What I did on my Spring trip

[Rocky Raab]

Last week, I traveled to Columbus, Mississippi. Whyinhell would I go there?

Well, I used to be an instructor pilot at Columbus AFB, and on Monday, they had the final student flight of the T-37 "Tweet" jet I flew. Called the 6,000-pound dog whistle, or the Flying Tadpole, the little Cessna was tens of thousands of student pilots' first jet - mine included. It was in active service for 50 years at every USAF pilot training base.

This was the taxi-out of the final flight...


Here's the traditional firetruck salute at the end...


And here's the patch that Warner Brothers generously designed for the flight...


The last remaining Tweets will be flown to the boneyard and cut up for scrap. The beer can you hoist in the near future may be part of this very airplane.

Sad.