First time I ever saw one taking off at Travis AFB I thought I was watching a slow motion crash. It was so slow and lumbering. Having always lived around Navy bases I was used to planes taking off fast and furious.
As it turned out, our next door neighbor was a C5 pilot. He was also (un)lucky enough to pick up Jim Jones’ dead and fly them back to the US. He said they turned the AC down as low as it would go and nobody went to the head during the entire flight.
A buddy of mine was unfortunate enough to be sent to Jonestown to recover the bodies. As far as the C-5 goes I had a 26 hour flight experience from Hades on one. Imagine flying from Travis AFB CA to Goma Africa non-stop! A triple air refueling! But to make it even worse almost half the passengers were from the media and the toilet overflowed about halfway there and the stink was horrid. I remember as we taxied in the airfield and ramp was covered with people and they surrounded the aircraft when we parked.
They look slow, like they’re hanging in the air, but perception of speed to an observer relates to the number of fuselage lengths traveled in a given increment of time.
In other words, a C-5 traveling at 150 knots (a medium weight approach speed) would look like it’s traveling much slower than a small airplane, such as a fighter, traveling at the same speed.