Douglas won the contract to produce a large, powerful cargo airlifter in 1981, though a full-scale development contract wasn’t awarded until four years later, kicking off detailed design, engineering and production work. The first C-17 took off on its debut flight on Sept. 15, 1991— a day that many employees still with the program remember in detail. “I can still see T-1 take off. I close my eyes and see us standing in the back of a friend’s pickup near the fence, watching it take off,” said Roscoe Litchard, senior structural design engineer for 32 Boeing Frontiers the aircraft’s wing and control surfaces. Manuch Nassiri, the program’s chief engineer, said he remembers the effort that went into designing and building the first test aircraft, right up to long days and nights on the flight ramp right before the first flight. But there was more hard work ahead. In the immediate years after first flight, the C-17 team reworked the aircraft design to meet the U.S. Air Force’s exacting specifications. Cost overruns also threatened the program. At one point, the Air Force threatened to order no more than 40 aircraft. “It was very challenging, but also very rewarding,” said Ron Gill, a Technical Fellow and manufacturing engineer who served on teams tasked with reducing production costs and improving quality on the program. “I believe that without that initiative, we would have shut down a long time ago.” He and others credit a series of leaders in the company and the Air Force who worked closely to solve the program’s challenges. “It went from that to being critically acclaimed,” said Drew Oberbeck, international
Frontiers March 2015 Issue
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