eagle has landed.

That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

- Apollo 11 was a big win for America, but it also transcended nationalism.

It was a step forward for all of humanity into the cosmos.

A step made possible in part, by a strange looking aircraft that would go on to enable many more chapters of space exploration.

Starting with Apollo, what are some of the interesting things that you guys have carried in the Guppy?

- Since Apollo, we've carried all the parts of the Space Station that were manufactured in the United States, from their point of manufacture to Kennedy Space Center for launch on the Space Shuttle.

We've also carried parts of the Space Launch System, the newest booster rocket that will go to the Moon, and we've carried the Artemis capsule that recently went to the Moon.

Aside from all our space missions, we also do a lot of work for the Department of Defense.

We can carry an entire aircraft inside the Super Guppy.

For example, we've carried an F-14 Tomcat on one mission.

We've also carried multiple T-38s to move them from point A to point B to get work done.

So it can carry quite a large range of aerospace cargo.

- That's incredible.

60 years later, the Guppy is still making history.

It's easy to focus on the pilots, I mean, that's what we do, but it really takes an entire team to keep this thing flying.

- It goes from our mechanics who work long hours keeping a 70+ year old airplane flying, to our engineers who design new systems and upgrade systems over time, to the flight engineers who actually manage a good part of the aircraft as we fly along.

The pilots in my mind, are almost a small part of the entire operation.

- This aircraft is one of a kind and more than 60 years old.

I can only imagine the special team it takes to maintain this aircraft.

- So there are some very old parts on it, but the actual Guppy, this Guppy itself was built in the mid-80s.

There's actually only four of us that work on this on a regular basis, and we're all maintainers first, but we each have our own individual specialties, so it does take quite a bit to keep it flying.

- Some of these parts have got to be pretty old.

How do you replace them?

- Some of these parts are really old.

In fact, we have some components that has a vacuum tube on it.

So it is a Frankenstein, where we get parts from the different aircrafts that it was built from, but there are some parts that are Guppy specific.

Like we have our hinge for our nose that it had cracked at one point, and we actually had to send it out, get it scanned, so we could replace it.

So a lot of stuff we have to just make in-house.

- This is considered a prototype aircraft, with parts from so many different kinds of airplanes.

What are the special challenges as a maintainer?

- Since it is so many different aircraft, we have a whole bunch of different technical manuals that we have to go through.

I've spent hours sometimes, trying to find one little answer.

- The aircraft is great.

But Greg, what does it really mean to be part of a team that's gonna get us back to the Moon after all these years?

- I have probably one of the most unique jobs in the world 'cause nobody else can say that they work on the Super Guppy except for three other people, to move everything around the country as it's getting built.

It's pretty cool to see everything that goes into the Guppy.

- Ray, there's nothing ordinary that I see about this aircraft.

Can we do a walk around and look closer?

- Sure.

Let's have a look.

- All right.

This is one of the most unusual looking noses of an aircraft I've ever seen.

What are we looking at here?

- Well, we're looking at the cockpit.

It's actually the cockpit of a KC-97, which is what the Super Guppy was made from.

When you look inside, it's very much 1950s technology, and if you saw old pictures of the KC-97, it would look exactly the same.

And one way to think about the Guppy is it's a mix of a lot of different aircraft.

The KC-97, like I mentioned, but also the 707 nose gear, the C-130 propellers, the P-3 Orion engines, and a lot of this airplane is actually hand-built.

- One more thing where we're at the front, the landing gear.

What makes it so unique?

- The original aircraft, the KC-97, had a different nose landing gear.

This nose landing gear is actually off a Boeing 707 Jetliner.

They did that to allow the proper clearances to get the loads on board, and it was a heavier duty landing gear.

- So this landing gear doesn't just help land the plane, it's also an integral part of how you load the aircraft.

- That's right, Tracy.

This nose landing gear also helps us open the nose.

When we open the nose, it opens from the front and we have to turn the landing gear 30 degrees to allow it to fully open.

- So they had to put it on backwards?

- They did put it on backwards, yep.

- The way this nose swings open is one of the most impressive things I've ever seen.

Let's go take a look at the engines.

So Ray, you have four C-130 prop.

An actual C-130 flies with four props, but this aircraft is way bigger.

How on earth do you make that happen?

- The C-130 props were selected because they're very good at carrying a large load on them.

As you can see, they're very wide cord, very big props, and they work great on the Guppy.

We use four engines from a Navy P-3 Orion.

They're the same engines that are used on the C-130 but they're upside down.

The reason why they did that is to get the proper clearance between the propeller and the ground, and also to get it away from the fuselage.

So these engines have a system that allow us to get high power when it's hot and high altitude conditions.

We use something called water methanol.

It's a mixture of methanol and distilled water that we can put into the engine to cool it, and allow us to get higher temperatures and higher power settings out of the aircraft.

- Wow, that is a unique way to improve aircraft performance.

- For a certain set of conditions, the water methanol will allow us to get more power outta the aircraft, so we can certainly take off on a shorter runway.

One thing, Tracy, I'd like to point out is the original wing on the KC-97 actually started right here.

This section was added to allow proper clearance between the number two and three engines in the fuselage.

- With this aircraft so old, how on earth do you keep parts in stock?

- We don't have a lot of parts on the shelf for this aircraft.

These tires, for example, actually come from a B-52.

- So the tires are B-52 tires.

What about the brakes?

- The brakes on the aircraft are original.

They're called expander drum brakes.

Unlike more modern airplanes that use disc brakes, these have a drum that actually expands out and allows the airplane to stop.

- Ray, this looks a lot like B-29 landing gear.

- The KC-97 is actually an offshoot of the B-29, and these outer wing panels and landing gear are exactly the same as a B-29.

- This aircraft has such a big vertical component.

How does it handle when it's fully loaded?

- If we have a cargo load that's up high inside the airplane, we have to be very careful with it.

Think of it this way, every aircraft has a longitudinal center of gravity.

We also have a vertical center of gravity.

And above a certain point, we're limited to how much angle of bank we can use when we wanna make a turn.

- You carry some really unusual cargo back here.

What are some of the considerations in getting it all to fit?

- If we have a cargo that's very wide, we have to actually get it up off the floor to take advantage of the fat part of the fuselage.

We use a platform which we call Dunnage, that'll actually get it up off the floor and get it into that wide section.

Every payload is unique, so every platform is unique to that payload.

- So that's the exterior of the aircraft, but we know the real magic happens in the flight deck.

As we head inside, I can't help but notice the flight control cables.

So Ray, it's pretty unique to be able to see the flight control cables exposed like this, and none of 'em look like they're exactly the same.

- No, they're not the same.

Because the nose opens up, we have to disconnect all these flight control cables before we open the nose.

And the idea is that we take this turnbuckle, slide it up here and clamp it down to keep tension on the aft part of the cable, and that allows us to disconnect the forward part of the cable.

- So instead of fly-by-wire like my old F-16, you have fly-by-cable.

- Not only do we not have fly-by-wire, but we don't even have an autopilot on this aircraft.

The pilot and copilot swap back and forth about every 45 minutes, taking turns flying the aircraft.

- So no autopilot, but you do have two pilots and the flight engineer up there on the flight deck.

Let's go take a look.

Ray, this is great.

We finally made it to the cockpit, to the flight deck of this massive airplane.

This aircraft has such an unusual shape.

How does that affect the handling characteristics of the aircraft?

- It takes all your strength to move the airplane around, there are no hydraulically boosted controls, and you're in here using muscle power to move the airplane around the sky.

Takeoff speeds and landing speeds, of course, vary by the weight of the airplane.

Typically, the takeoff speed will be about 130 to 140 knots, and landing speeds will be about 120 to maybe 130 knots.

- All right, from one pilot to another, what's the hardest thing about flying the Super Guppy?

- Yeah, certainly the landings are the biggest challenge.

Any kind of crosswind with a large side area really makes this airplane a handful.

The rudder is actually pretty small for the size of the aircraft.

And the way the air flows around the fuselage, it doesn't work on the rudder quite as well as it does with most airplanes.

So yeah, any crosswind is a handful.

Now, we can work with the flight engineer in pretty high crosswinds to actually what they call fan the motors.

So we will adjust the throttles in such a way that it helps create that yaw that we need to counteract any crosswind.

- It's incredible.

I've never seen a flight deck like this.

I see all these steam gauges, which is not surprising.

But what did catch my eye is that there's not that many engine gauges for your four pack of motors out there.

- As the pilots, we only have a minimal number of gauges up here.

Basically, the engine temperatures and then the torque being put out by the prop and also the RPM.

Most of the gauges that are used to control the engines, control the electrical system, everything else, is actually back in the flight engineer's station.

We almost like to call the flight engineer the king of the cockpit because they are really the one controlling most of the systems of the airplane.

- Heavy aircraft have largely gone to a two person cockpit.

But on the Super Guppy, the flight engineer has not been replaced by the microchip.

- [Flight Engineer] Okay, we're set up on three.

- Nelson, tell us how you work as part of the team to fly the Super Guppy.

- Well, this airplane is unique where the pilot really does not touch the throttles at all.

The engineer sets power setting throughout.

So that's one important aspect of my job.

Communication is a must.

The pilot would call, you know, torque 5, torque 10, but at times, the pilot would call just a little more power, a little less power.

Okay, what is a little more power to this pilot?

- Nelson, you've got a lot going on at your workstation here.

Can you run us through some of what you're looking at?

- We call this our engine stack.

The top gauges are fuel flow, TIT, and torque, which is our power setting.

Our RPM, our oil pressures, and oil temperature, and oil.

And pilots, as they're flying the airplane, they really don't have the time 'cause it's such a handful of an airplane, to look at the gauges to see specifically what the engines are doing.

We're burning down the runway and I see an issue with one of our engines, I'll call "Abort, abort!"

And will run the procedures to get that engine outta the way and abort the take off.

Another important aspect of my job is performance.

Because the airplane is a experimental airplane, there's a huge drag index on the airplane, so we don't have computers to compute performance, so the flight engineer computes performance all by hand.

There are literally charts that we would go in by hand, to compute all the numbers.

What power setting do we need?

We also compute optical clearance.

You know, are we able to clear this mountain way out there being that we weigh 165,000 pounds?

I would go in and yep, we can clear that mountain at our given weight.

A flight engineer on this airplane is absolutely critical to keep it flying.

- Stay in school, kids, because math is involved in flying.

Today, a big part of the Super Guppy's mission is transporting components for NASA's Artemis program, which aims to put humans back on the Moon.

This time, to stay.

With so many Artemis missions on the horizon, how deep is your training pipeline at this point?

- We're always upgrading pilots into the aircraft.

Pilot training is all done in-house.

There are no simulators for the Guppy.

We do use a P-3 Orion simulator to practice some of the emergency procedures, but the cockpit is different enough that it doesn't really translate well to this airplane.

We do have our own ground school, our flight engineers teach the ground school, and then we will take the new pilot out and actually perform all the training in the aircraft.

Flying this airplane for the first time can be a handful, so we start out pretty basic, you know, just up and away, straight level, basic turns, things like that.

But over time, we start to add approaches and takeoffs which are much harder to do unless you have some background in it.

For the new pilots, the actual missions are the best type of training.

Once you get on a mission, your perspective really changes on how to operate the airplane.

You know, training is an artificial environment, right?

You don't necessarily always just go out and do landings, for example.

But when you get a load on the back of the airplane and it handles the way it does with a load on board and you're having to think about climbs, descents, working with air traffic control, it really does do a lot more training than just our basic training flights.

- This is the part I've been waiting for!

It's time to fly.

(flight engineer speaking indistinctly over radio) - For the Guppy, believe it or not, the best cruise speed is as fast as you can go, so we will cruise about 200 knots indicated.

Our red line is 211 knots, and we bump up against that red line, we'll get a warning that we're going too fast and we'll have to slow down.

So we run a little bit under red line, but we try to go as fast as we can.

The missions that we fly are missions that are important to the nation.

You're moving space cargo that is worth billions of dollars and it's the hard work of thousands of people, so you always take that into consideration whenever you're planning a mission and whenever you're actually doing the mission.

- It's incredible to see us come full circle from Apollo to Artemis, and back to the Moon again.

How does it feel to be such an integral part of that?

- As a kid, I watched Apollo land on the Moon.

Now, it's just amazing to me that I'm allowed to fly an airplane that is also carrying spacecraft that will go to the Moon.

And just for me, that is a full circle of just experience.

This is a national asset and we recognize that, and we take care of it like it is.

- What does the future hold for the Super Guppy?

- We're planning to fly the Guppy for at least another 10 years, but we are looking at the Beluga, which is similar in design, not as big.

We're always gonna have that requirement to move oversize pieces of cargo, if not the Guppy, something very similar.

It sits really strong with me to be a part of the Artemis.

We are going to finally get a woman on the Moon, and a man or a woman of color on the Moon.

It is a time to get excited.

Once we go there, we're gonna stay.

And then from the Moon, we're going to Mars.

- A variety of big cargo jets have mostly replaced the Super Guppys, including the Airbus Beluga, the Boeing Dreamlifter, and the Russian Antonov 124 and 225.

In this rapidly changing world of aviation technology, the Super Guppy is still relevant today.

We'll see you next time on "Behind the Wings"!

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