On This Day in History

1918: MEDAL OF HONOR. After destroying a number of enemy aircraft within 17 days, 2Lt Frank Luke of the 27th Aero Squadron volunteers to go on a patrol to shoot down German balloons. Despite an […]

1964: With eight KC-135s, the Yankee Team Tanker Task Force starts supporting PACOM fighter combat operations, primarily Navy Task Force 77 aircraft.

1943: Eighth Air Force B-17s attack targets in Emden, Germany with nearly 1,000 tons of bombs, the heaviest assault on a single target to date in World War II. A P-47 fighter escort with belly

1964: President Lyndon B. Johnson presents aviation’s highest honor, the 1963 Robert J. Collier Trophy, to Clarence L. “Kelly” Johnson of Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, who designed and developed the U-2 and A-11 (SR-71). Ten days

2004: Operation PROVIDE HOPE. A C-17 from McChord AFB delivers medicines and medical supplies worth $15 million to Bishkek IAP in the Kyrgyz Republic. It was the largest humanita­rian shipment to the republic since it

1949: Convair’s T-29 Flying Schoolroom makes its first flight. Providing navigator training at 14 sta­tions, each station had access to a map table, loran scope, altimeter and radio compass panel. In the roof of the

1964: North American Aviation test pilot Alvin S. White and Col Joseph F. Cotton fly the XB-70A Valkyrie for the first time in a flight from Palmdale to Edwards AFB.

1951: USAF recovers animals from a rocket flight for the first time, when a monkey and 11 mice survive an Aerobee flight to an altitude of 236,000 feet.

1944: Operation MARKET GARDEN. 1,546 allied planes and 478 gliders carry 35,000 troops for an airborne assault between Eindhoven and Arnhem in Holland to secure the Rhine. (Depicted in the movie “A Bridge Too Far.”)

2005: Travis AFB places the restored C-141A Starlifter (tail number 63-8088) nicknamed the Golden Bear on permanent static display. It was the USAF’s first operational C-141A, the first to carry wounded troops from Vietnam to