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On December 4, 2005, Air Force Staff Sgt. Israel “DT” Del Toro was riding in a Humvee with an Army unit in Afghanistan. ...
10/10/2026

On December 4, 2005, Air Force Staff Sgt. Israel “DT” Del Toro was riding in a Humvee with an Army unit in Afghanistan. His job was to call in air strikes from the ground. He was 30, and back home his wife Carmen and their 3-year-old son were waiting for him.

The Humvee rolled over a hidden explosive and blew up. DT was burned over 80% of his body and lost fingers on both hands. As he lost consciousness, he had one thought: he had to keep the promise he made to his dad. His father’s last words to him had been to always take care of his family.

He woke up 3 months later in a hospital in Texas, still thinking he was in Afghanistan. He had gone from 200 pounds to 115, and the burns in his lungs had almost taken him 3 times. Doctors had given him a 15% chance to live. If he survived, they said, he would never walk again or breathe without a respirator.

One of his biggest fears was that his little boy would be afraid of him. When his son finally saw him, he ran straight into his father’s arms.

A few months later, DT walked out of the hospital, and he promised himself he would return to duty. Eventually, a medical board gave him a choice: retire with a 100% disability rating and teach as a civilian, or re-enlist and do the same job in uniform.

He refused to retire. On February 8, 2010, after 120 surgeries, he raised his right hand and became the first airman ever to re-enlist with a 100% disability rating. “It wasn’t about the money,” he said. He went on to train new airmen in his old job, win a gold medal in shot put at the Invictus Games, and receive the Pat Tillman Award for Service at the ESPYs.

He later taught cadets to skydive at the Air Force Academy, and retired in 2019 as a senior master sergeant. The man doctors said would never walk again had gone back to jumping out of airplanes.

The 10 men aboard a B-17 bomber named All American were heading home from a bombing raid when 2 enemy fighters came stra...
10/10/2026

The 10 men aboard a B-17 bomber named All American were heading home from a bombing raid when 2 enemy fighters came straight at their formation. They fought back, and the fighter coming at them appeared to be hit. It never pulled away. It passed inches over the cockpit, and its wing sliced through the back of the bomber.

They had taken off that day, February 1, 1943, from a desert airfield in Algeria to bomb enemy-held ports in Tunisia. The crew had named their bomber All American because they came from all over the country, North and South. Now the left side of their tail was gone. The gash across the top of the fuselage was so big that one of them said you could drive a jeep through it. Pieces of the enemy fighter were stuck in the bomber, and only a few strips of metal on the right side still held the tail on, with tail gunner Sam Sarpolus inside it.

The pilots pinned the controls with their hands and knees to stop the bomber from climbing, throttled back, and used the bombsight’s autopilot to help steer. Sarpolus crawled forward out of the swaying tail. He later said it felt like riding the end of a kite.

Their base was still 90 minutes away. The crew was told that anyone who felt safer jumping could bail out. Not one of them would leave. The other bombers slowed down and flew around them until they were clear of enemy fighters, and a navigator in one of them took this photo.

Over the field, they were offered the chance again. Again, nobody jumped. With no tail wheel, the bomber touched down and skidded its broken tail across the sand. The pilot waved off the ambulance: “No business, Doc.” Their ground crew had already given them up, and the crew chief had tears in his eyes. Not one man aboard had a scratch.

According to their bombardier, Boeing engineers later said it should have been impossible to fly. On the ground, when men climbed inside to look at the damage, the tail finally broke off.

On October 7, the U.S. Air Force published a new notice seeking companies capable of restoring as many as four retired K...
10/10/2026

On October 7, the U.S. Air Force published a new notice seeking companies capable of restoring as many as four retired KC-10 Extenders from storage at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona and returning them to flying condition.

The work would include depot-level maintenance, repairs, flight clearances and eventually ferrying the aircraft overseas. The KC-10s would not return to operational service with the U.S. Air Force. Instead, the plan is to transfer them through the Excess Defense Articles program to an unnamed partner nation in North Africa, where they could continue serving as aerial refueling and transport aircraft.

The development comes just two years after the Air Force retired its final KC-10 in September 2024, ending 44 years of service. The type first entered service in 1981 and became one of the Air Force’s most capable long-range tankers, able to refuel other aircraft in flight while also carrying cargo and personnel.

The Air Force retired the fleet as it transitioned to the newer KC-46A Pegasus, sending the remaining KC-10s to storage in Arizona. Now, instead of spending the rest of their lives in the desert, several of them could be getting a second chance to fly.

Boeing built its last 757 in 2004, after 1,050 of them had rolled off the line. More than 20 years later, Delta Air Line...
10/10/2026

Boeing built its last 757 in 2004, after 1,050 of them had rolled off the line. More than 20 years later, Delta Air Lines still flies over 80 of them, the largest passenger 757 fleet in the world, and it owns every single one outright.

Delta has flown the 757 since November 1984. Most airlines moved on from it years ago, and American retired its last one in 2020. Delta went the other way, maintaining the jets with its own TechOps teams and even giving some of them new cabins. The stretched 757-300 carries up to 234 passengers and still works Delta’s busy domestic routes.

Delta still has no direct replacement for the 757’s mix of range and capacity. The airline uses it where it needs lots of seats, long range and strong runway performance all at once, and the 757-200 can even fly some of the shorter routes across the Atlantic. Airbus A321neos are taking over part of its flying, and Boeing’s 737 MAX 10, which Delta ordered to help replace it, still hasn’t been certified after the FAA delayed it again in late September.

So Delta is retiring its 757s slowly. It flew 100 757-200s in 2022 and 75 at the end of June, along with all 16 of its 757-300s. The 757-200s now average more than 28 years old.

Delta has said it could keep its youngest 757 flying until 2035, a full 30 years after it was delivered.

USS Abraham Lincoln pulled into San Diego this week after 321 days away, and its commanding officer, Captain Daniel Keel...
10/10/2026

USS Abraham Lincoln pulled into San Diego this week after 321 days away, and its commanding officer, Captain Daniel Keeler, said the ship came back without losing a single life or a single aircraft, and without taking any combat damage.

It was anything but a quiet deployment. The Lincoln left San Diego on November 21, 2025, for a routine Pacific deployment and was redirected to the Middle East, where it spent more than 200 days in a combat zone. That included 40 days of nonstop combat operations and helping enforce a naval blockade. The strike group flew 3,693 combat flights and dropped 1.37 million pounds of ordnance. It shot down 77 attack drones, destroyed 21 anti-ship cruise missiles and defended itself against fast-attack boats and explosive-laden boats.

The ship went 286 days before its first full port visit, a record for a modern US carrier. Its roughly 5,000 sailors and Marines kept the flight deck running day and night, landing jets in the dark on a full deck in dangerous waters. Before it reached home, the strike group received the Presidential Unit Citation, the highest honor a military unit can receive for heroism in combat.

Keeler told reporters: “Every single sailor and Marine that left on this deployment is going home.” He called it a legendary performance by his team.

On Thursday, hundreds of family members and friends were waiting at Naval Air Station North Island to welcome them back.

After 321 days, every one of them made it home.

The first of the two new VC-25B aircraft that will replace the current Air Force One fleet is now expected to be deliver...
10/10/2026

The first of the two new VC-25B aircraft that will replace the current Air Force One fleet is now expected to be delivered in mid-2028, roughly four years later than the program’s original 2024 target. The second aircraft is currently scheduled to follow in mid-2029.

The jets began life as Boeing 747-8s, but converting them into presidential aircraft requires an enormous amount of work. Boeing is installing secure communications equipment, defensive systems, upgraded electrical power, specialized mission equipment, a medical area and a completely redesigned interior. The aircraft must also be capable of functioning as a secure airborne command center during a national emergency.

The program has faced years of engineering, production and certification challenges, including delays involving the interior, complex wiring installations, structural modification work and repairs to the two 747 airframes. Boeing has also recorded billions of dollars in losses on the fixed-price program as costs have continued to rise.

Work is now moving into a more visible stage. The Air Force expects the first VC-25B to be powered up before the end of 2026, with its first flight planned for 2027 ahead of the targeted mid-2028 delivery.

And delivery does not mean the aircraft immediately enters service. After Boeing hands the jet over, the Air Force will still have acceptance work, operational testing, crew training and other preparations to complete before it is ready to fly regular presidential missions. In other words, a mid-2028 delivery date does not necessarily mean the aircraft would begin service in mid-2028.

Until the replacements are ready, the Air Force will continue operating the two current VC-25A Boeing 747-200s, which entered presidential service in 1990. More than three decades later, they remain among the most recognizable aircraft in the world, but keeping them flying has become increasingly difficult as the aircraft age and replacement parts become harder to obtain.

Gail Halvorsen was born on this day, October 10, in 1920, in Salt Lake City, and grew up on farms in Utah and Idaho watc...
10/10/2026

Gail Halvorsen was born on this day, October 10, in 1920, in Salt Lake City, and grew up on farms in Utah and Idaho watching planes fly over and wishing he was in one. By 1948 he was a 27-year-old Air Force lieutenant flying a C-54 cargo plane into West Berlin, where the Soviet Union had cut off every road and rail line and 2 million people were being fed entirely from the air.

One day at Tempelhof airport he found about 30 children pressed against the barbed-wire fence by the runway. They were thin and hungry, and they asked him questions about flying. One told him something he never forgot: that they could get by on a little food, but if they lost their freedom, they might never get it back.

He wanted to give them something. All he had in his pocket was 2 sticks of gum. He broke them into pieces and passed them through the fence, and the children who didn’t get a piece passed the wrappers around just to smell them.

He promised to come back the next day with enough for everyone, and told them they’d know his plane because he would wiggle its wings. He tied candy bars to handkerchief parachutes, and on his next approach into Berlin, he wiggled his wings and dropped them out the flare chute. The children were waiting. He kept doing it, without permission, until a newspaper photographed one of his drops and his commander called him in. Instead of punishing him, the Air Force expanded it. “Operation Little Vittles” ran from September 1948 to May 1949. Children and candy companies across America sent donations, and by the end, more than 250,000 little parachutes carrying over 20 tons of chocolate and gum had floated down over Berlin.

The children called him Uncle Wiggly Wings. He flew in the Air Force until 1974, went back to Berlin again and again for the rest of his life, and was still catching candy parachutes at airshows past 90. He passed away in 2022 at 101. When he did, the mayor of Berlin said his deeply human act had never been forgotten.

King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands has flown as a co-pilot for KLM since 1996, quietly operating regular passenger...
10/10/2026

King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands has flown as a co-pilot for KLM since 1996, quietly operating regular passenger flights about twice a month, even after becoming king in 2013. He flew under his first name only, and his role was not widely known until 2017.

His aviation career began years earlier. Willem-Alexander earned his private pilot license in 1985 and commercial license in 1987. He later flew as a volunteer pilot in Kenya, qualified on multi-engine jets, received a military pilot license in 1994 and earned his Airline Transport Pilot Licence in 2001.

For years he flew KLM’s Fokker 70. When KLM retired the type, he retrained on the Boeing 737 in 2017 so he could continue flying regular passenger services. He serves as an unsalaried guest pilot and uses the flights to maintain the experience and flight time required for his qualifications.

Now KLM is gradually replacing its 737 fleet with Airbus A321neos, so the King went back into training again. He flew his final scheduled KLM 737 service on March 11, 2026, followed by his final flight in the Boeing 737-based Dutch government aircraft PH-GOV on May 7.

At 59, he earned his Airbus A321neo type rating on June 6. Ten days later, on June 16, he made his first KLM flight on the new type, sitting in the right seat of A321neo PH-AXC.

Heavy rain was falling over Dover Air Force Base as an Army carry team stepped onto the flight line to receive the remai...
10/10/2026

Heavy rain was falling over Dover Air Force Base as an Army carry team stepped onto the flight line to receive the remains of 37-year-old Maj. Bianca C. Wilkerson.

Wilkerson was assigned to U.S. Army Central and had been deployed in support of operations in Doha, Qatar. While aboard a non-combat military flight headed toward Saudi Arabia on September 18, she suffered a medical emergency and died. The Army later classified her death as non-combat-related.

Her remains were flown back to the United States and arrived at Dover eight days later. There, despite the rain, service members carried out a dignified transfer, moving her flag-draped transfer case from the aircraft area with full military honors.

Dover Air Force Base is the main U.S. entry point for the remains of service members who die overseas, and these transfers are handled under strict military protocol before the fallen are returned to their families.

Wilkerson was from Norfolk, Virginia, and had been serving as a captain at the time of her death. She was posthumously promoted to major.

On this day, October 10, in 1962, a blue and white Boeing 707 landed at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington. Its t...
10/10/2026

On this day, October 10, in 1962, a blue and white Boeing 707 landed at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington. Its tail number was 26000. It was the first jet ever designed and built specifically to carry the President of the United States, and whenever the president was aboard, it answered to one call sign: Air Force One.

Inside, it was a flying office, packed with communications gear that let the president run the government and command the military from anywhere in the world. Outside, it looked like nothing the Air Force had flown before. President Kennedy thought the old presidential planes looked drab, so First Lady Jackie Kennedy and the designer Raymond Loewy created a new look: blue, white and silver, with “United States of America” in tall letters down the side and a flag on the tail. Every Air Force One since has worn it.

Kennedy flew on the jet for the first time a month later. A year after that, it carried him to Dallas. On November 22, 1963, it carried him home. Lyndon Johnson took the oath of office standing in its cabin before it left the ground, with Jackie Kennedy beside him.

The jet went on to fly Johnson through his presidency and took Richard Nixon to China in 1972, the trip that opened relations between the 2 countries. Later that year a newer 707 took over as the main presidential plane, but 26000 stayed in the fleet as a backup for another 26 years.

In May 1998, after 36 years and more than 13,000 flying hours, it made its final flight, to the National Museum of the US Air Force near Dayton, Ohio. It’s on display there today, and visitors can walk through it. One Air Force historian has called it the most important historical airplane in the world.

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