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)
Happy Birthday US Air Force: 78 Today
Sept. 18, 2025
Seventy-eight years ago today, on Sept. 18, 1947, Supreme Court Chief Justice Fred Vinson swore in Stuart Symington as the first ever Secretary of the Air Force, and the Air Force officially became the first new military service since the Revolutionary War.
