The Starlifter arrived just as the American commitment in Vietnam multiplied, and it quickly became the backbone of the Pacific air bridge. Military Airlift Command scheduled C-141s through Hawaii, Guam, Okinawa and the Philippines to bases such as Tan Son Nhut, Cam Ranh Bay and Da Nang, carrying troops, spare parts, ammunition and anything else that needed to arrive fast. Its jet speed shrank the Pacific: Lockheed Martin records that the round trip from California to Saigon fell from 95 hours to 34.

The return flights mattered just as much. C-141s were fitted with litter stanchions and carried flight nurses and medical technicians, turning the cargo hold into an aeromedical evacuation ward. Wounded servicemen who had been stabilised in Vietnam or Japan could be in a hospital in the United States within days. The aircraft also carried the war dead home. For a generation of Americans, the Starlifter was the aircraft that took them to Vietnam and, for many, the one that brought them back.

Under the Paris Peace Accords of January 1973, North Vietnam agreed to release American prisoners of war. On 12 February 1973, the first C-141s landed at Gia Lam airport in Hanoi to collect them, with aircraft 66-0177 among the first to make the flight. Prisoners, some held for more than seven years, walked across the tarmac to the waiting transports, some on crutches or stretchers, to begin the journey home. Over the following weeks Starlifters brought nearly 600 men out of Hanoi and from other release points, via Clark Air Base in the Philippines to the United States.

Aircraft 66-0177 became known as the Hanoi Taxi. It served on into the 2000s, upgraded to C-141C standard, and was kept as a flying memorial with signatures from former POWs inside. On 6 May 2006 it made the last flight of any C-141, to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, where it joined the National Museum of the United States Air Force.

• C-141A: original production version, 284 built for the US Air Force.
• NC-141A: test and research aircraft, including the Kuiper Airborne Observatory and 61-2775, used to tow a QF-106 in NASA’s Eclipse project in 1997–98.
• C-141A (SOLL): aircraft modified for special operations low-level missions.
• C-141B: stretched by about 23 ft with aerial refuelling; nearly the whole fleet converted from 1977 to 1982.
• C-141C: C-141Bs upgraded in the late 1990s with digital flight systems, GPS and improved defensive systems, flown mainly by Reserve and Guard units.
• L-300: civil demonstrator; no airline orders followed.

Lockheed delivered the C-141 programme on schedule and under budget, a rarity among major aircraft programmes of the era and a sharp contrast with the C-5 that followed. The Starlifter’s TF33 engines, of the same family as the B-52H’s engines, were well understood, and the aircraft was simple to maintain by later standards.

As the fleet aged, costs rose. By the 1990s the airframes had accumulated very high flying hours, and fatigue cracking in the wings forced restrictions and expensive repairs; this was a key reason for retiring the fleet in favour of the C-17. With the type now retired, any hourly figure is historical. We give a hedged order-of-magnitude estimate of US$5,000 to 8,000 per hour in 1990s money, based on fuel burn plus crew and maintenance; actual Air Force accounting figures varied with year and method.