US Military Cargo Aircraft

C-5 Galaxy (in background) and C-141 Starlifter (in foreground)

Comrade Misfit posted a video of a C-141 today. I'm watching it and I'm thinking that the video is distorted, the aspect ratio must be wrong, look how long and skinny that plane is. Then I did a little checking and figured out that I was thinking of the C-17 Globemaster, which is just as fat as the Galaxy (see image above), which makes the fuselage about two and half times the diameter of the C-141 Starlifter. The C-141 is basically a jet engined version of the venerable C-130 Hercules. The fuselage is longer but it is the same diameter.

Update: Cop Car thought I was being funny when I compared the C-141 to the Hercules. Thank you, Cop Car, for the compliment, but my statement was just an over-simplification of this one:

It is not surprising that Lockheed incorporated many similar design traits from their venerable and highly successful C-130 Hercules, into their C-141A design proposal for SOR 182. Both types have an identical fuselage cross section (10ft x 9ft), high wing, clamshell rear doors that could be opened in-flight for airdrops, main landing gear that retracted into fairings alongside the fuselage (this made the cargo hold unobstructed) and a rear cargo ramp. - UK Airshow Review

I was simply looking for fuselage dimensions, which were surprisingly hard to come by. The bit about the clam-shell doors was surprising. Both the Starlifter and the Hercules have cargo ramps in the rear. The Hercules, the C-17 and the C-5 do not have clam-shell doors but the C-141 does.

Clam-shell doors open for an airdrop.

Table of specifications of a few US military cargo aircraft.