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THE STARLIFTER YEARSThe C-141 Starlifter served the U.S. Air Force from 1965 to 2006, but if we’re being honest, the yea...
10/23/2026

THE STARLIFTER YEARS

The C-141 Starlifter served the U.S. Air Force from 1965 to 2006, but if we’re being honest, the years that mattered most to generations of Paratroopers were 1965 through 2004. Those were the years it served as a jump platform for countless Soldiers.

In August 1965, the first Paratroopers jumped from a C-141A, making the Starlifter the first jet transport used for U.S. Army parachute operations.

Over the next 39 years, the C-141 became a familiar part of Airborne life, from Jump School at Benning to Green Ramp at Bragg. It carried Paratroopers and their equipment to training exercises and deployments around the world. For those who jumped from one, the sound of its four engines, the crowded aircraft, and the wait for the green light are memories that haven’t faded.

But every aircraft eventually makes its final pass over the DZ.

On May 13, 2004, a C-141C Starlifter approached Fryar DZ for what would be the aircraft’s final Paratroop drop. Thunderstorms had passed overnight, leaving behind a warm, muggy Georgia morning. As the aircraft neared the drop zone, MAJ Jeff Minton banked the big jet into a tight, 45-degree descending turn to the left.

Inside, Jump School students waited in their harnesses, loaded down with parachutes and combat equipment, preparing for their 5th jump.

Among them was 18-year-old PVT Jason Stewart of Chandler, Arizona. Stewart had been named his class’s “Keeper of the Wings,” a Jump School tradition that entrusted the youngest student with a set of jump wings until graduation. The honor also meant he would be the last student to exit the aircraft.

Stewart knew he was the last in his class. What he didn’t know was that he would be the last in nearly 39 years of C-141 parachute operations.

“I thought I’d just be the last jumper in my class,” he later recalled.

When Stewart cleared the door, the Jumpmasters and loadmasters recovered the static lines and closed the doors. No Paratrooper would ever jump from a Starlifter again.

The C-141 would continue flying for another two years, finally retiring in May 2006. Its contributions to military airlift went far beyond parachute operations, but for generations of Paratroopers, it will always be remembered for its smooth ride and one helluva an opening shock.

One day after jumping into North Korea, PFC Richard Wilson was treating casualties when Ico, 187th was ambushed near Opa...
10/22/2026

One day after jumping into North Korea, PFC Richard Wilson was treating casualties when Ico, 187th was ambushed near Opari.

Wilson moved among the wounded under fire and helped them withdraw.

Then he learned that one Soldier—previously believed dead—was still moving.

Wilson went back alone and unarmed.

A patrol found him two days later beside the man he had tried to save.

He was 19 years old.

21 October 1950 — Opari, Korea.

10/21/2026

Twenty-five years ago today, Green Berets inserted into Afghanistan in response to the attacks of September 11th. Among them were the men who would become known as the Horse Soldiers—a lasting symbol of courage, ingenuity, and resolve.

In support of Horse Soldier Bourbon, Special Forces Trust was honored to help Green Berets attend a commemorative gathering in New York City recognizing this historic mission and the men who answered our nation’s call.

Coming together honors a shared history, strengthens enduring bonds, and ensures the legacy of the Regiment carries forward.

Today, we honor their service, remember their sacrifices, and recognize the families who have stood beside them.

The Riggers Jumped TooThe men who helped rig the first combat heavy drop didn’t stay behind at the airfield.The 8081st Q...
10/20/2026

The Riggers Jumped Too

The men who helped rig the first combat heavy drop didn’t stay behind at the airfield.

The 8081st Quartermaster Airborne Air Supply and Packaging Company had been activated less than three months before the Rakkasans jumped into North Korea. Its original personnel came from the 11th and 82nd, along with Quartermaster specialists from Fort Lee. Some of those Fort Lee Soldiers weren’t even Airborne when they arrived in theater. They became jump qualified there.

The company reached Japan in September and immediately began intensive training in packing and rigging heavy equipment. By October, they were at Kimpo working around the clock to prepare the loads that would follow the 187th onto the drop zones.

And there was a lot of improvisation involved. Aerial-delivery containers were in short supply, so the 8081st developed ways to rig many loads with rope instead. That improvised system carried much of the am******on, rations and fuel dropped to the Rakkasans on October 20.

Then 30 members of the 8081st jumped into Sukch’on-Sunch’on themselves.

They fought alongside the 187th during the initial assault, then went to work recovering the parachutes, platforms and other aerial-delivery equipment scattered across the drop zones. Army Quartermaster history credits them with recovering more than $1 million worth of parachutes and equipment.

That wasn’t cleanup. Heavy-drop parachutes and platforms were valuable, scarce and needed again. The same men who helped put the first combat heavy drop on the ground jumped in to make sure the equipment that made it possible could be used again.

Less than two months later, the 8081st would be handed another problem nobody had solved before: figuring out how to airdrop sections of a treadway bridge to the Marines and Soldiers fighting their way out of Chosin.

The Army tried giving a truck legs. The infantry still had to walk.In 1966, the Army commissioned General Electric to de...
10/20/2026

The Army tried giving a truck legs. The infantry still had to walk.

In 1966, the Army commissioned General Electric to develop this four-legged Cybernetic Walker. It stood 11 feet tall, moved at about 5 mph, and could pull a jeep out of the mud. The operator controlled its legs with his hands and feet, which makes driving a stick sound pretty relaxing.

The idea was to carry supplies over terrain that stopped conventional vehicles. It could climb obstacles and balance on two diagonal legs, but needed hoses connected to an external hydraulic power source to operate.

A walking truck with a leash. It never got past testing.

Photos: U.S. Army Transportation Museum

30 Minutes and a Lot of HistoryWhen the Rakkasans stepped into the skies over North Korea on October 20, 1950, there was...
10/20/2026

30 Minutes and a Lot of History

When the Rakkasans stepped into the skies over North Korea on October 20, 1950, there was a lot of history being made.

It was their first combat jump. The aircraft delivering many of them to the DZ was a “cherry” too. The Air Force had accepted the C-119 into service only ten months earlier, and this would be its first use in a combat parachute operation.

The biggest first, however, came after the troop drop: the first combat heavy drop.

Only five months earlier, Exercise SWARMER at Fort Bragg had put large-scale Airborne operations and aerial resupply through a major test, exposing plenty of problems that still needed to be solved. Now the concept had to work in combat.

C-119s dropped jeeps, 90mm guns, 105mm howitzers, trailers, radios, am******on, fuel and other supplies behind enemy lines. During the operation and the days immediately following it, more than 600 tons of equipment and supplies came down at Sukch’on and Sunch’on, including 12 105mm howitzers and 39 jeeps.

The Rakkasans’ first combat jump in Korea is rightly remembered. But what came down behind them marked another milestone. For the first time, an Airborne force was receiving its heavy equipment by parachute in combat.

25 years ago tonight: Objective RhinoOn October 19, 2001, four MC-130 Combat Talons crossed into southern Afghanistan at...
10/19/2026

25 years ago tonight: Objective Rhino

On October 19, 2001, four MC-130 Combat Talons crossed into southern Afghanistan at 800 feet under zero illumination. On board were 199 Rangers from 3/75, a regimental command element and attached specialists. Their objective was a desert landing strip southwest of Kandahar known as Rhino. It was the Regiment’s first combat parachute assault since Just Cause.

Aco moved against Objectives Tin and Iron and established blocking positions. Cco cleared Cobalt, the walled compound beside the strip. Four Soldiers from TPD 940, Bco, 9th POB had jumped with the Rangers and used portable loudspeakers to broadcast surrender and noninterference messages. USAF Special Tactics personnel surveyed the strip and worked the air picture while the site became a FARP for 160th SOAR aircraft supporting the simultaneous operation at Objective Gecko. A medical team arriving by MC-130 treated two Rangers injured on the jump.

Five hours and 24 minutes after the jump, the Rangers collapsed the perimeter, boarded the MC-130s and left Rhino. The assault had put American ground forces deep inside Taliban-held territory less than six weeks after September 11. The site would later become Camp Rhino.

The operation also carried a cost away from Rhino itself. At Objective Honda in Pakistan, an MH-60K supporting the mission crashed in a brownout. SPC Jonn Edmunds and PFC Kristofor Stonesifer of Bco, 3/75 were killed. They were the first Army Special Operations casualties of Operation Enduring Freedom.

U.S. military Combat Camera imagery.

Yes, the 504th used carrier pigeons.During the regiment’s fighting in Italy in 1943, the terrain on the Fifth Army’s rig...
10/17/2026

Yes, the 504th used carrier pigeons.

During the regiment’s fighting in Italy in 1943, the terrain on the Fifth Army’s right flank was so difficult that Army historians noted the 504th often had to communicate by carrier pigeon. In some places, food and am******on were moved across deep mountain gorges by overhead trolley.

The Army took the pigeon business seriously. During WWII, aerial-delivery crews also had a six-foot parachute developed specifically for dropping pigeon cages. It could carry about 35 pounds.

Somewhere in the long list of things the Army has thrown out of an airplane, add pigeons.

The Army planned its first division-sized jump before it had an airborne division.On October 17, 1918, BG William “Billy...
10/17/2026

The Army planned its first division-sized jump before it had an airborne division.

On October 17, 1918, BG William “Billy” Mitchell presented GEN John Pershing with a plan to send the 1st Division over German lines near Metz, France.

The proposal called for approximately 12,000 infantrymen, 1,200 bombers, machine guns, and resupply from the air.

There was one fairly significant detail still to work out.

The Army had never trained an infantry division to jump.

Mitchell’s plan called for using British Handley Page bombers to drop the infantry behind German lines while American forces attacked from the front.

The Armistice arrived just 25 days later, before the plan could be tested.

More than two decades before the Test Platoon, the basic Airborne idea was already there.

Put infantry where the enemy doesn’t expect infantry to appear.

Statue Saturday: The Horse SoldierLong before the Horse Soldier stood overlooking Ground Zero, it was an 18-inch sculptu...
10/17/2026

Statue Saturday: The Horse Soldier

Long before the Horse Soldier stood overlooking Ground Zero, it was an 18-inch sculpture on a Kentucky artist's workbench.

Sculptor Douwe Blumberg had seen a grainy Defense Department photograph of U.S. Special Forces riding horses in Afghanistan and was struck by the contrast: a 21st-century American Soldier carrying modern weapons and communications equipment while riding an Afghan mountain horse.

Blumberg knew horses. He had worked professionally as a horse trainer before becoming a sculptor. Special Forces was another matter.

In 2002, Blumberg displayed his work-in-progress at an art show in Louisville. Word of the sculpture eventually reached 5th Group at Fort Campbell, and Blumberg was invited down to meet some of the men who had recently returned from Afghanistan.

They liked the idea.

The details? Not so much.

The original rider wore conventional body armor, carried the wrong r***e and sat on a comparatively docile horse. CPT Mark Nutsch and other members of ODA 595 began working directly with Blumberg, showing him the equipment and Afghan horse tack they had actually used and explaining how they had operated.

Blumberg went home and essentially started over.

The resulting small bronze captured the image far more accurately, but for several years that's what it remained.

Then, in 2011, an anonymous group of Wall Street financiers who had lost friends in the September 11 attacks approached Blumberg about turning it into a full-size monument at Ground Zero. There was one catch: they wanted it finished in time for the New York City Veterans Day Parade just six months later.

Blumberg initially told them it couldn't be done.

It was.

On November 11, 2011, the completed bronze was unveiled in New York following the Veterans Day Parade. Its first home was inside the Winter Garden Hall at Two World Financial Center near Ground Zero. That location was always intended to be temporary.

The following year, on October 19, the anniversary of ODA 595's insertion into Afghanistan, the statue was rededicated closer to Ground Zero, positioned facing outward toward the rising One World Trade Center. Army officials described the Green Beret as providing "overwatch" on the new tower.

The rebuilding of the World Trade Center site wasn't finished, though. The monument moved again in 2014 to another temporary location near the base of One World Trade Center.

Its permanent home finally came in 2016.

Liberty Park had just opened above the World Trade Center site, overlooking the 9/11 Memorial. On September 13, the Horse Soldier was rededicated there, finally giving the public direct access to a monument that had spent part of its previous life viewed through construction fencing.

Its formal name is America's Response Monument, with the subtitle De Oppresso Liber. A section of steel recovered from the World Trade Center is embedded in its base, physically connecting the attack that began the story with the men sent to respond.

The Green Beret isn't facing the memorial pools.

He's standing watch over them.

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