An Aeronautical Systems Center official says that Air Mobility Command now has eight C-5 airlifters that have completed the Avionics Modernization Program—one more than needed to restart operational test & evaluation. (Another two AMP-complete C-5s are due out this month.) The eight have the new “state-of-the-art” cockpit that is the precursor to the second phase—new engines—of the full C-5 modernization effort. Dave Schairbaum, deputy director of ASC’s C-5 Systems Group, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, says that the plan is to brief Lt. Gen. John Hudson, ASC commander and program executive officer for aircraft, this month then move into OT&E in April.
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.