U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Matthew Gilmore
Lt. Col. Barry A. King, 374th Operations Group deputy commander, left, and 1st. Lt. Emery Gumapas, 36th Airlift Squadron pilot, right, make adjustments aboard Santa 21 on its way to airdrop supplies to the island of Nama, Federated States of Micronesia during Operation Christmas Drop 2018, Dec. 10, 2018.
- The US military has been delivering much-needed supplies to islands in the Pacific every year around the Christmas holidays for almost seven decades.
- Operation Christmas Drop (OCD) is the Department of
Defense 's longest-running humanitarian airlift operation. - Supplies are delivered to 56 islands across the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, Federated States of Micronesia, and Republic of Palau.
- The most recent drop occurred just last week.
For people living on remote islands across the Pacific, Christmas is the sound of C-130s roaring overhead as boxes of food, clothing, toys, and more parachuted from the holds drop down from the sky.
Here's what it looked like this year.