The Super Guppy Story.

The air traffic controllers were so doubtful that the plane would even get off the ground that they notified police and fire departments to be on alert.
But the Super Guppy proved them wrong.

On September 19, 1962, the bizarre new aircraft took to the skies near Los Angeles. When former Air Force pilot Jack Conroy took off and safely landed this specially modified plane, he opened a new age of airborne transport lead by Aero Spaceline's Super Guppy family of aircraft.

This shiny silver monster, then known as the Pregnant Guppy (later called the Super Guppy), looks more like an airship than an aircraft. In 2000-2010s, despite being 50 years old, this plane could transport monstrous cargo.

The Super Guppy is a series of specially-built aircraft made by Aero Spacelines.
The Guppies are actually made of elements from other aircrafts.

The idea was hatched one evening in 1960 when Conroy was talking with aircraft broker, who had just acquired a number of old Boeing Model 377 Stratocruisers that he hoped to resell. The propeller-driven Stratocruiser had been Boeing’s first post-war airliner.

Conroy had heard that NASA was transporting components for future spacecraft from manufacturers on the West Coast to launch sites on the Eastern seacoast.

This was usually a laborious journey via the Panama Canal, taking at least 18 days. Instead Conroy wanted to stretch and expand the Stratocruiser's fuselage to transport rocket boosters and other bulky space hardware by plane.

It was a crazy idea. Most of the people who looked at it said the thing would never fly. But Conroy was determined, he mortgaged his house to create Aero Spacelines International and began modifying the first Stratocruiser.

Two years later, after the Super Guppy had flown, Conroy obtained special permission to fly the uncertified aircraft to NASA’s Manned Space Flight Center in Houston for a demonstration. Permission was given but required him not to fly over population centers.

NASA officials were dubious that this aircraft was safe enough to transport an expensive cargo. Although the Super Guppy was only 1360kg heavier than the original Stratocruiser, the aerodynamics were far worse, and the cruise speed was reduced. The plane remains stable even with two of its four engines out.

The Super Guppy cut the delivery time from factory to the launch site from 18 days to 18 hours, and immediately began transporting components for the Gemini space program. In fact, NASA says they would not have been able to get a man on the moon by 1969 without the help of the Guppy.

The Super Guppy was made from not one but two Stratocruisers, with a section of fuselage sawed off one and added to another to stretch it by 5 meters. The custom-built cargo bay was 5.79m in diameter, sized to carry stages of the Saturn V rocket.

Soon one Super Guppy was not enough for NASA’s needs, and it was quickly followed by the second Super Guppy in 1965. The Super Guppy was pressurized, making it possible to fly above weather.

The Super Guppy also benefited from upgraded engines, though its cruising speed of 400km/h is sluggish by modern standards.

The Super Guppy wins by volume. Its payload bay is 7.62m high, 7.62m wide, and 38.8m long. That gives a whopping 1104 cubic meters of usable space. This plane can take big, relatively light cargo like space components.

After carrying boosters and other components in the early days of the space race, Airbus used 4 Super Guppies starting in the early 1970s to carry airliner components for assembly in their base in Toulouse, France. Airbus later built their own cargo plane designed very similar to the Guppy.

After working for the European Space Agency, the Super Guppy was sold back to NASA, and began transporting elements of the International Space Station to the launch site.

The Super Guppy has been used for plenty of other missions as well. It often transports NASA's T-38 trainer jet, and other loads have included airliner fuselages, an entire Sea King helicopter, etc.

The Super Guppy was built in the 1960s and it remains a 1960s aircraft—without any modern electronics. Flying with a crew of 6 or 7: 2 pilots, 2 flight engineers, a load master, and 1 or 2 maintenance technicians.