On This Day in History

1924: KEY EVENT–FIRST AROUND-THE-WORLD FLIGHT/MACKAY TROPHY. Four Army Douglas Biplanes take off from Seattle on the first global flight. Only two crews complete the 26,345-mile flight after 363 hours flying time in an elapsed time […]

  1915:     President Wilson appoints the first members to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). In 1958, NACA becomes NASA.

  1983: Through 1 May, the Air Force transfers 31 SAC units and four bases to AFSPACE, which assumes control over missile warning and space surveillance systems.

1979:     THREE-MILE ISLAND DISASTER. Through 15 April, after the Three-Mile Island nuclear power plant fails near Harrisburg, Pa., MAC flies 15 support missions (two C-5s, one C-130, and 12 C-141s). The aircraft deliver a 40,000-pound

1944: Army Air Forces reaches its WW II high total of 2, 411, 294 persons assigned.

  2004: NASA’s X-43A unmanned scramjet aircraft becomes the first jet to break Maj William J. Knight’s X-15 record of 4,520 MPH. While the X-1, Skyrocket, X-2, and X-15 were rocket-powered, the X-43 featured an

  1965:     The first nuclear power system to be tested in space, the SNAP 10A, is successfully launched into orbit aboard an Atlas-Agena spacecraft. SNAP 10A functions for 43 days until a electrical component fails.

  1999: Operation ALLIED FORCE. An F-15 shoots down two MiG-29s in aerial combat over Yugoslavia on the third day of the operation.

1944: Fifteenth Air Force makes its first operational delivery of a VB-1 Azon radio-controlled bomb against the Avisio Viaduct, attempting  to cut the Brenner Pass between Italy and great­er Germany.

  1945: Operation VARSITY. An Allied airborne and amphibious assault crosses the Rhine River. More than 2,000 transports and gliders from the IX Troop Carrier Command drop two airborne divisions near Wesel, Germany, in daylight.