This week in AFLCMC history - January 17 - 21, 2022 Published Jan. 18, 2022 By Air Force Life Cycle Management Center History Office In this edition of Heritage Hangar, you'll learn about old and new airplanes and tidbits of what happened this week many years ago. 17 Jan 1992 (Mobility & Training Aircraft Dir.) Beech held the rollout ceremony for the new T-1A Jayhawk advanced training aircraft. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen Merrill McPeak attended the event. Because the Air Force had been using its T-37s and T-38s since the late 1950s, the DoD issued a Trainer Aircraft Master Plan in 1989 to modernize the training fleet. The Jayhawk was the first of these, winning the Tanker-Transport Training System contract in 1990 as the militarized version of the Beech 400A business jet. 18 Jan 1977 (AFLCMC) The Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) issued a revised version of the 1971 DoD Directive 5000.1 (David Packard’s significant post-McNamara revisions to DoD acquisition policy) to implement the OMB’s Office of Federal Procurement Policy Circular A-109 “Major Systems Acquisition” (April 1976). This Circular introduced both the Mission Element Needs Statement (MENS) that expressed a service need in terms of operational requirements, rather than performance specs or system characteristics, and Milestone Zero for earlier OSD oversight and competitive consideration of alternatives before development proceeds. It also emphasized life cycle acquisition management. The services were reluctant to implement it because they felt it could curtail independent development that provides innovative capabilities for which a specific operational need might not then exist. 19 Jan 1968 (Robins AFB) Robins AFB initiated its Equal Employment Opportunity Program for Women. Like many of AFLCMC’s bases, Robins had been a predominant employer of female workers during World War II, but those numbers dwindled drastically after the end of the war. The Air Force made explicit efforts to recruit women and minorities that were significantly underrepresented in the workforce by the 1960s. The EEOP provided a structure and process for ensuring these opportunities. At the time, the Warner Robins Air Materiel Area’s Eleanor Richardson was the Air Force’s highest ranking female employee: a GS-15 Deputy Director of Plans and Management, who had started with the Army Air Force in 1942. 20 Jan 1962 (ISR & SOF Dir.—Big Safari) One of Big Safari’s earliest programs was the HOT PEPPER modification of a C-54D in 1954. Its primary equipment was a hidden 100-inch focal length oblique-looking K-30 camera, though additional electronic intelligence equipment expanded its covert capabilities. On 20 Jan 1962, Hot Pepper went into the General Dynamics Ft Worth depot for modification as HILO HATTIE. That added night photography and radio direction finding equipment. It was used in Vietnam from 1962-1963, primarily to create critical maps & charts of South Vietnam. 21 Jan 1918 (WPAFB) Both McCook & Wilbur Wright Fields in Dayton went into quarantine to protect their troops from a local typhoid fever outbreak. Typhoid is caused by exposure to fecal bacteria, primarily in water supplies. There was a relatively new vaccine available for it, but many were reluctant to take it. However, the militaries of the world fighting WWI quickly mandated vaccinations because troops in the field and barracks were especially vulnerable. A few days after quarantine, all McCook & Wilbur Wright Field troops and civilian personnel were required to get vaccinated or be prohibited from entering the Fields. 22 Jan 1943 (Hill AFB) The Public Relations Office of the Ogden Air Depot at Hill Field, Utah, published the first base newspaper. This edition had no specific name, but the subsequent issue was dubbed The Hill Fielder. It was replaced by the Hill Top Times after 1946. This premiere issue featured updates on construction, promotions and personnel changes, recreational activities and awards for safety. It had a feature article on the “Mechanics Learner” program that the Depot found necessary to institute in order to teach the inexperienced local workforce how to overhaul airplanes, engines, and other aeronautical equipment. 23 Jan 1950 (AFLCMC) The Air Force activated Air Research & Development Command (ARDC). While the USAF’s supply & logistics functions of Air Materiel Command dominated post-WWII acquisition, leaders recognized the necessity of elevating R&D to independent status. Then, as now, there was a debate about the lines between the phases of acquisition and logistics. Advisor Gen Jimmy Doolittle (ret) wrote, “Development is a function which runs continuously from the concept of an idea to the obsoleting and abandoning of the process or product that resulted from the idea. Frequently...by far the greater part of development takes place after an airplane is in actual service." This Week in AFLCMC History: Martin Luther King, Jr. Day In recognition of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day national holiday, we have reproduced here the National Archives copy of Executive Order 9981, dated 26 July 1948. President Harry S. Truman issued this decree that mandated equal treatment for all service members, “without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin.” It is typically considered the moment at which the armed services were officially, if not quite functionally, desegregated. President Truman had grown frustrated with the hesitancy of both the Congress and military to implement policies for integration and equal rights for African American servicemen. World War II had shown definitively that stereotypes of their capabilities were racist means of maintaining the social status quo, rather than having any basis in reality. Millions of black Americans served in wartime manufacturing plants, at bases around the country, and in uniform across the world. However, post-war efforts to end the military’s Jim Crow-era discriminatory regulations were delayed, if not outright rejected. Executive Order 9981 was Truman’s attempt to force the issue and was rebuffed by service leaders. It established the President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment in the Military (the Fahey Committee), which led the charge for studying and making recommendations to implement the intent of the EO. It was up to the Secretaries of Defense to actually enforce the changes. After 1950, new SECDEF Louis Johnson made full integration his primary mission. The Air Force under SE-CAF Stuart Symington took the lead, rapidly desegregating its units, but the Navy and Army raised considerably more objections on the basis of needing more time to revise their long-entrenched policies. When the committee issued its final report in the summer of 1950, it had won agreements from all branches regarding the elimination of racial quotas, opening of specialties regardless of race, and general integration of units and facilities. While the process was far from complete, most of the formal institutional barriers to racial equality in the US armed forces had been dismantled during this period. [Image: copyright Smithsonian Institution. In 1948 President Harry S. Truman established the Fahey Committee (The President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment in the Military) to establish procedures for providing equal opportunity in the military.]