Westover crews have been flying different versions of the C-5 Galaxy jet for 30 years.
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CHICOPEE - As the last C-5B Galaxy jet in the U.S. Air Force fleet took off from Westover Air Reserve Base on Wednesday and headed to Georgia for a complete upgrade, Lt. Col Jordan Murphy lamented the departure.
"A lot of us who are airplane folks are going to miss the TF39 engine whine," said Murphy, the 439th Airlift Wing Maintenance Squad commander.
The Westover jet is the last one in the Air Force that will get a new engine, replacing the older TF39 one. The distinctive whine may be gone, but so will be a lot of maintenance problems that come with older engines, which occasionally cause mission plans to be changed, delayed or scrapped because there is a mechanical problem, Murphy said.
Several years ago Department of Defense officials embarked on a program to upgrade the Air Force's entire fleet of C-5 cargo jets, which are the largest planes made in the country, said Master Sgt. Andrew Biscoe, public relations technician.
The 49 C-5B models, which were built in the 1980s, are all being upgraded with new engines and wiring. They will see improvements and repairs to the exterior and interior air frame of the plane and eventually will also see cabin overhauls including new seats, Murphy said. At the end of the process they'll be called C-5M Super Galaxies.
The cost of the project is $90 million per plane. The major work is being done at the Lockheed Martin plant in Marietta, Georgia. The plane will then head to New York where the upgrades to the cabin and cockpit will be made, he said.
At the same time, the oldest C-5A models, which were built in the late 1960s and early 1970s, are being retired. The exception is two original C-5As that had been converted to carry more equipment and dubbed C-5Cs. They are also getting new engines, he said.
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At the height of the construction of the C-5s there were about 127, but several were shot down or destroyed in crashes. There are about 70 remaining C-5As that will be retired, Biscoe said.
The project to upgrade the jets is called Reliability, Enhancement and Re-engineering, Murphy said.
"Reliability is a big part of it," he said. "They break far less often. We have started to see reliability has fallen below acceptable" with the older planes.
But there are other advantages as well. The engines will be far more fuel-efficient so the jets will be able to carry even larger, heavier loads or will be able to go farther without making stops or refueling in the air, Murphy said.
"They are so much quieter a lot of people are going to hear it and say what is going on?" Biscoe said.
The first C-5B jet left Westover for an upgrade in 2015. Because budget cuts reduced the number of jets that will be assigned to Westover from the original 16 to eight, that plane never returned after the work was done. Instead it and some of the others was flown to Lackland Air Base in Texas after it was upgraded, he said.
With the Wednesday morning takeoff, it means every C-5B has now either been upgraded or is in the process of being improved. Westover is scheduled to see its first C-5M plane arrive around June 18, Murphy said.
It takes about 18 months to completely upgrade a plane, so the one that left Wednesday should return sometime around the summer of 2018.
Meanwhile, Westover flight crews and maintainers are not sitting idle. They are using four "loaner" C-5A jets that will be retired when the new jets return. Ironically, two of the planes, including one built in 1969, is among the first planes to arrive at Westover when its mission changed to flying cargo planes, Biscoe said.
Maintenance crews and flight crews are also being sent to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, which already has the new C-5Ms, to be trained on the upgraded planes, he said.
Westover first started flying C-5 jets 30 years ago in 1987. The base has now had C-5s longer than any other type of plane, he said.
"It is a new chapter of avionics history here with the last C-5B leaving," Biscoe said.
Thomas Pitoniak 
