On This Day in History

1942: Flying his P-38 Lightning against the Japanese in the Pacific, 2Lt Richard I. Bong score his first two aerial victories. He later becomes the top ace in the war (40) and receives the Medal […]

1944: MEDAL OF HONOR. BG Frederick W. Castle leads some 2,000 heavy bombers against German airfields. On the way an engine fails, and his unescorted B-17 becomes a target to enemy fighters. After his bomber

2006: The 437th Airlift Wing and the 315th Airlift Wing (Air Force Reserve Associate) at Charleston AFB, S. C., fly a 20-ship formation of C-17 Globemaster IIIs, the largest C-17 formation to date ever flown

1907: The Army’s Chief Signal Officer, Brig Gen James Allen, seeks bids for the first heavier-than-air military flying machine. The specifications call for an aircraft that could carry two people, fly at 40 miles per

1944: Gen Henry H. Arnold becomes General of the Army (5 stars), the first airman to hold this rank.

1950: KOREAN WAR/Operation CHRISTMAS KIDLIFT. The 61st Troop Carrier Group airlifts more than 800 endangered South Korean orphans on 12 C-54s from Kimpo to Cheju-do, an island off the South Korean coast.

  1903: Orville Wright makes the first sustained, controlled power airplane flight in the Kill Devil Hills, near Kitty Hawk. In the fourth and longest flight of the day, flown by Wilbur, the Wright Flyer

    1964: In an FC-47, Capt Jack Harvey and his crew fly the first gunship mission in the Vietnam War. The FC-47 later becomes the AC-47 eventually equipped with Gatling guns in its cargo

  1988: W. Stuart Symington, the first Secretary of the Air Force, dies at his home in New Canaan, Connecticut.