Civil Air Patrol Maj. Jaimie L Henson entered the Mrs. United States National Pageant on a whim, hoping it would give her a platform to tell people about the Civil Air Patrol and the benefits of volunteerism. So Henson was “quite surprised” to learn that she will represent her state as Mrs. Kentucky in this July’s pageant. “It is a beauty pageant, but the Mrs. [United States National] Pageant focuses on accomplishments, and not so much the physical beauty,” Henson told Flightlines on Thursday. “I think that’s one of the things that kind of intrigued me about it. The age…
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Capt. Dana Lyon, the widow of Capt. David Lyon, swings a champagne bottle to christen the ship named for her late husband on Aug. 11, 2014.
The Navy and Air Force honored a fallen airmen on Wednesday by officially naming a ship after him. Motor Vessel Capt. David I. Lyon is an Air Force pre-positioning vessel, named for a logistics readiness officer from Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado. Lyon was killed Dec. 27, 2013, when a car bomb struck his convoy in Afghanistan. Lyon graduated from the Air Force Academy — where he met his future wife Dana — in 2008, and even high-fived President George W. Bush as he walked across the stage at the ceremony. He volunteered to deploy to Afghanistan as an…
A new petition to the White House is calling on Congress to hold hearings about what U.S. government officials know about the existence of extraterrestrial life. As of Thursday evening, the petition was about 3,500 signatures toward the 100,000 signature threshold required to get a response from the White House. In November 2011, the White House responded to a similar petition by asserting the U.S. government has no evidence that aliens exist, that aliens have visited Earth, or that there is a conspiracy to hide evidence of alien life from the U.S. public. “There are scores of government/agency/political witnesses of…
Senior Master Sgt. Steph Schwarz, combat flight engineer, 920th Rescue Wing, Patrick Air Force Base, Fla., responded to save two people who were critically injured when their personal watercraft slammed into his backyard wooden boat dock.(U.S. Air Force photo/Maj. Cathleen Snow)
Senior Master Sgt. Steph Schwartz didn’t think twice when a personal watercraft crashed into his backyard boat dock in Satellite Beach, Florida, Sunday, critically injuring two. The reservist with the 920th Rescue Wing at Patrick Air Force Base leaped into action — an impulsive response he credits to 27 years in Air Force rescue, according to a news release from his wing. Schwartz was inside around 2 p.m. Jan. 4 when he heard a crash “loud enough to make me jump out of my chair,” he said in the news release. The combat flight engineer ran outside, where he saw…
A still from CNN's Doomsday video, starring all four services' military bands.
What’s the one thing you’d like to see at the end of the world? If you answered “a military band,” then CNN’s got you covered. A truly weird relic of CNN’s early days surfaced earlier this week when Jalopnik posted the network’s fabled “Doomsday video.” As founder Ted Turner told the New Yorker back in 1988, the 24-hour CNN would only sign off once, in case of nuclear annihilation or other such apocalypse. So he gathered the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps marching bands for a videotaping at CNN’s old headquarters and had them perform the National Anthem. Turner said…
An Air National Guardsman from Robins Air Force Base, Georgia won the service’s first-ever “High Flyin’ BBQ Challenge.” Tech. Sgt. Todd Houghton, an aircraft structural mechanic with the 116th Air Control Wing, told Airman magazine he brought the same quest for perfection to barbecuing as he does to his job. “Growing up, my dad put it simply, ‘Anything that is worth doing, do it well and do it right on the first time,’” Houghton told the magazine in a story posted online this week. “When I go do a job on an aircraft, I ask myself, ‘Would I let my family fly…
Twelve airmen from the 8th Special Operations Squadron, Hurlburt Field, Florida, joined the prestigious ranks of Mackay Trophy winners at an awards ceremony this month. The Rooster 73 crew members were recognized for a 2013 rescue mission over wartorn South Sudan where they came under heavy enemy fire. They performed expert aerial maneuvers while simultaneously providing medical care to four critically injured Special Forces passengers on board one of their three CV-22 Ospreys. The mission resulted in the safe evacuation of American citizens from the remote South Sudanese city of Bor. You can read more about the mission in an August Air Force Times story. The airmen — Majors Taylor…
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh promotes Goldie the therapy dog to the rank of major during a ceremony at the Pentagon Nov. 12.
If this newly-minted major rises through the next three ranks as fast as he did the last three, he’ll pin on his first star next March. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh presided over Goldie’s “commissioning” just eight months ago at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. There, the 4-year-old Golden retriever is a beloved member of the therapy dog program, visiting service members undergoing rehabilitation. On Nov. 12, the general and the dog crossed paths again, this time at the Pentagon, where Welsh promoted Goldie from second lieutenant to major. “It’s a rather fast…
