A Military Airplane Flies Into the Sunset
Mar 20, 2025
By Mark Strauss
Mar 20, 2025
By Mark Strauss
The Air Force throws a retirement party for the excellent T-1A trainer.
After more than 30 years in service, the last Raytheon T-1A Jayhawk in the U.S. Air Force’s 86th Flying Training Squadron received a hero’s sendoff as it made its final departure from Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas last December.
Airmen signed their names on the exterior of the swept-wing, twin-engine jet, which then participated in a flyover accompanied by two Beechcraft T-6A Texan IIs and two Northrop T-38Cs. The five aircraft made two passes over the air traffic control tower and airfield, ending with the T-6As and T-38Cs splitting off and the T-1A flying alone before traveling to the boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona, where nearly 4,000 aircraft are stored. In its last full year of service, the T-1A flew more than 15,000 hours.
The T-1A Jayhawk, a military version of the Beechjet 400A, first entered service in the early 1990s. The venerable aircraft was used for training student pilots selected to fly airlift or tanker aircraft.
Used as a trainer for large aircraft such as the Lockheed C-5 and Boeing’s C-17 and KC-135, two-thirds of U.S. Air Force pilots trained on the Jayhawk—a military version of the Beech 400A, outfitted with an additional fuselage fuel tank and structurally modified to increase bird strike resistance. The T-1A has cockpit seating for an instructor and two students and is powered by twin turbofan engines capable of 538 mph.
In addition to preparing pilots for transport and refueling missions, the Jayhawk was used for navigator training for the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, and U.S. Marine Corps.
The Air Force announced the Jayhawk’s retirement in 2022, as part of a broader transition to modernize the training fleet and tactics. In 2024, 75 of the 177 Jayhawks in service were decommissioned, with another 53 scheduled to fly into the sunset later this year.
The T-1A is being replaced with Boeing’s T-7A, a more advanced trainer (powered by a single afterburning General Electric F404 engine), which has been christened “Red Hawk” as an homage to the Tuskegee Airmen.
Porter Halyburton was declared killed-in-action after his airplane was shot down on October 17, 1965. During a past lecture, an image of Halyburton’s own gravestone is projected behind him.
A Lasting Bond
The story of the airmen who survived the Hanoi Hilton
Readers of Air & Space Quarterly will recognize the name Porter Halyburton from our Winter 2024 interview with the retired U.S. Navy commander (“Unbroken”). This spring, Halyburton will be delivering a candid talk about the seven years he spent in captivity during the Vietnam War.
Sixty years ago this fall, Halyburton’s McDonnell F-4B Phantom was struck by anti-aircraft artillery while flying over North Vietnam. The pilot, Lieutenant Commander Stan Olmstead, was killed and Halyburton, the radar intercept officer, bailed out over enemy territory.
Halyburton spent most of his seven years as a POW in Hỏa Lò prison, infamously known as the Hanoi Hilton. Despite physical and mental torture, a meager diet, and inadequate medical care that characterized life for the POWs, Halyburton and the hundreds of American pilots and aviators being held at the prison formed a community, supporting each other and creating bonds that lasted long past their release in 1973.
Halyburton will deliver the National Air and Space Museum’s annual Amelia Earhart Lecture in Aviation History on May 21, 2025, at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. The program will also be streamed live on YouTube.
Learn more and reserve free tickets.
The Amelia Earhart Lecture in Aviation History is made possible by the generous support of Pratt & Whitney: An RTX Business.
LEDA 1313424, aptly nicknamed the Bullseye, is two and a half times the size of our Milky Way and has nine rings — six more than any other known galaxy.
Target Acquired
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured an image of a gargantuan galaxy nicknamed “Bullseye,” which is rippling with nine star-filled rings after an “arrow” (a far smaller blue dwarf galaxy) shot through its heart. Astronomers using Hubble identified eight visible rings—more than previously detected by any telescope—and confirmed a ninth ring using data from the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii.
This article, originally titled “Fond Farewell,” is from the Spring 2025 issue of Air & Space Quarterly, the National Air and Space Museum's signature magazine that explores topics in aviation and space, from the earliest moments of flight to today. Explore the full issue.
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