This week in AFLCMC history - April 18- 24, 2022

  • Published
  • By Air Force Life Cycle Management Center History Office
This week’s Heritage Hangar feature article highlights some of the connections of that event, and Jimmy Doolittle, to AFLCMC’s predecessors. That mission lives on in Air Force memory, perhaps most notably as the namesake of our newest bomber, the Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider.  The other daily entries this week describe an array of tie-ins to AFLCMC’s systems, facilities, and personnel.

19 Apr 1955 (Fighters Dir./Agile Combat Support Directorate) 
 
Test pilot Richard Salmon successfully ejected from the second prototype Lockheed XF-104 Starfighter. These prototypes featured an atypical downward-firing ejection seat, under the assumption that an upwardly-ejected pilot might hit the upright tail. On this flight, test firing of the plane’s cannons shook loose the lower ejection hatch at 47,000 feet, causing explosive decompression. Fortunately, Salmon was wearing a standard Air Force T-1 partial pressure suit, developed by the David Clark Company under the direction of Wright Field. The Air Force began mandating use of such suits for its high-altitude fighters and bombers in the 1950s. They were form-fitted, but pressurized only when cabin pressurization failed. Production F-104s used a standard upwardly-firing ejection seat. 
 
20 Apr 1962 (ISR & SOF Dir. - Big Safari)

The KC-135A tail number 55-3121 entered the General Dynamics Convair facility for modification as SPEED LIGHT ECHO. This was the latest aircraft converted by Big Safari in just a few weeks to monitor nuclear weapons testing. The modifications included both cameras and electromagnetic sensors. Operating out of Hickam AFB, Hawaii, ECHO first supported the “DOMINIC U” series of American nuclear test explosions over the Pacific Ocean. Some of these tests were conducted at high altitudes and inadvertently demonstrated the effects of an electromagnetic pulse on both satellites and Hawaii. 

21 Apr 1921 (AFLCMC)
 
The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) Executive Committee held its annual meeting in Washington, DC. The NACA was established in 1915 to advise and direct American aeronautics policy and research. It had some “seats” assigned to specific organizations like the military: the Chief of the Air Service, Maj Gen Mason Patrick and the head of its Engineering Division, Maj Thurman Bane represented the Army. While it was at first advisory, the NACA began operating its own research centers at places like Langley Field, which served as both friend and foil to the Engineering Division over the years. The NACA became the heart of NASA when it was created in 1958. 

22 Apr 2004 (Tinker AFB)

Tinker Air Force Base hosted a ceremony dedicating a historic marker for its German Family Cemetery. The area where Tinker now stands had been occupied by Land Rush settlers in the 1890s. German farmers used this particular plot for a planned (but never built) Lutheran Church and accompanying cemetery. In 1894, 9-month-old Margaretha Kuhlman was the first to be buried there, followed by more than 70 others over the next century. Tinker annexed the land in 1955 as part of a major expansion, agreeing to maintain the cemetery and provide access to the family members, approximately 50 of whom attended this dedication ceremony. 

23 Apr 1991 (Fighters Directorate)

Air Force Secretary Donald Rice announced the selection of the Lockheed team and Pratt & Whitney as the winning contractors for the Advanced Technology Fighter (ATF) program, with their YF-22 aircraft and YF119 engine, respectively. During the ATF demonstration/validation phase, the YF-22 competed against the Northrop YF-23 and the F119 engine against GE’s YF120. The studies that led to the ATF began in the 1970s, first exploring a multi-role aircraft much like the later F-35, but switched to a next-generation air dominance fighter in response to the introduction of fourth-generation Soviet fighters. In the early 1980s, the Air Force funded technology development programs specific to the ATF through its labs. These included a highly-integrated avionics architecture, from very high-speed processors to electronic warfare; ultra-reliable radar; advanced low observable design and materials; and engine technologies from thrust vectoring to supercruise. 

24 Apr 1918 (WPAFB)

Majs AH Gilkerson, the chief flying instructor for the pilot training school at Wilbur Wright Field (WWF; now WPAFB Area A) and AE Welbourne, the Field’s commander, crashed this Curtiss JN-4 attempting to take off from McCook Field. They had flown the short distance from WWF to McCook to visit its commander, Lt Col Jesse Vincent, in his downtown Dayton office. The pair requested to borrow a plane more suitable than their training aircraft for a long-distance flight to Cleveland. When Vincent refused them, they reportedly left in a huff and returned to their plane. Gilkerson took off and, in Vincent’s words, “gave a very poor exhibition of flying,” stalling the plane, and crashing into the trees on the levee separating McCook from the Great Miami River and in full view of downtown. They received only minor injuries and were driven back to WWF. 

80 Years Ago This Week in AFLCMC History: 18 April 1942 (see photos above)

On 18 April 1942, 80 airmen, led by Lt Col James H. Doolittle, aboard 16 B-25 Mitchell bombers, left the deck of the American aircraft carrier USS Hornet, flew over 700 miles, and executed a surprise air attack on Tokyo and other Japanese cities— the “Doolittle Raid.” 

Born in 1896, Jimmy Doolittle served as an instructor pilot during World War I. After the war, he was a test pilot at Dayton’s McCook Field and conducted a flight test program he developed to analyze G-forces on maneuvering aircraft (and incidentally, on pilots, one of the first such experiments in aviation medicine). He attended the precursor for the Air Force Institute of Technology at McCook, earned the first PhD in aeronautics in the US from MIT in 1925, flew air racers, and executed the first “outside loop” at Wright Field. In 1929, he made the world’s first complete instrument-only flight, though with a safety pilot. In the 1930s, he continued aviation-related work in private industry. As a Shell Oil executive, he promoted the adoption and production of 100-octane aviation gas, a development made by Wright Field engineers. When recalled to active duty in 1940, Doolittle became an acquisition officer, under Materiel Command at Wright Field. He oversaw the conversion of industry in nearby states to wartime manufacturing.

Army Air Forces chief Gen Hap Arnold invited Doolittle to help plan a retaliatory raid on Japan after Pearl Harbor, who then volunteered to lead the attack. Doolittle’s plan using the new B-25 medium bombers aboard aircraft carriers had never been done before. Takeoff distance was the primary concern, leading to a significant and ad hoc process of removing all unnecessary equipment from the planes. Doolittle and the volunteer pilots trained and converted their aircraft at Eglin Field, Florida in March 1942. 

Spotted by a Japanese ship, the Raiders took off sooner and farther than planned. They reached their targets, though the low fuel forced most to ditch in China, rather than land at Nationalist Chinese air fields. Several were captured and executed or imprisoned by the Japanese, though many, including Doolittle, returned to the US. During the raid, Doolittle’s flight jacket bore the Wright Field spearhead emblem, signifying his assignment to the acquisition corps, rather than an operational unit. 

Those who survived WWII reunited annually, with the last Raider, Dayton native and Doolittle’s co-pilot Dick Cole, passing away in 2019. Doolittle himself died in 1993. Wright-Patterson named its Doolittle Acquisition Complex for him. 

In 2016, the Air Force announced that the new B-21 bomber would be called the “Raider” in honor of Doolittle and his men. Dick Cole was on-hand for the announcement.