Members of the Missouri, Ohio, and New York Air National Guard, along with active duty and Air Force Reserve Command airmen, came together under the auspices of the 774th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron at Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan, on Aug. 8 to drop an M198 artillery piece from the back of a C-130 transport to an Army unit in a remote part of Paktika Province in eastern Afghanistan. “Anything the guys on the ground need to do their job we get to them—beans, bullets, and sometimes artillery pieces,” said MSgt. Dennis Mowry, a C-130 loadmaster with the Missouri ANG. He continued, “Now that the soldiers have that howitzer, they have something bigger to shoot back with.” The gun weighs more than 10 tons and is 36 feet long. (Bagram report by SSgt. J.G. Buzanowski)
The Smithsonian’s announcement that an F-117A Nighthawk, tail number 85-0818, is headed to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, or NASM, is welcome news. The acquisition of this Nighthawk fills a long-standing historical gap—indeed, need—in the collections of what is generally considered the world’s premier air and space…
