AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 276 / 283

Plate 276 of 283 · Modern age · Strategic airlifter

Boeing C-17 Globemaster III

C-17A Globemaster III, ZZ173, painted as ZZ173, a Boeing C-17A Globemaster III of No. 99 Squadron, Royal Air Force, one of the eight C-17s (ZZ171 to ZZ178) flown from RAF Brize Norton: a four-engined strategic airlifter with a high, swept supercritical wing set with anhedral and tipped with upswept winglets, four Pratt & Whitney F117-PW-100 turbofans in pods hung on pylons below the wing, with thrust reversers, large flap-track fairings under the trailing edge, a T-tail with a swept fin, a wide, deep cargo hold ending in a loading ramp under the upswept tail, a twin-wheel nose leg and main undercarriage of two legs each side, each with three wheels, retracting into fuselage sponsons: medium grey overall with bare-metal intake lips, black ‘ROYAL AIR FORCE’ titles behind the flight deck with a small Union flag below, black ‘ZZ173’ on the nose and on the rear fuselage behind a low-visibility red and blue roundel, low-visibility roundels on the wing tips above and below, and a red and blue fin flash with the No. 99 Squadron puma badge, as photographed at the Royal International Air Tattoo in 2013 (shape from Boeing’s own three-view drawing of the C-17, checked against photographs of ZZ173 and a side-on photograph of its sister aircraft ZZ175; the four sources disagree on the engine positions by up to a metre, so the median is used, the thrust reversers are shown stowed, and the small stencils are left off).

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as ZZ173, a Boeing C-17A Globemaster III of No. 99 Squadron, Royal Air Force, one of the eight C-17s (ZZ171 to ZZ178) flown from RAF Brize Norton: a four-engined strategic airlifter with a high, swept supercritical wing set with anhedral and tipped with upswept winglets, four Pratt & Whitney F117-PW-100 turbofans in pods hung on pylons below the wing, with thrust reversers, large flap-track fairings under the trailing edge, a T-tail with a swept fin, a wide, deep cargo hold ending in a loading ramp under the upswept tail, a twin-wheel nose leg and main undercarriage of two legs each side, each with three wheels, retracting into fuselage sponsons: medium grey overall with bare-metal intake lips, black ‘ROYAL AIR FORCE’ titles behind the flight deck with a small Union flag below, black ‘ZZ173’ on the nose and on the rear fuselage behind a low-visibility red and blue roundel, low-visibility roundels on the wing tips above and below, and a red and blue fin flash with the No. 99 Squadron puma badge, as photographed at the Royal International Air Tattoo in 2013 (shape from Boeing’s own three-view drawing of the C-17, checked against photographs of ZZ173 and a side-on photograph of its sister aircraft ZZ175; the four sources disagree on the engine positions by up to a metre, so the median is used, the thrust reversers are shown stowed, and the small stencils are left off). Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1.5 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (C-17A); engine, crew and dimensions are for the C-17A Globemaster III, ZZ173 modelled here.

History

The C-17A

In the late 1970s the US Air Force wanted a transport that could carry outsize cargo, such as tanks and helicopters, across oceans like the huge C-5 Galaxy, and then deliver it straight to short, rough forward airstrips as the smaller Hercules could. McDonnell Douglas won the resulting C-X competition in 1981 with a design that drew on its YC-15 prototype of the early 1970s, in which the jet exhaust was blown over large flaps to give lift at low speeds. Money was slow to come, and full-scale development of what became the C-17 did not begin until 1985.

The C-17 has a high, swept wing with winglets, four turbofans in pods, a T-tail and a hold wide and tall enough for a main battle tank or a Chinook helicopter, loaded over a ramp under the tail. Its flaps sit in the exhaust of the engines, letting a heavily loaded aircraft land steeply and slowly, and its thrust reversers let it back up on the ground. The first flew from Long Beach, California, on 15 September 1991, but the programme ran late and over budget and came close to cancellation in 1993 before its problems were fixed. The USAF took its first C-17 that year, and Boeing took over the type when it merged with McDonnell Douglas in 1997.

The RAF leased four C-17s in 2001, re-forming No. 99 Squadron at RAF Brize Norton to fly them, and liked them so much that it bought them outright and added four more, the last in 2012. They have flown troops and equipment to Afghanistan and Iraq, aid to disaster zones around the world, and evacuated thousands of people from Kabul in August 2021. Production ended in 2015 after 279 had been built, 223 of them for the USAF and the rest for Britain, Australia, Canada, India, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and a NATO group.

This airframe

C-17A Globemaster III ZZ173

ZZ173The airframe modelled

ZZ173 is one of the four C-17s the RAF leased in 2001 and later bought, and one of the eight, serials ZZ171 to ZZ178, flown from RAF Brize Norton by No. 99 Squadron. No C-17 is in a museum, and ZZ173 was chosen because it is the best photographed of the eight, from every side, at the Royal International Air Tattoo in 2013. The model shows it as those photographs do: medium grey overall with bare-metal intake lips, black ‘ROYAL AIR FORCE’ titles behind the flight deck with a small Union flag below, black ‘ZZ173’ on the nose and on the rear fuselage behind a low-visibility red and blue roundel, roundels on the wing tips above and below, and a red and blue fin flash with the squadron’s puma badge. Its shape comes from Boeing’s own three-view drawing of the C-17, checked against photographs of ZZ173 and of its sister aircraft ZZ175, which wears the same markings. The sources disagree on where the engines sit by up to a metre, so the model takes the middle figure; the small stencils are left off.

Where to see one

Not on charge

The RAF’s eight C-17s fly with No. 99 Squadron from RAF Brize Norton and are not in any museum. They appear at the Royal International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford.

All 283 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.