On This Day in History

1923: The first airways lighting occurs when 18- and 36-inch electric arc beacons are used to light 42 landing fields between Chicago and Cheyenne. They were visible for 50 miles.

1953: Dr. Werner von Braun and his team join US Army personnel at Cape Canaveral in firing the first Redstone (Redstone No. 1). It was our first truly ballistic missile.

  1940: First flight of the North American B-25 Mitchell bomber.

  1978: At McConnell AFB, A1C Tina M. Ponzer (381st SMW) becomes SAC’s first enlisted female to perform Titan II alert duty. (on the left, with Lt Patricia Fornes on the right)

1943: The Air Transport Command  uses a C-87 Liberator (converted B-24) to carry Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt on a tour of the Pacific theater to boost morale, inspect Red Cross installations, and learn how women from

1953: The XC-99, the world’s largest plane to date, makes its first transatlantic flight from Kelly AFB to Frankfurt, Germany, with 60,000 pounds of cargo. For size comparison, The XC-99 is shown in flight c.

1942:   When Lt Elza Shahan ferries his P-38 to England, he spots a German FW-200 Condor near Iceland. Shahan turns and shoots the Condor down, becoming the first American Army pilot to shoot down a

  1908: Lts Frank P. Lahm, Benjamin D. Foulois, and Thomas E. Selfridge begin the first, official American airship tests at Fort Myer.

  2003: A C-9A Nightingale (No. 68-10959) assigned to the 375th Airlift Wing at Scott AFB performs the last scheduled C-9 aeromedical evacuation mission.

  1983:           Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger directs the USAF to deploy 100 Peacekeeper missiles in Mi­nuteman Silos.