The answer to a need for larger and faster commercial and military airlifters was provided by, among others, the Douglas aircraft company with its military C-74 and C-124 cargo planes.

The C-124 evolved from an earlier Douglas design, the C-74 Globemaster. Officially, it was the Globemaster II, but the name had no appear to the "drivers and fixers", so it came to be called "Old Shaky" or just plain "Shaky", and as time passed, the name was more often than not uttered with a kind of reverence.