The Aero Spacelines Pregnant Guppy was a large, wide-bodied cargo aircraft built in the United States and used for ferrying outsized cargo items, most notably components of

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

's Apollo program. The Pregnant Guppy was the first of the Guppy line of aircraft produced by

Aero Spacelines Aero Spacelines, Inc. was an American aircraft manufacturer from 1960 to 1968 that converted Boeing 377 Stratocruisers into the famous Aero Spacelines Pregnant Guppy, Guppy line of airplanes, re-engineered to transport oversized cargo such as ...

. The design inspired later designs, such as the

jet-powered Jet propulsion is the propulsion of an object in one direction, produced by ejecting a jet of fluid in the opposite direction. By Newton's third law, the moving body is propelled in the opposite direction to the jet. Reaction engines operating o ...

Airbus Beluga The Airbus A300-600ST (Super Transporter), or Beluga, is a version of the standard A300-600 wide-body airliner modified to carry aircraft parts and outsize cargo. It received the official name of ''Super Transporter'' early on; however, the nam ...

and

Boeing Dreamlifter The Boeing 747-400 Large Cargo Freighter (LCF) is a wide-body cargo aircraft modified extensively from the Boeing 747-400 airliner. With a volume of it can hold three times that of a 747-400F freighter.Hanson, Mary et al"Boeing Selects EGAT f ...

Development

In 1960, NASA was using

barges Barge nowadays generally refers to a flat-bottomed boat, flat-bottomed inland waterway vessel which does not have its own means of mechanical propulsion. The first modern barges were pulled by tugs, but nowadays most are pushed by Pusher (boat) ...

to transport increasingly large rocket components from manufacturers on the West Coast to test and launch sites on the East Coast, a method that was slow and expensive. Meanwhile, U.S. airlines were disposing of their obsolete piston-engined

Boeing 377 Stratocruiser The Boeing 377 Stratocruiser was a large long-range airliner developed from the C-97 Stratofreighter military transport, itself a derivative of the B-29 Superfortress. The Stratocruiser's first flight was on July 8, 1947. Its design was advanced ...

s in favor of the newer jet-engined airliners. Aircraft broker Leo Mansdorf was stockpiling surplus Stratocruisers at

Van Nuys Van Nuys () is a neighborhood in the central San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles, California. Home to Van Nuys Airport and the Valley Municipal Building, it is the most populous neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley. History In 1909, t ...

for resale. Ex-

USAF The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Sign ...

pilot

John M. Conroy John Michael Conroy (December 14, 1920 – December 5, 1979) was an American actor, aviator, and later businessman, whose company Aero Spacelines developed the Pregnant Guppy, Super Guppy, and Mini Guppy cargo aircraft. He later founded Con ...

realized that these aircraft could be modified to transport the large but relatively light rocket components. Conroy presented his plans for an extensively modified Stratocruiser to NASA, where an official commented that the bloated aircraft resembled a pregnant

guppy The guppy (), also known as millionfish and rainbow fish, is one of the world's most widely distributed tropical fish and one of the most popular freshwater aquarium fish species. It is a member of the family Poeciliidae and, like almost all ...

. Although NASA was lukewarm on the concept, Conroy mortgaged his house and founded Aero Spacelines International to build and operate the concept aircraft. Conversion work was undertaken by

On Mark Engineering On Mark Engineering was an American aircraft remanufacturing company established in 1954 at Van Nuys Airport in California. Its most significant products were rebuilding military surplus A-26 Invaders into executive transports—the Marketeer w ...

. The Pregnant Guppy (registered N1024V) used an ex-

Pan Am Pan American World Airways, originally founded as Pan American Airways and commonly known as Pan Am, was an American airline that was the principal and largest international air carrier and unofficial overseas flag carrier of the United States ...

airframe. A 5-meter section from an ex-

British Overseas Airways Corporation British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) was the British state-owned airline created in 1939 by the merger of Imperial Airways and British Airways Ltd. It continued operating overseas services throughout World War II. After the passi ...

aircraft (G-AKGJ) was added immediately behind the wing. A new upper fuselage of 6-meter diameter was added, giving the aircraft a "triple-bubble" appearance when viewed from the front. The entire rear section, including tail surfaces, was detachable to allow cargo to be loaded directly into the fuselage. The wing, engines, tail, nose, and cockpit were unchanged. The aircraft first flew on September 19, 1962, piloted by Conroy and co-pilot

Clay Lacy Hershel Clay Lacy (born August 14, 1932) is the founder and former chief executive officer of Clay Lacy Aviation, established in 1968 as the first executive jet charter company in the Western United States. His professional resume includes pilot ...

. When Van Nuys traffic control realized that Conroy intended to take off, they notified police and fire departments to be on alert. However, the huge aircraft performed flawlessly. It differed in handling from a Stratocruiser only in a slight decrease in speed caused by the drag of the larger fuselage. The Guppy delivered the

S-IV The S-IV was the second stage of the Saturn I rocket used by NASA for early flights in the Apollo program. The S-IV was manufactured by the Douglas Aircraft Company and later modified by them to the S-IVB, a similar but distinct stage used on t ...

Saturn I rocket stage three weeks faster than a barge, for a cost of $16.00 (equivalent to $ today) per mile ().

Operational history

In the summer of 1963, the Pregnant Guppy began flying NASA cargo. Among its early duties was transporting the first and second stages of the Gemini program's

Titan II The Titan II was an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) developed by the Glenn L. Martin Company from the earlier Titan I missile. Titan II was originally designed and used as an ICBM, but was later adapted as a medium-lift space l ...

from the Martin Co. in Baltimore, Maryland, to

Cape Canaveral , image = cape canaveral.jpg , image_size = 300 , caption = View of Cape Canaveral from space in 1991 , map = Florida#USA , map_width = 300 , type =Cape , map_caption = Location in Florida , location ...

. As the space program grew through the late 1960s, it became apparent that the one original aircraft clearly could not handle the whole transport load, so 25 more Stratocruisers and ex-USAF C-97s were purchased to construct four Super Guppy aircraft, which were even longer and larger than the original. The various Guppy aircraft served throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and beyond. After the Apollo program ended, the aircraft transported airliner sections. The Pregnant Guppy was sold to American Jet Industries and registered N126AJ for scrap. It was

scrapped Scrap consists of recyclable materials, usually metals, left over from product manufacturing and consumption, such as parts of vehicles, building supplies, and surplus materials. Unlike waste, scrap has monetary value, especially recovered me ...

in 1979.

Specifications (B337PG Pregnant Guppy)

References

Works cited

External links

"Model 377 Stratocruiser Commercial Transport"
by Boeing. Retrieved October 5, 2006.
"All About Guppys"
by Daren Savage. Updated September 17, 2006. Retrieved October 5, 2006.
''It's a Plane: One man's obsession, it helped get us to the moon''
Tripp, Robert S. Spring 2002, American Heritage of Invention and Technology

by Kenneth W. Shanaberger. Updated August 31, 2004. Retrieved October 5, 2006.
"The Plane That Won The Space Race"
by Margy Bloom. Retrieved May/June 2010.
"The Pregnant Guppy"
Historic Wings: Daily Stories. Retrieved September 19, 2012 {{Outsized cargo aircraft

Pregnant Guppy The Aero Spacelines Pregnant Guppy was a large, wide-bodied cargo aircraft built in the United States and used for ferrying outsized cargo items, most notably components of NASA's Apollo program. The Pregnant Guppy was the first of the Guppy l ...

On Mark aircraft 1960s United States cargo aircraft Four-engined tractor aircraft Low-wing aircraft Aircraft first flown in 1962 Four-engined piston aircraft Aircraft related to spaceflight