Aero Spacelines Pregnant Guppy

Outsize cargo conversion of the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser

The Aero Spacelines Pregnant Guppy was a large, wide bodied cargo aircraft built in the United States and used for ferrying outsized cargo items, most notably components of NASA's Apollo program. used an ex Pan Am airframe. A 5 meter section from an ex British Overseas Airways Corporation aircraft (G AKGJ) was added immediately behind the wing. A new upper fuselage of 6 meter diameter was added, giving the aircraft a "triple bubble" appearance when viewed from the front. The entire rear section, including tail surfaces, was detachable to allow cargo to be loaded directly into the fuselage. The wing, engines, tail, nose, and cockpit were unchanged. The aircraft first flew on September 19, 1962, piloted by Conroy and co pilot Clay Lacy. When Van Nuys traffic control realized that Conroy intended to take off, they notified police and fire departments to be on alert. However, the huge aircraft performed flawlessly. It differed in handling from a Stratocruiser only in a slight decrease in speed caused by the drag of the larger fuselage. The Guppy delivered the S IV Saturn I rocket stage three weeks faster than a barge, for a cost of $16.00 (equivalent to $16.0 in 1964 is equivalent to about <calculated amount> in recent years today) per mile (1 mile (2 km)).

In the summer of 1963, the Pregnant Guppy began flying NASA cargo. Among its early duties was transporting the first and second stages of the Gemini program's Titan II from the Martin Co. in Baltimore, Maryland, to Cape Canaveral. As the space program grew through the late 1960s, it became apparent that the one original aircraft clearly could not handle the whole transport load, so 25 more Stratocruisers and ex USAF C 97s were purchased to construct four Super Guppy aircraft, which were even longer and larger than the original. The various Guppy aircraft served throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and beyond. After the Apollo program ended, the aircraft transported airliner sections.