This Week In AFLCMC History - June 12 - 18, 2023 Published June 13, 2023 By Air Force Life Cycle Management Center History Office 12 Jun 1970 (Digital Directorate/Hanscom AFB) On this date, Headquarters Air Force Systems Command (which merged with Air Force Logistics Command to form Air Force Materiel Command, or AFMC, in 1992) approved an Initial Operational Capability (IOC) date of Dec 31, 1970 for the “Conversion of Range Telemetry Systems,” or CORTS, program. This program was initiated to switch the telemetry systems at three missile test ranges from the “Very High Frequency Band” they were operating at to the “Ultra High Frequency Band” - a conversion that would help reduce the overcrowding of existing radio frequencies and allow for better updates over the next decade. The installation of the required radio technologies to support this conversion, and the check-out of all sites at all ranges, was completed on Mar 31, 1970. 13 Jun 1952 (Wright-Patterson AFB) Today in 1952, sixteen newspaper and radio writers from seven European nations in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) arrived at Wright-Patterson AFB for a one-day tour. The nations represented included Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and the United Kingdom. Several reporters attended: Alfred Louis Edmond Delsart (Lyon, France); Melchin van de Meeber (the Hague, Netherlands); George L. Bruce; London, Arasme Gillard (Brussels, Belgium); Clacinto Furlan (Milan, Italy); Alf Schioettz-Christensen, Aalberg, Denmark; and Lt. Comdr. Jose Soares Oliveira, Lisbon, Portugal. All were impressed with American efficiency, but of Dayton, Schioettz-Christensen admitted that the only thing he knew about the city prior to his visiting was “that the National Cash Registers were made here.” 14 Jun 1912 (Air Force History) Private First Class Vernon L. Burge began his aviation career in 1907 working as a ground crew mechanic on balloons, dirigibles, and, later, the Signal Corps’ Aeroplane No. 1—but Burge loved all things flying and wanted to fly himself. When a shortage of available officers in the Signal Corps for flight instruction permitted Lt Frank P. Lahm to offer Burge a chance to fly at Lahm’s new flying school in the Philippines, Burge took it, beginning instruction with Lt Moss L. Love in Apr 1912. On Jun 14, 1912, Burge became the first enlisted pilot, passing his FAI test and receiving aviation certificate No. 154. Nearly 3,000 enlisted pilots would serve between 1912 and 1957. They are remembered at Maxwell-Gunter AFB’s Enlisted Heritage Hall, where the pictured statue depicts and stands in honor of Burge, the first enlisted pilot in military aviation. The engraving reads, “In Honor of Our Enlisted Pilots … Let Us Never Forget ’They Also Flew.’” 15 Jun 1944 (Bombers Directorate) On today’s date, the U.S. launched a B‑29 Superfortress very long range bomber attack against the Imperial Iron and Steel Works at Yawata in Kyushu, Japan—the first against the Japanese homeland since the Doolittle Raid in Apr 1942, and the start of the strategic bombing campaign against Japan. Although dozens of B-29s participated in the attack, damage was minimal, and around 20 of the participating aircraft were unable to drop bombs on the target for various reasons. Per Hitting Home: The Air Offensive Against Japan, “four abort-ed with mechanical problems, four crashed, six jettisoned their bombs because of mechanical difficulties, and others bombed secondary targets or targets of opportunity.” This reflected troubles that the B-29 had struggled with over its development process. Engine overheating was the biggest issue, but there were other design flaws as well. The second XB-29 would crash in the months after the B-29’s first flight in 1942, killing all 11 crew—and 22 employees at the meat-packing plant it crashed into. Problems aside, the B-29 was still used to good effect in ending the war in the Pacific thanks to its wide range of around 3,700 miles. Pictured is a B-29 raid over Yokohama in May 1945. 16 Jun 1942 (Wright-Patterson AFB) Patterson Field Station Hospital in Building 219 opened with 52 beds. It was staffed initially by 55 Medical Corps officers, 500 enlisted men, and 6 civilian employees, and it was the base’s first permanent hospital (though earlier, temporary medical facilities were established as far back as 1917). The rapid expansion of the base during World War II soon overwhelmed this small hospital, however, and another temporary structure was opened, eventually replacing Building 219 as the base hospital (until the present-day medical center at Building 830 was opened in 1956). Building 219 went on to become an officer’s quarters, a barracks for Women in the Air Force (WAF) troops, and a host to a variety of offices before reverting to a medical facility in 1977. Somewhat notably, it was one of the buildings featured in a Wright-Patt-centered episode of Ghost Hunters, as it is purportedly “haunted.” Today it houses the Air Force Marathon Office and other offices. 18 Jun 1981 (Fighters and Advanced Aircraft Dir.) On this date, the F-117A Nighthawk, the world’s first operational stealth aircraft, flew for the first time. In the cockpit for the occasion was Lockheed test pilot Harold “Hal” Farley. Pilots of the F-117 were known by the callsign “Bandit,” initially so that they could discuss their jobs without associating them to a classified program. Farley was Bandit-117. The first operational F-117 pilot— Col Al Whitley —was Bandit-150, and the last F-117 pilot was Bandit-708, then- Col David Goldfein, who would go on to become the 21st Chief of Staff of the Air Force. Despite being known as a "stealth fighter," the F-117 was in reality a ground attack platform designed for destroying highly-defended, high-value targets like air defense installations and command centers by virtue of their ability to evade detection. This capability was, in the words of AFMC Command Historian Yancy Mailes, perhaps “best demonstrated during Operation Desert Storm when pilots snuck into Iraq and dropped weapons down the elevator shaft of a central communications building in Iraq.” Indeed, during Desert Storm, the F-117 flew 1,271 sorties with an 80% mission success rate and zero losses. 65 Years Ago in AFLCMC History: The X-20 Dyna-Soar (16 Jun 1958) On 16 June 1958, the Air Force announced that the Martin Company and Boeing were selected as the contractors for Phase I of the Dyna-Soar program. Dyna-Soar was a crewed, reusable spaceplane demonstrator that was to lead to an operational military vehicle. It would be boosted into an orbital or suborbital trajectory by a large rocket, then use its shape to skip and “glide” across the upper atmosphere for extended range, conduct a military mission like reconnaissance or bombardment, then reenter and land back in the US. The skip-glide concept went back to the 1930s, but it wasn’t until the 1950s that rockets were large enough to reach space with a payload like a nuclear warhead, satellite, or spacecraft. That capability quickly led to concepts for military missions in space. The Wright Air Development Center (WADC) in Dayton (now AFLCMC & AFRL) was the epicenter of research for hypersonic flight, human spaceflight, and all things aerospace. Their X-15 demonstrator program was then in the early stages of becoming the most successful X-plane program in history as it explored the edges of space and hypersonic flight. Dyna-Soar, later designated the X-20, was to continue the X-15’s mission by carrying a pilot into space and, in operational form, conducting reconnaissance, bombing, or even satellite inspection and interdiction. To its supporters, that versatility was an asset, but to its detractors, it raised the question of not what it could do but what it should do, given that there were no existing requirements. But in the mid-1950s, the concept of a manned, gliding spaceplane offered enticing options for rapid, long-range bombing with the sort of accuracy that the then-foundering cruise missile programs couldn’t match and for equally responsive and survivable strategic recon-naissance of the closed-off Soviet Union. The Air Force supported studies of these concepts under programs such as Bomi, Hywards, Brass Bell, and Robo in that period until the efforts coalesced in October 1957 into a “manned hypersonic test vehicle…[as] a means to evaluate military subsystems.” Its name: Dynamics Soaring, or Dyna-Soar, aka Weapons System 464L. With a development plan in place, the Air Force invited a dozen aircraft companies to submit proposals, of which nine responded in March 1958. Boeing and Martin were awarded 12-18 month contracts to develop their initial concepts and submit proposals for the prime contract. In June 1959, the Source Selection Board chose Boeing to continue the vehicle program, but recommended that Martin continue on as the rocket booster contractor. Four years later, before any actual vehicles were built or tested, the new Lyndon B. Johnson administration cancelled Dyna-Soar in November 1963 over questions of its cost, lack of mission requirements, improvements in unmanned satellites and ICBMs, redundancy with NASA’s human spaceflight program, and competition from the Air Force’s Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) that would be a crewed spy satellite.