Hans Holbein wrote:

A C-119 built by FIAT?

I looked it up, it was a concept for a pod transport. The idea was that the
bare plane would just be there to lift a payload pod that would hold the
actual payload. Rationale: Military transport aircraft have to fulfill a
variety of missions. That means that a true mulit-purpose aircraft has to
have facilities to support all these missions, be it medevac, paratroopers,
normal troop transport, vehicle transport, what-have-you. On every single
mission, however, only the facilities specific for that mission would be
used, making the rest dead weight to lug around. Pods were supposed to be
tailor made for each mission profile and thus have a better payload/empty
weight ratio than a plane outfitted to fulfil all missions at once.

Doesn't explain why it's so ugly, though. And it seems the idea didn't quite
work out.