<p>Despite lessons from the recent past, the Air Force had always been slow to recognize the importance of air transportation, itself the subject of a new word now coming into vogue: airlift.
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<p>As far back as 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower asked Defense Secretary Neil McElroy to study air transport. Air staff officers produced a February 1960 report, 'The Role of Military Air Transport Service in Peace and War', which contained the first national policy statement on airlift. When Senator John F. Kennedy made airlift an issue in his 1960 presidential campaign, he spoke of the need to develop "additional air transport mobility—and obtain it now." That year, it was obvious that the capability did not exist to rapidly move US troops to the location where most expected a new conflict, i.e. the Congo. Transportation shortfalls hampered the US capability to move people and supplies all over the globe. Incredibly, the Air Force was flying transports (C-124, C-133 and even the otherwise brilliant Lockheed C-130 Hercules) which had emerged from the drawing board without anyone measuring the cargoes they would carry. It was national policy to rely on civil contractors, and in an emergency, the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, to move people, but the Air Force lacked modern transports to carry objects.
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<p>In March 1961, Lockheed won an Air Force competition for a jet-powered version of the C-130 retaining the latter's body cross-section of 10 ft x 9 ft (3.05 m x 2.74 m). The new aircraft was the first US Air Force type designed to comply with both military and civil airworthiness standards. It was sorely needed. It was also appropriate to the nation's new doctrine of flexible response, with US forces likely to deploy anywhere on short notice.
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<p>The result of these decisions was the Lockheed C-141 StarLifter, which began operational service in October 1964. The Lockheed C-5 Galaxy which followed (becoming operational in December 1969) capped off a new generation of aircraft designed in coordination with the other armed services' branches and able to move American war machines around the globe.
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<p>The Military Air Transport Service was redesignated Military Airlift Command on 1 January 1966. MAC, inevitably pronounced 'Mack' by a generation who plied the world's airways in its C-130s, C-141s, and C-5s, was the only branch of the Air Force which flew 'real life' missions all day, every day. Its contribution was rarely given much credit and MAC programme directors always had to wait in line when budget hearings on Capitol Hill determined what the Air Force would buy, and when.
