On This Day in History

  1957: USAF cancels the Navaho program. The Navaho provided technologies for other mis­siles: the Atlas and Thor used a modified Navaho booster, and the Hound Dog, Polaris, and Mi­nuteman missiles used its inertial guidance system.

1944: Lt Col Clifford Heflin flies his C-47 on the first landing mission into France to rescue airmen who had parachuted behind enemy lines.

  1942:          Flying a Lockheed A-29 Hudson, Lt Harry J. Kane and crew of the 396th BMS attack and sink a German submarine (U-701) off Cherry Point NC to make the first sure “kill”

1989: President George H. W. Bush presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civi­lian award, to Gen James H. Doolittle (retired) at the White House. Doolittle is the only person to have received

  1944: Harry Crosby, company pilot, flies the Northrop MX-324, the first US rocket-powered aircraft, for the first time at Harper Dry Lake, CA.

1943: Lt Charles Hall, 99th Fighter Squadron, becomes the first US African-American pilot to shoot down an Axis plane, a German Focke-Wulf 190 over Sicily.

1941: The Air Corps Ferrying Command (ACFC) sends its first air transport flights from Bolling Field to Scotland via Montreal and Newfoundland. Using modified B-24 Liberator bombers with seats in the bomb bay, the “Arnold

1975: The USAF retires its last Douglas C-47B Skytrain (Gooney Bird) to the Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson AFB. Douglas Aircraft delivered the first aircraft in 1941.

1972: MEDAL OF HONOR. For heroic and valorous service this date, Capt Steven L. Bennett, a forward air controller,  receives the Medal of Honor posthumously. Citation: http://www.cmohs.org/recipient-detail/3230/bennett-steven-l.php

1927: MACKAY TROPHY/DISTINGUISHED FLYING CROSS. Lts Lester J. Maitland and Al­bert F. Hegenberger fly the first nonstop flight from Oakland to Wheeler Field, Honolulu. They fly 2,407 miles in 25:50  by using the directional beacons