16th Combat Aviation Brigade – June 30, 2018

Major Benoit, 16 CAB Operation Officer, shared his love of flying, a brief history of his unit and their recent combat victories against ISIS. Afterwards, we enjoyed a round-robin static display of an Apache helicopter a Black Hawk helicopter and an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) belonging to the Shadow unit. This was a powerful opportunity to see, ask, touch and share in the presence of amazing flying machines and the men and women that fly and maintain them. The students sat in the seats, grab a hold of the controls, flipped switches, climbed on top, inspected inside the cowlings, put on the helmets and imagined being pilot in command. Lots of smiles were recorded in the hangar that day. Following this immersion into Army aviation we enjoyed some great chow and, as it turns out, the best in the US Army! The meeting rounded out with a Q&A session with five officers giving the students the opportunity to ask all they wanted to know. We ran out of time and had to shut down the meeting while they were still hungry for knowledge. Click photo to enlarge.