On This Day in History

  The Flying Tigers join the Army Air Forces as the 23rd Fighter Group, Col Robert L. Scott Jr commanding.

The USAF gives the B-29 Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, to the Smithsonian Institute.

1982: Rockwell International rolls out the Space Shuttle Challenger.

1965: Capt Joseph Engle qualifies as a military astronaut by flying the X-15 No. 3 to 280,600 feet at 3,432 MPH (Mach 4.94)

1950: Korean War. 1Lt Bryce Poe II, in an RF-80A, flies the USAF’s first jet combat reconnaissance mission, photographing the North Korean advance.

1995: For the first time a Space Shuttle, the Atlantis, visits the Russian Mir space station.

  1994: A 60 AW C-5 from Travis AFB flew a 34-ton Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine to Chernobyl, Ukraine. There, medical specialists use the machine to treat victims of the 1986 nuclear reactor meltdown.

  1944: While escorting B-17s on a Ploesti raid, 52nd Fighter Group downs 12 enemy aircraft for 102 aerial victories in 30 days. This becomes a  US record never equaled in Europe.  

1944: After the second Operation FRANTIC raid, the Luftwaffe attacks B-17s at Poltava, destroying 47 and damaging 19 more.

1954:  USAF creates a Western Development Division under Brig Gen Bernard A. Schriever to accelerate the Atlas ICBM program.