This Day in Air and Space History

  1967: Operation POKER DICE. SAC beds down B-52s at U-Tapao with the first 3 aircraft arriving during the day. Later in the day they fly their first bombing mission from U-T.

  1974: Between 9 April and 11 May, USAF conducts the flyoff between the A-10 and A-7.

  1942: Using aircraft acquired from Pan American Airlines, the Army begins the largest airlift in World War II. Two DC-3s airlift gasoline and lubricating oil over the Himalaya Mountains from Dinjan in eastern India

1 943:     Operation FLAX. North West African Air Force attacks Axis air transport service between Italy via Sicily to Tunisia; 201 enemy aircraft are destroyed.

1975:     Operation BABYLIFT: A MAC C-5 crashes in an emergency landing near Saigon while flying the op’s 1st mission; 138 die and 176 survive the crash. Flight Nurse 1Lt Regina C. Aune ignores severe

  1996:     A 76th Airlift Squadron CT-43 transport crashes near Dubrovnik, Croatia killing 35, including Commerce Secretary Ronald Brown. Brown was on an economic development mission to the former Yugoslavia.

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

1952:     KOREAN WAR. Fifth Air Force Sabre pilots destroy ten MiGs while losing one F-86. In the battle, Col Francis S. Gabreski, the 51st Fighter-Interceptor Wing Commander, destroys a MiG to become the eighth jet

  2003: Operation Noble Eagle. By this date in the Global War on Terrorism, the Air National Guard had flown 72 % of fighter sorties, 52 % of tanker, and 35 % of airlift.

1961: President John F. Kennedy asks Congress to: (1) put 50 percent of SAC’s bombers on ground alert; (2) speed up the B-47 phaseout; (3) produce the Skybolt to replace the Hound Dog missile; (4)