C5s are huge. I walked through one during a base open house and it was enormous. I was maybe ten so I didn’t exactly have an adult’s perspective but nevertheless, it was huge and since it was a SAC base, the B52s were off in the distance guarded by MPs so I didn’t have anything close to compare them with. As an adult, I tried to get into a B52 on static display at Travis, we got in the bomb bay but didn’t relish having the MPs escort us off the base or worse, tell my father. The point though is that the B52 although still enormous, wasn’t as big as I remembered.
If the Minuteman was capable from flying from Vandenberg to the USSR, the C5 could only add to the range and it was mobile!
The range of a Minuteman Missile is 8055 miles or 7000 nautical miles
I think perhaps the bit of trivia that best relates the dimensions of the Galaxy is the fact that the Wright brothers’ first powered flight at Kitty Hawk could have taken place within the cargo area of a C-5.
The big benefit was that it was mobile. Silo-based missiles were vulnerable to a surprise first strike. Bombers could be kept aloft, invulnerable to a first strike, but bombers would then have to be able to penetrate enemy air defenses.
A C-5 would have the benefit of a bomber (could be launched on first indication that a strike was imminent, and be called back if it was a false alarm) along with the advantages of an ICBM (hard for an enemy to stop once launched)