On This Day in History

    1909:    Wilbur Wright flies from Governor’s Island out past the Statue of Liberty, up the Hudson to Grant’s Tomb, and back to the island during New York’s Hudson-Fulton celebration.  

1993:    PJ TSgt Timothy A. Wilkinson receives the Air Force Cross for saving five wounded Army Rangers after enemy forces shoot down their helicopter at Mogadishu, Somalia. This event  was made famous in the book

    1918:    The Army’s pilotless aircraft, the Kettering “Bug,” with preset controls, begins flights at Dayton. It is called a guided missile in later years.

  1965:    When the USAF Aeronautical Station inactivates at Yokota, a 30-year era of Morse code in the USAF comes to an end. Begun in 1935 with the creation of the Aeronautical (Airways) Station –

  1949:   Operation VITTLES. The last flight took place to end the Berlin Airlift. Results show 2,343,301.5 tons of supplies carried on 277,262 Allied flights. US planes carried 1,783,826 tons.

1991:       President George H. W. Bush terminates SAC’s alert force operation, which started in October 1957. This action heralds an end to the Cold War.

1918:    Between this date and 1 October, Air Service pilots shoot down 74 German aircraft and 15 balloons.

2007:    FIRST MQ-9 REAPER MISSION. The MQ-9 Reaper flies its first operational mission in Afghanistan for Operation ENDURING FREEDOM. (2009 photo)

1929:    Lt James H. Doolittle makes the first all-blind flight at Mitchel Field. Although a check pilot accompanies him, Doolittle takes off in a Consolidated NY-2 airplane with a completely covered cockpit, flies a short

  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