{"id":179326,"date":"2025-02-24T16:00:15","date_gmt":"2025-02-24T06:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/simpleflying.com\/oldest-us-military-aircraft-still-flying\/"},"modified":"2025-02-24T16:00:15","modified_gmt":"2025-02-24T06:00:15","slug":"what-is-the-oldest-us-military-aircraft-still-flying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=179326","title":{"rendered":"What Is The Oldest US Military Aircraft Still Flying?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What is         <span class=\"display-card-hyperlink-article\" data-id=\"2032532\"><a href=\"https:\/\/simpleflying.com\/top-5-oldest-us-air-force-aircraft-service\/\" >the oldest aircraft in service in the United States Air Force<\/a><\/span>? When it comes to the US Navy, the answer to that question is easy. The oldest US ship in service is the wooden frigate, USS <em>Constitution<\/em>, aka Old Ironsides, which first launched in 1797. In the             <span class=\"display-card-hyperlink display-card-hyperlink-no-vignette\" data-id=\"1835\"style=\";  ;\" class=\"display-card-hyperlink display-card-hyperlink-no-vignette\"><a href=\"https:\/\/simpleflying.com\/tag\/air-force\/\"  >Air Force<\/a><\/span>, the oldest jet aircraft in service is         <span class=\"display-card-hyperlink-article\" data-id=\"2030083\"><a href=\"https:\/\/simpleflying.com\/roles-kc-135-stratotanker-us-military-missions\/\" >a KC-135 Stratotanker<\/a><\/span> with the tail number 57-1719. That aircraft was built in 1957 and is still flying refueling missions. The             <span class=\"display-card-hyperlink display-card-hyperlink-no-vignette\" data-id=\"60642\"style=\";  ;\" class=\"display-card-hyperlink display-card-hyperlink-no-vignette\"><a href=\"https:\/\/simpleflying.com\/tag\/b-52\/\"  >B-52<\/a><\/span> Stratofortress seems to be the oldest type of aircraft in service as it first flew in 1952. The oldest military aircraft still in production is the             <span class=\"display-card-hyperlink display-card-hyperlink-no-vignette\" data-id=\"255371\"style=\";  ;\" class=\"display-card-hyperlink display-card-hyperlink-no-vignette\"><a href=\"https:\/\/simpleflying.com\/tag\/c-130\/\"  >C-130<\/a><\/span> Hercules family that first flew in 1954.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A KC-135 tanker is the oldest jet aircraft currently in Air Force service, an accolade it has held for over a decade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8316,396,2038,6067,412,423,1328],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-179326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-air-tanker","category-aircraft","category-b-52","category-c-130","category-military","category-united-states","category-united-states-air-force"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=179326"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":179327,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179326\/revisions\/179327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=179326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=179326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=179326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}