The Air Force’s first active associate unit, the 30th Airlift Squadron, which partnered with the Wyoming Air National Guard’s 153rd Airlift Wing in Cheyenne just over a year ago, will deploy as a unit this month to Balad AB, Iraq, reports SSgt. LuCelia Ball. As an associate unit, the 30th AS doesn’t own its aircraft, so it is taking two of the C-130H3 airlifters of the 153rd AW. Despite startup issues with this unique unit, as we reported earlier, the aircrews and maintainers learned the ropes quickly—the aircrews had not flown the H3 version of the Hercules—and began deploying as part of combined crews with their Air Guard partners within a few months of activation.
Retired Col. Carlyle "Smitty" Harris, known for introducing the "tap code" by which American POWs in North Vietnam could surreptitiously communicate with one another, died July 6. Harris was brutalized by the North Vietnamese over almost eight years of captivity.