Dover welcomes AMC commander, arrival of Lucky #13

  • Published
  • By Col. Steven Harrison
  • 436 AW commander
DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. --  Next week, Dover is honored to welcome Gen. Arthur Lichte, Air Mobility Command commander, to Dover AFB as he personally delivers our 13th and final C-17 Globemaster III!

We will mark this historic event with a ceremony at the AMC Museum Wednesday afternoon. Let's show General Lichte how excited we are to welcome this newest airlifter into the Air Force's inventory and how Team Dover contributes to America's unrivaled global reach!

It's hard to believe that since the arrival of the first C-17 in June 2007, Dover AFB has already flown more than 1,400 sorties, carried more than 12,000 passengers and delivered more than 33 million pounds of cargo. And our Total Force Team has done it all - from aero medical evacuation and humanitarian assistance, to special airlift and direct delivery of cargo and personnel to the frontlines of the War on Terror. In fact, we even delivered a couple of giant squids to the Smithsonian Museum!

The bottom line is that the C-17, combined with the C-5 Galaxy and Dover AFB's Super Port, form an incredible logistics capability that is absolutely unrivaled anywhere in the world. This unique capability allows us to move more cargo, more efficiently than any other base in AMC in support of the War on Terror. And we aren't stopping there -- in 2009, we will proudly continue Dover's legacy of mission excellence and logistics leadership with the arrival of America's newest strategic airlifter, the C-5M Super Galaxy!

Speaking of mission excellence, Team Dover has been at the center of a whirlwind of high profile events recently! With NASCAR in town, we hosted more than one hundred jets as drivers and their teams arrived through the Civil Air Terminal. Nearly simultaneously, our Airmen were hosting the executive transport jets of world leaders who were arriving in New York for the opening of the United Nations General Assembly. This is truly an international mission and you all did a fantastic job supporting these dignitaries and NASCAR community partners while still ensuring Dover's vital mission continued.

Marking another milestone in the base's airlift legacy, supporting our community partners, and hosting America's allies ... that is full-spectrum excellence, and one more reason that Dover is "America's Preeminent Expeditionary Airlift Team!"