C5-A Galaxy | Davis-Monthan Air Force Base

The C5-A Galaxy was quite possibly my favorite of the planes I photographed when I visited AMARG; I assume it is named that because one of them is approximately as large as a star cluster. The C5 is one of the biggest military aircraft in the world: as tall as a 5-6 story building (65 ft.), 247 ft. long with a 222 ft. wingspan, and 380,000 pounds without any cargo and capable of a maximum takeoff weight of nearly a million pounds (840,000 to be exact). My guide informed me that they were capable of carrying six Greyhound buses in a line three long and two wide. One of these behemoths alone is so large as to be hard to comprehend, but the ghost formation sitting in the desert is mind-boggling. I think if I had the time, I could have spent an entire day in this section alone.
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Photograph taken at AMARG, the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, AZ. Photograph and text by Matthew Christopher of Abandoned America