page_title: Aero Spacelines Pregnant Guppy
section_title: Operational history
hierarchical_section_title: Aero Spacelines Pregnant Guppy / Operational history
caption_attribution_description: English: Saturn I's S-IV stage loaded onto a modified Boeing B-377 Stratocruiser for transport.
context_page_description: 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 NASA's components of the Apollo program. The Pregnant Guppy was the first of the Guppy line of aircraft produced by Aero Spacelines. The design inspired other later designs, such as the jet-powered Airbus Beluga and Boeing Dreamlifter.
context_section_description: 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 from the Martin Co. in Baltimore, Maryland, to Cape Canaveral. As the space program grew through the late 1960s, this one 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, initially transporting space components, and later, as NASA scaled down its operations after the success of the Apollo program, transporting airliner sections.
  The Pregnant Guppy was sold to American Jet Industries and registered N126AJ for scrap and it was finally scrapped at Van Nuys in 1979.
caption: The Pregnant Guppy, with its tail removed, is loaded with a S-IV stage (1965)
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