An End...

The last combat mission in the forty-year operational career of the C-141 StarLifter was successfully completed early in the morning of 1 October. A crew from Air Force Reserve Command's 445th Airlift Wing, the last StarLifter unit, returned to Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, after a five-day mission to Germany and Iraq, flying cargo in and injured personnel out and then back to the United States. The C-141 has been used to transport more than seventy percent of the injured or wounded out of Iraq since the war began. The 445th AW aircrews will fly the eight remaining C-141s inside the borders of the continental United States until next spring when the last StarLifter is retired.

Photo By John Rossino