This Week In AFLCMC History – July 29 - August 4, 2024

  • Published
  • By Air Force Life Cycle Management Center History Office
29 Jul 1974 (Mobility and Training Aircraft Directorate)
Fifty years ago, Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger issued a program decision memorandum directing the Air Force to consolidate all military airlift forces under a single manager by the end of fiscal year 1977. The Air Force answered the charge by announcing, one month later, that the Military Airlift Command (MAC) would be providing airlift services to all branches. This was partly made possible by folding all of Tactical Airlift Command’s tactical airlift assets (comprised mainly of C-130s) into MAC, which prior to this date had only managed the Air Force’s strategic airlift assets. The goal, as Air Force Chief of Staff Gen David C. Jones described it, was to “achieve better integration of overall airlift” by consolidating “strategic and tactical airlift assets” into one command; in the process, it made MAC the world’s largest single airlift organization.
 
30 Jul 1994 (AFNG History/Mobility and Training Aircraft Dir./Ohio History)
 Today, 30 years ago, Rickenbacker Air Force Base, Ohio, closed in accordance with the 1990 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) plan. The base, near Columbus, Ohio, got its start in 1942 as the “Northeastern Training Center of the Army Air Corps,” where it provided basic pilot training. Soon after, it changed its name to “Lockbourne Army Airfield” on account of its location in Lockbourne, Ohio. It housed a number of wings during World War II, including the 91st Bomb Wing, the 55th Fighter Wing, and several others. Perhaps most famously, it also was home to the Tuskegee Airmen’s 477th Composite Group. In 1948, it became an Air Force Base, and in 1974 it was renamed “Rickenbacker AFB” in honor of Edward V. “Eddie” Rickenbacker, the American WWI “ace of aces.” Despite its losing its “Air Force Base” status in 1994, the base still stands today as the Rickenbacker Air National Guard Base, where it is home to the 121st Air Refueling Wing—“All Things At All Times!”
 
 31 Jul 1964 (Digital Directorate/Hanscom AFB)
Sixty years ago today, the seventh and last of the Hanscom AFB-managed Air Weapons Control Systems (412L) in West Germany were completed, along with the overhead facility at Giebelstadt Air Base. The 412L Control System consisted of radars, data processors, communications systems, and other equipment, and was meant to manage local air defenses. Used from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, the 412L semi-automatic radar control and data net was reported to be even more efficient than NORAD’s Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) Air Defense System, thanks to its advanced microelectronics, but unlike SAGE, it was only designed for use in its own small, relatively localized region (specifically, it was used in southern Germany to manage air defense activities for NATO’s Fourth Allied Tactical Air Force). Although limited in comparison to modern computing capabilities, the 412L system was cutting edge for its day.
 
1 Aug 1929 (Wright-Patterson AFB/Air Force History)
Today, 95 years ago, Lieutenant James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his transcontinental one-stop flight in 1922 (his first major aviation feat—he’d enlisted in 1917), for his acceleration tests at McCook Field, Ohio, in 1924, and for his blind instrument landing earlier in 1929 (which utilized artificial horizontal and directional gyroscopes that he’d helped develop the year before). Even after his DFC, Doolittle continued to set records and accomplish great things, though today he is per-haps best known for his WW2-era “Doolittle Raid” against Japan in April 1942, when he led sixteen B-25 bombers on a bombing raid against the Japanese main islands. A month after the raid against Japan, Doolittle received the Medal of Honor from President Franklin D. Roosevelt. After the war, he became the president of the Air Force Association, an organization he helped to organize.
 
2 Aug 1990 (Air Force History)
On today’s date in 1990, Iraq invaded the neighboring country of Kuwait, beginning what came to be known as the Gulf War. In a matter of hours, Kuwait City was occupied by Iraqi forces. U.S. President George H. W. Bush, with other coalition leaders, warned of retribution if Iraq did not pull their forces back to their own country. Five days later, on 7 Aug 1990, Operation Desert Shield began. Desert Shield was meant to shore up Allied defenses around Iraq and Kuwait, and by the end of August, the USAF had a range of fighter, electronic warfare, reconnaissance, airlift, attack, and tanker aircraft in the region. On 17 Jan 1991, Operation Desert Storm—the combat portion of the Gulf War—began with “the largest air campaign since World War II.” This six-week campaign consisted of 116,000 combat air sorties, with 88,500 tons of bombs dropped, and was so successful that the ground portion of the campaign (beginning on 24 Feb) that followed was over in just 100 hours.
 
3 Aug 1972 (Fighters and Advanced Aircraft Directorate)
Today in 1972, the F-15 Eagle successfully completed its first supersonic flight out of Edwards AFB, California. The test came exactly one week after the F-15’s maiden flight on 27 July 1972, and lasted about 45 minutes. During the supersonic flight, the F-15 achieved a speed of Mach 1.5. The F-15 continues to fly today as an air superiority fighter for achieving and maintaining tactical air supremacy over the battlefield, and it has deployed for a number of operations, including Southern Watch, Provide Comfort, Allied Force, Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. _
 
80 Years Ago This Week in AFLCMC History: 4 Aug 1944 
Operation APHRODITE
 
In mid-1943, the heart of World War II, British intelligence noticed the Germans building a series of massive concrete complexes directly across the English Channel in France, followed by dozens of smaller sites that had what looked like skis laid on edge. Alarmingly, these “ski” ramps were all pointed in one direction—London.
 
Technical experts speculated that these new large sites were for launching Germany’s secret V-2 ballistic missile, while the smaller “ski sites” fired the V-1 “buzz bomb” cruise missile, each possibly carrying chemical or biological warheads. In the fall of 1943, the British launched CROSSBOW to destroy the missile facilities, but hitting them with high-altitude bombers proved ineffective. That December, US Army Air Forces chief Gen Hap Arnold directed the commander of the AAF Proving Ground at Eglin Field to build an exact replica of the ski sites, against which they would test every method of bombing and every weapon to determine which was the most effective. Remarkably, Gen Arnold was at Eglin watching test attacks against the site mockup there just 25 days later.
 
Despite continued attacks, the Germans managed to launch their first “buzzbomb” against England in the summer of 1944, shortly after the D-Day invasion. Likewise, the V-2 rocket sites and other hardened facilities like submarine pens remained largely intact despite everything thrown against them. AAF leaders recognized that they needed precision weapons to knock out these remaining targets. The trouble was that “precision” in 1944 was measured in city blocks, not feet. The engineers at Wright Field were already developing both air– and ground-launched guided bombs for greater accuracy, but these were neither mature or large enough for these massive targets. But a few months earlier, they began studying something that could be: airplanes.
 
They wondered, what if the “war weary” bombers that were too damaged or worn out for manned missions could be stripped down, stuffed with high explosives, equipped with remote controls borrowed from the guided missile program, and then remotely flown straight into a target by a mothership—a “kamikaze” drone? The code-named CASTOR equipment was hurriedly developed at Wright Field, tested at Eglin (using the same V- 1 “ski” sites), then sent to the UK for live tests as Operation APHRODITE. Experiments there showed that the fully-automatic equipment was too unreliable for take-offs, forcing the AAF to use a volunteer pilot and engineer to get the plane airborne, arm the explosives, set the plane for auto/radio control, and then bail out.
 
The first operational mission occurred on 4 August 1944 against one of the hardened sites. Unfortunately the drone B-17 spun out of control shortly after the crew bailed out. Subsequent strikes fared little better; most notably, the Navy’s first attempt ended in a premature explosion that killed its crew, including pilot Lt Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr.—older brother to future President John F. Kennedy. Development continued without great success, but this experience provided the impetus to improve these capabilities in the Cold War.