For Whales, Not Warriors
The Air Force's C-17 Globemaster was chosen last week to fly
Keiko, the killer whale star of "Free Willy," back home
because the rugged cargo plane is uniquely suited to land on the
short runway at Iceland's Heimaey airport. It's not as well
equipped, unfortunately, for one of its primary missions:
dropping parachuting G.I.'s rapidly into the world's hot spots.
It seems that in flight, the hulking 300-ton plane kicks up a
lot of turbulence. Such swirling atmospheric eddies can entangle
soldiers in their parachute lines, collapse their chutes or hurl
airborne paratroopers dangerously into one another. The
Globemaster suffers particularly in comparison with its
predecessor. A fleet of older C-141's can fly over a drop zone
and unload a brigade of 3,000 paratroopers in as little as 19
minutes, with each group of three C-141's separated by 8,000 feet.
Not only does that allow for a fast drop, it also minimizes the
time the planes spend over a potentially hostile area. But the
C-17 creates such a wind wake that the Air Force is keeping each
trio of planes 40,000 feet apart. That distance -- nearly seven
miles -- stretches delivery time to 51 minutes. "It really slows
up our ability to get troops on the ground," an Army officer
says. Boeing, the plane's builder, is working with the Air Force
and Army to figure out how to fly C-17's closer together without
jeopardizing paratroopers.