With Heavy Hearts …

The November, Wings Over Dallas airshow tragedy, to which the NTSB has yet to ascribe a cause, has rent a multitude of hearts, and colored the 2022 holiday season in the lugubrious and indelible hues of grief.

Faced with the decision of remaining stoically inactive in the accident’s wake or advancing respectfully and resolutely forward into the optimism that is the future’s province and promise, the Commemorative Air Force chose the latter, and is now leaning into its values by continuing with its traditions—principally, the CAF’s mission to educate, inspire, and honor through the enterprise of flight.

Ergo, the Commemorative Air Force will move forward with its longstanding and popular 12 Planes of Christmas campaign for 2022.  The fundraising event is enshrined in CAF tradition, and allows the organization to close out the year by calling attention to the myriad, historically significant aircraft being restored and cared for by CAF members.

Each year, the 12 Planes of Christmas crusade features a dozen vintage aircraft undergoing or in imminent need of extensive restoration work, and solicits public support of the expensive, time-consuming endeavors. In addition to showcasing the aircraft, their histories, and respective funding needs, the 12 Planes of Christmas initiative shares the CAF’s vision for the machines’ futures as living vestiges of aviation’s magnificent past, and conduits to epochs wondrous and world-changing.

During the campaign, the CAF sends out a succession of emails, each featuring one of the year’s Planes of Christmas. This year, the organization has added a link to each email by which recipients may opt out of subsequent 12 Planes of Christmas correspondences for 2022.

The CAF encourages lovers of airplanes to show their support for the 12 Planes of Christmas, and reminds those inclined to give that they are helping to save significant pieces of history and keeping the legacy of the Greatest Generation in the hearts and minds of future generations of Americans.

FMI: www.commemorativeairforce.org