On This Day in History

  2001:    Texas Governor and former Texas Air National Guardsman George W. Bush is inaugurated as Presi­dent of the US. He is the first former Air Guardsman to become President.

1991:    War begins in the Persian Gulf. Operation Desert Shield becomes Operation Desert Storm. More than 1,200 combat sorties are flown, and 106 cruise missiles are launched against targets in Iraq and Kuwait during the

  1991:    Operation Secret Squirrel. The 2d Bomb Wing at Barksdale AFB sends B-52Gs at 0636 local time to Iraq; they launch 35 cruise missiles on 17 January at the start of Desert Storm.

  1950:    General of the Air Force Henry H. Arnold dies of a heart ailment at Sonoma, CA.

    1943:    The Casablanca Conference opens. Plans for a combined bomber offensive against Germany are established. Lt Gen Ira C. Eaker promotes a daylight-bombing offensive for U. S. forces.

1993:    FIRST US MILITARY WOMAN IN SPACE. Maj Susan Helms becomes the first US military woman in space during a flight of the Space Shuttle Endeavour.

1994:    An HH-60G Pave Hawk from 56th Rescue Squadron at Keflavik, Iceland rescues six sailors off the coast; receives the 1994 Mackay trophy.

1793:    Jean Pierre Blanchard makes the first manned balloon flight in America with a 46-minute trip between the Wall Street Prison in Philadelphia PA, to Deptford Township, NJ carrying landing clearance orders signed by President

1973:    LAST AERIAL VICTORY. In their F-4D Phantom 65-0796, Capt Paul D. Howman and 1Lt Lawrence W. Kullman shoot down a MiG southwest of Hanoi with a radar-guided AIM-7 missile. This shootdown was the last

1968:    The National Air and Space Administration’s Surveyor VII, the last spacecraft in the program to analyze the lunar surface, launches from the Eastern Test Range, FL aboard an Atlas-Centaur rocket (AC-15), on a 67-hour