This Week In AFLCMC History - June 26 - July 2, 2023 Published June 27, 2023 By Air Force Life Cycle Management Center History Office 26 Jun 1972 (Fighters & Advanced Aircraft Dir.) On this date in 1972, the Air Force unveiled the prototype for its newest air superiority fighter at the McDonnell Douglas plant in St. Louis—the twin-engine YF-15A Eagle. Designed to counter the then-new Soviet MIG-23 and other adversarial aircraft in development at the time, the F-15 combined maneuverability with high speed to give it an edge in air-to-air combat. It first flew in July 1972, and entered service in 1976. It remains in use today, having participated in OPERATION DESERT STORM (where it scored 32 of the USAF’s 36 air-to-air victories), OPERATION ALLIED FORCE, OPERATIONS ENDURING FREEDOM and IRAQI FREEDOM, and others. 28 Jun 1933 (Agile Combat Support Dir.) 90 years ago today, Capt Donald L. Bruner was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his work at McCook Field, Dayton, Ohio, in the development of night flying and night flying equipment. In the early 1920s, Bruner and his team replaced existing but barebones and often hazardous WW1-era night flying equipment, like wingtip flares that could catch a field or a plane on fire, with a variety of safer and more effective innovations. These included both improvements to the aircraft themselves (such as by lighting instrument panels and covering their dials in luminous paints, installing encased lights in the wingtips, applying nonglare finishes to propellers so that they wouldn’t reflect the new light sources or the flames of their aircrafts’ Liberty engines, and so on) and to the airfield. Indeed, airfield lighting in particular was vastly improved at this time, with new beacons and searchlights and the introduction of boundary lights and obstacle lights. 29 Jun 1993 (Tinker AFB) On this date, 30 years ago, Tinker AFB dedicated the “Tinker Air Force Base Urban Greenway” as a wildlife sanctuary. The first of its kind within the Department of Defense, the Tinker greenway originally consisted of 110 acres—and has since grown in size. Essentially an urban restoration project in the middle of Oklahoma City, it serves the base’s human and wildlife populations alike: The wildlife get a safe haven and home in the midst of the city, and the humans on base get trails and recreation spaces. The development of the park, which began in 1991, played a big role in Tinker AFB’s winning the 1992 Air Force General Thomas D. White Natural Resources Conservation Award in 1993. 30 Jun 1966 (Digital Directorate) The first of 377 Electronic Systems Division (ESD)-developed AN/MRC-107 communications units rolled off the General Dynamics assembly line at Rochester, New York. This was part of a $10 million contract to develop highly-mobile, jeep-mounted communication units for the ongoing Vietnam War. These units included four different types of radios (plus two manpack sets) to enable forward air control parties to talk to both aircraft in the sky and to other ground-based units in order to help close air support missions more easily differentiate between friendly and enemy ground positions when attacking frequently jungle-cloaked targets. 1 Jul 1947 (Presidential and Executive Airlift Dir.) Today in 1947, President Harry S. Truman’s new presidential plane landed in Washington, D.C. This aircraft, named The Independence after Truman’s home town in Missouri, was the second presidential aircraft in history. It was a Douglas DC-6, re-dubbed the VC-188 as the Air Force’s staff/executive variant. It replaced the outdated VC-54C Sacred Cow. It was flown into D.C. from California by Lt Col Harry T. Myers, with Douglas’s assistant chief pilot, William J. Morrissey, as co-pilot. It had one passenger, Santa Monica Mayor Mark T. Gates, who carried with him a plaque and a scroll with the signatures of 12,000 Douglas employees. Appropriately enough, it was commissioned into the Air Force a few days later on Independence Day. Originally, The Independence had a yellow beak but this was later repainted white because the yellow paint interfered with the weather radar. Flying as a presidential plane until 1953, it would afterwards be used for VIP transport until retired to the National Museum of the USAF in 1965. Although it carried the President, it wasn’t until the next presidential plane, the Columbine II, that the call sign “Air Force One” would enter use. 2 Jul 1982 (Mobility & Training Aircraft Dir.) On this date, Fairchild Republic was selected to develop the T-46A next generation trainer. This light jet, nicknamed the Eaglet, was supposed to replace the Cessna T-37 Tweet as the Air Force’s primary trainer, but the program was cancelled in 1986 with only three Eaglets hatched. A twin-tail aircraft with two Garrett F109 turbo-fan engines and a side-by-side cockpit configuration, the aircraft seemed ready to meet or exceed all of Air Training Command’s requirements—however, schedule delays and cost overruns began to add up within months of contract award, and key milestones slipped well behind schedule (first flight, for example, occurred on Oct 15, 1985, which was a full six months behind schedule). There were additional problem areas, such as high drag, a lack of adequate stall warnings, some issues with flight controls, and so on; but in describing why it was cancelled, the Air Force indicated that it was the “schedule delays and manufacturing problems, coupled with lack of affordability, [that] made this decision necessary.” AFLCMC History Highlight: Archibald H. Freeman (d. 27 Jun 1918) The 27th of June, 1918, was a clear and pleasant morning in Dayton, Ohio. It was a Thursday, and intrepid test pilot Archibald Freeman—”Arch” or “Archie” to his friends—was ready to meet it head on. After saying goodbye to his newlywed bride, he headed out from his home at the Riverside apartments to his office, such as it was, at the Dayton-Wright Airplane Company. Arch and Helen, who was well known as a local entertainer, had been married just a month earlier, though she was his second wife. Freeman's first had divorced him a few years ago because he was unwilling to give up his dangerous job as a stunt and test pilot. He’d tried, but flying was what he did. Flying was all he wanted to do. With that as his goal for the day today also—to be up in the skies over Dayton—Freeman arrived at the Dayton-Wright plant, just south of town, for his usual work checking out new DH-4 biplanes fresh off the factory floor, like the one pictured below at D-W a few weeks later. World War I was still raging in Europe, and each run of the Dayton-Wright Company’s production planes had to be tested before they were sent on to the front lines. The plane he was testing today, though, was being troublesome. After getting about fifty feet high, the engine stalled. It was a problem he’d seen before. Several weeks earlier, on May 2, 1918, Freeman and scores of onlookers had watched a former instructor of Freeman’s—Major Oscar Brindley—plummet to the ground when his DH-4’s engine quit during a low-level turn, killing both Brindley and his accompanying passenger, Col Henry J. Damm. Freeman knew the risks. But he also knew how to recover from the engine stall. As soon as his engine sputtered out, he had enough altitude to execute a one hundred and eighty degree turn and carefully land back on the field, where the mechanics went over the fuel system and performed their troubleshooting. Perhaps some people would have taken that as a sign to leave that plane alone for the day, but Freeman had a job to do. When his mechanics gave him the all clear, he took it up once more. And again the engine stalled. And again he turned it back onto the field, gliding it skillfully to a landing. Once more it was worked on, and then turned back into his hands. Perhaps thinking that the third time’s the charm, Freeman took it up one more time. Born on the fifth of September, the exact year of Arch Freeman’s birth is historically uncertain. His headstone lists it as 1888, while other records say he was born in 1887 or 1889. Much of his childhood is equally shrouded in mystery, though it is clear that he was born in New York City, where it is said he went to Trinity School. Freeman was generally described as fearless, pleasant to be around, and abundantly cheerful. His life seems to suggest that he was also a bit of a showman and an adrenaline-junkie, and that he absolutely loved flying. He first became interested in being a pilot when he met Arthur L. Welsh, one of Orville Wright’s flying instructors, who began training him to fly at the Wright flying school extension on Long Island, New York. From there, Freeman would go on to Dayton, Ohio to take his place among America’s early aviators by obtaining pilot’s license no. 84 on Jan 12, 1912. A few months later, in May 1912, Freeman took a flying instructor’s job in Boston, Massachusetts, working for Harry Atwood’s aviation school. Barely having arrived in Boston and with the ink hardly dry on his license, Freeman and one of his pupils, Henry Roy Waite, made national news. To settle a bet, on May 20th they took to the air and dropped “toy bombs” (bags filled with flour) on military installations and battleships around the Boston Harbor. With the bombs were notes that read, “what if this were sixteen ounces of nitroglycerin instead of flour?” This early demonstration of the military potential of airpower was made nine years before Billy Mitchell’s demonstration of the airplane’s capacity for sinking battleships with live explosives. The next month, Atwood closed up his flying school with not one student having actually graduated, leaving Freeman as an itinerant instructor in the area while performing more exciting exhibition flying on the side. It was during this time that Freeman also met his first wife, Christine “Chrissy” H. Steeves (m. Feb 10, 1913), who worked for a local theater company. As noted, his wife didn’t like how dangerous his flying career was, so he promised her he’d give it up—but he later went back on that promise and the two soon divorced. It was also during this time that Freeman would meet and be-friend fellow Wright graduate, Howard Rinehart. Later in 1913, Freeman moved back to New York to take a more stable job with the Wright Company, remaining until 1915. In 1916, as the Dayton-Wright Company was being dreamt up by Dayton businessmen Edward A. Deeds and Charles F. Kettering, Freeman’s old friend Howard Rinehart brought him on board to start a flying school for the two businessmen on a field just north of Dayton (temporarily dubbed “Wright Field,” then simply the “North Field”). A year later, North Field was turned over to the Army instead, at which point it was renamed “McCook Field,” and Rinehart and Free-man took new jobs as test and acceptance pilots for the Dayton-Wright Company’s new plant in the suburb of Moraine, which was by then beginning to produce American-made DH-4s with Liberty engines. On the morning of June 27, 1918, the Liberty in Free-man’s plane had already failed him twice, but he took off a third time after the mechanics made adjustments. Again his engine quit. This time, however, a gust of wind caught him as he swung it around back towards the landing field, and instead of gliding grace-fully to a landing, the airplane pivoted straight into the ground from about 150 feet up. As the DH-4 collided with the earth, the force of the crash sent Freeman’s head forward into his instrument panel. He died on the way to the hospital. His passenger, Robert Ahlers, an ignition expert with Delco, survived with minor injuries. Freeman’s bride, Helen F. Kraus, accompanied her new husband’s body back to New York for burial.