StarLifter Airborne On Powered Flight’s Birthday

Tomorrow, Dec. 17, marks the 119th anniversary of the Wright Brothers’ first flight in 1903. Exactly 60 years from that date, at Marietta, Ga., in 1963, the Lockheed C-141 StarLifter, the world’s first turbofan-powered transport, was flown for the first time with company test pilot Leo Sullivan at the controls. A total of 285 C-141As were built and the StarLifter fleet would accumulate more than 10.6 million flight hours doing just about everything—airlift; airdrop of cargo and paratroopers; aeromedical evacuation; final flights for the honored war dead; Antarctic resupply; and much more. But the StarLifter’s most prominent missions were as “Freedom Birds,” to repatriate former U.S. POWs held by the North Vietnamese during Operation Homecoming in 1973. The C-141 contract was also the mechanism company officials used to integrate the Marietta plant in 1961. In the 1980s, 270 C-141As were significantly modified and redesignated C-141Bs. In the 1990s, the StarLifter received a digital cockpit and other upgrades. The C-141 closed out a 43-year career in 2006.