B377PG Super Guppy Photo Gallery Contact Sheet

Among the difficulties facing the Apollo program in the 1960s and early 1970s was how to move large rocket stages from the contractor facilities where they were built to the launch pads in Florida. In 1961, John M. Conroy of Aero Spacelines, Inc., proposed modifying a Boeing Stratocruiser airliner with a bulging fuselage. Despite the ungainly appearance of the "Pregnant Guppy" as it came to be called and despite Conroy's nearly running out of cash and credit during the conversion, the project was successful.

In September 1963, the Pregnant Guppy flew the S-IV stage for the fifth Saturn I launch from California to Florida. The aircraft has also carried Gemini launch vehicles, Apollo command and service modules, Pegasus meteoroid detection equipment, F-1 engines for the Saturn V, an instrument unit for the Saturn I, and other large NASA cargo.