The Caribou is a pretty cool aircraft. I got to see one do a really short take off an landing once at Ft. Stewart, GA. Man, did they wind-up those engines for the take off! Loud!
I really liked the Caribou. My class was the last one to include it in the training before handing them over to the Air Farce. It had a cool cockpit layout.
In the central highlands where I was stationed Caribous were coming and going all day long. We had a fairly short runway so most everything came in by CV-2 (C-7 for you AF folks) or C-123. Pilots used to wind the radials up and pull the stick all the way back (or so it seemed) and with all their linens hanging out they could be airborne in less that a thousand feet.