Bumpy Ride, Happy Landing : Lockheed Finishes Military C-5B Order

Lockheed Corp. today delivered the last of 50 C-5B jumbo cargo planes to the Air Force, completing a seven-year, $6.9-billion contract that drew accusations of greed from Congress.

The final C-5B, the biggest air cargo carrier in the West, took off after a ceremony, made a salute lap around Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Co. headquarters in suburban Marietta and headed for the air base at Dover, Del.

The company has no plans for further production of the C-5B, said Robert Z. Christopher, director of the C-5 program. Lockheed Aeronautical is a division of Lockheed Corp., the Calabasas, Calif.-based aeronautics giant.

The C-5B is 248 feet long and has a wing span of 223 feet and a 65-foot T-shaped tail as high as a six-story building.

The jet, an updated version of the C-5A, can carry almost any piece of the Army’s hardware--two 50-ton M-1 tanks, for example.

Today’s ceremony marked a happy landing in the flight of the C-5B project, but it was a bumpy ride.

Lockheed won the contract in 1982, beating Boeing and McDonnell Douglas. The original pact was for $7.8 billion.

Production of the plane’s predecessor, the C-5A, was marred by revelations that the Air Force had purchased ineffective repair kits from Lockheed that included $229.94 nickel-sized washers.

Shortly before the first C-5B was to be delivered in late 1985, it was discovered that tens of thousands of nuts on the planes had to be replaced because the wrong kind was installed.

The Pentagon accused the company of inflating the C-5B contract by as much as $500 million by withholding details of a proposed two-tier wage system for its new employees; by 1987 the price tag had been whittled down to $6.9 billion.