Me and my cousin went for the first time to Ramstein Air Base on September 23rd and 24th, 2016. The weather was very good and we managed to see quite a lot of military aircraft. Highlight was the very last Lockheed C5B Galaxy.

We located a very quiet spotters location from where we could see the aircraft nicely in the sun. As we stayed for the whole weekend we had booked into a great hotel very close to the base, the drive to the hotel only took us about 10 minutes. Overall it was a very good weekend for me, especially because of the C5s. Already on the Friday morning one of the first aircraft we saw was a ’mighty’ Galaxy that arrived at Ramstein. The noise is something that I will remember for a very long time..

Over the two days we also saw the arrival of several tankers, but unfortunately no KC10s. On the Saturday morning it was quite busy, with about 7 Lockheed C130 Hercules transports that arrived in about 30 minutes. On that day we also saw a few Boeing C17 Globemaster IIIs taking off, but in the afternoon it went very quiet. Only from 4 o’clock onwards we saw a number of new arrivals. Last aircraft we saw, just before we left, was a modernized Lockheed C5M Galaxy. We ended the trip just like we started, with a ‘mighty’ Galaxy.

Text & Photography: Levie Meykens