This Week In AFLCMC History – July 22 - 28, 2024

  • Published
  • By Air Force Life Cycle Management Center History Office
22 Jul 1966 (Hill AFB/Fighters and Advanced Aircraft Directorate)
During the mid- and late-1960s, much of Hill AFB’s F-4 Phantom II maintenance work was centered around supporting the aircraft’s Vietnam War-era missions in Southeast Asia (SEA). On 22 Jul 1966, Hill AFB’s Ogden Air Materiel Area (OOAMA) even converted its depot-repair facilities to a production line to produce 100 Centerline Stores Support Fitting Repair Kits for F-4s deployed to SEA, as the industry-side manufacturers could not produce them fast enough—and a lack of the kits meant grounded aircraft. Working around the clock, and on weekends, OOAMA maintenance personnel produced the required kits by mid-August, enabling the F-4 squadrons that needed them to keep flying with OOAMA-manufactured kits until the commercially-produced ones were once again available.
 
23 Jul 2004 (Presidential and Executive Airpower Directorate)
 Today, 20 years ago, Illinois Congressman Jerry F. Costello broke the news that the Air Force Reserve Command’s 932nd Airlift Wing at Scott AFB, Illinois, would receive $265 million to purchase three new C-40C Clippers. The C-40 is the militarized version of the Boeing 737, and it is primarily used for executive airlift. The wing was also set to receive three modern C-9C Nightingales from Andrews AFB (to replace the three older C-9As then at Scott). This move allowed the 932nd to remain at Scott AFB, after, just a year prior, it had looked like the wing’s roughly 1,000 reservists and civilian workers might soon be out of the job. The C-9 mission eventually became the wing’s only mission, and it’s what the 932nd still flies today.
 
24 Jul 1964 (ISR & Special Operations Forces Directorate/Big Safari)
Sixty years ago today, President Lyndon Johnson publicly revealed the existence of the SR-71, with newspapers around the country subsequently reporting on the new “2000 mph” reconnaissance plane. The SR-71 was derived from the CIA’s (then) still-secret A-12 spyplane, developed by Lockheed’s famed aircraft designer, Clarence L. “Kelly” Johnson, and the Skunk Works. The Air Force’s SR-71 “Blackbird” was slightly larger and added a backseat Reconnaissance Systems Operator. It was the world’s fastest and highest-flying operational airplane when it first flew in Dec 1964. It entered service in Jan 1966, and retired in Jan 1990. The BIG SAFARI program office managed the SR-71’s brief resurrection in 1995 until its final retirement two years later.
 
25 Jul 1944 (Bombers Directorate)
Today, 80 years ago, Operation COBRA began. The 25-31 Jul 1944 operation was meant to break U.S. forces at Normandy through Germany’s defensive lines following the D-Day landings from several weeks before. It started with approximately 3,000 planes, including 1,500 Eighth Air Force bombers, attacking German positions at St. Lo near American lines. In remembering the event, one German panzer division commander remarked that, “The aircraft flew over us continuously, passing above us like a conveyor belt […] My front positions resembled a scene from the moon, and at least 70% of my troops were out of action—dead, buried, or stunned. All of my forward tanks were disabled and the roads were practically impassable.” The operation was generally considered a great success, collapsing the Nazi front lines; but a few bombers did accidentally drop on friendly forces, killing almost 500 US troops, including US Ground Forces Commander Lt Gen Lesley J. McNair.
 
26 Jul 1949 (ISR & Special Operations Forces Directorate)
Seventy-five years ago today, news broke to the American public that the Air Force had its first amphibious helicopter, the Sikorsky H-5H, a new variant of the popular H-5. It had pontoon-like floats with wheels on the bottoms, allowing it to land on both water and land. The “H” models also had the unusual bubble-like “blisters,” seen on the fuselage fore and aft of the engine/rotor, that widened the interior to accommodate up to three litter patients at a time—two in the front of the helicopter and one isolated in the rear. Produced only in small numbers, H-5Hs did perform some water rescues during the Korean War, but that role was primarily completed by Grumman HU-16 Albatross fixed-wing airplanes or the larger and newer H-19 Chickasaw helicopter. Nevertheless, the handful of H-5Hs helped pioneer amphibious rotorcraft, and did play a small role in wartime rescue operations.
 
27 Jul 1954 (Mobility and Training Aircraft Directorate/Wright-Patterson AFB)
Today, seventy years ago, as the Air Force began increasingly flying jet aircraft, the ground school phase of Wright-Patterson AFB’s special “jet aircraft transition program” began for pilots assigned or attached to Wright-Patt organizations. The program involved nine T‑33 jet trainers, and was operated by the 2750th Air Base Wing’s Flight Training Branch—whose instructors had just themselves completed a jet indoctrination course at Craig AFB, Alabama, a few weeks prior. Classroom training initially occurred in the main training branch in Area C (which is part of Area A today), before moving to Building 8 in Area B. .
 
 
110 Years Ago This Week in AFLCMC History: 28 July 1914—World War I begins in Europe
Following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand the month before, on this date 110 years ago Austria-Hungary declared war on the nation of Serbia, knocking over a domino that quickly had most of Europe embroiled in the “Great War”—later redubbed “World War I”—though America remained ostensibly neutral for nearly 3 more years.
 
The First World War was significant in many ways, but it was especially notable as the first major conflict to heavily involve airplanes. For the United States, it breathed life into the country’s foundering military aviation industry, which for years Congress and the American public had neglected to take seriously. Germany’s pre-war government aviation spending, for example, was $45 million; Russia’s was $22.5 million; France’s was $12 million; and Great Britain’s was $1 million. The U.S., however, only appropriated $250,000 to military aviation in FY 1915, and its air forces consisted of 208 assigned personnel and 23 airplanes—none of which were combat-ready or even combat-capable.
 
In the years after 1914, leading up to America’s involvement in the war, and especially in the year-and-a-half after the U.S.’s entry into the war in April 1917, many of the tasks—from development and acquisitions to logistics and armament—that would later become AFMC and AFLCMC missions synthesized in the Dayton, Ohio, area as the United States sought to catch up to European aviation. Indeed, where most of today’s USAF bases trace their roots to WWII, Wright-Patterson AFB’s predecessor bases were born out of WWI. Partly this was thanks to Dayton’s position in the industrial heartland, and partly it was due to local business leader connections to the nascent Air Service and their enthusiasm for aviation. The Dayton Wright Airplane Company, for example, was organized less than a week after the U.S. declared war on Germany, and produced over 3500 planes by Nov 1918.
 
The War made an indelible footprint on Dayton through its Army aviation fields. Outside of town (now WPAFB Area A), the massive Wilbur Wright Field (WWF) was home to pilot, mechanic, and armorer training, as well as the Fairfield Air Depot that supplied it and other training bases. Across from downtown Dayton, McCook Field opened in late 1917 to manage aircraft and technology development, testing, acquisition, and production. In the years following WWI, McCook lost its land, but not its mission, while Wilbur Wright Field lost its original missions, but kept its property. In 1927, the research and acquisition functions moved to land adjacent to WWF, giving it a unique place in Army (and then Air Force) aviation that enabled it to persist for another century (and counting).