An Air Guard wing touched down on all seven continents in 2 year span

A unit with the Nevada Air National Guard completed a series of literal around-the-world missions in 2025, with crews completing airlift missions that took its flyers to all seven continents.

In May, the 152nd Airlift Wing deployed to Santiago, Chile, in South America, in support of Operation Southern Star, training with special operations forces to establish Forward Area Refueling Points, or FARPs.

That mission made the seventh continent in which 152nd personnel had operated in just over a year. 

Just months prior, 152nd crews had flown missions to the most remote continent, Antarctica. Flying C-130s, 152nd crews flew between New Zealand and McMurdo Station, Antarctica, in January 2025 in support of the annual Operation Deep Freeze, which brings personnel and equipment to and from the continent during the summer months.

A 152nd Airlift Wing C-139 in Santiago, Chile, during exercise Southern Star ’25. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Gracelyn Hess.

The wing’s commander, Col. Catherine Grush, said in a release that she was most proud that almost as soon as the crews returned from Deep Freeze duty, they responded to flying missions in support of wildfires in Los Angeles.

“The rapid transition from polar operations to domestic emergency response over fires underscored the wing’s versatility and ability to operate across the full spectrum of missions,” said Grush.

Tagging all seven

The unit’s path through all seven continents began in 2024, when wing personnel were in Niger and Djibouti while attached to U.S. Africa Command. The 152nd also does regular expeditionary rotations to Djibouti, most recently in early 2022.

As an airlift wing, the 152nd routinely picks up flights to Europe and into Asia for U.S. Central Command and other regional operations, a duty familiar to virtually all airlift units across the Air Force and Air National Guard.

Missing from the list, a 152nd spokesman admitted, is an actual touchdown in Australia, which in the U.S. and some other Western countries is often taught and discussed as a stand-alone continent. But modern professional geographers and nearly all international political organizations — including the (just-shuttered) CIA World Fact Book — recognize Australia as among the 14 island nations of Oceania, which includes New Zealand and several other countries to which 152nd crews are frequent visitors.

The wing’s Deep Freeze flights were based in Christchurch, New Zealand, and the 152nd regularly sends crews to Oceania’s Tonga, Fiji, and Samoa, through a Nevada State Partnership with the militaries of those nations.

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