This Week In AFLCMC History – August 5 - 11, 2024

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  • By Air Force Life Cycle Management Center History Office
5 Aug 1954 (Bombers Directorate)
Seventy years ago today, the B-52A—the first production model of the B-52—flew its first flight from Boeing’s Seattle plant. A.M. “Tex” Johnston, Boeing’s Chief of flight test, and Donald Knutson, co-pilot, flew the aircraft, taking off at 3:42 p.m. local time, and landing at 5:00 p.m. The production model of the B-52 differed from the two test models that came before it by having the pilot and the co-pilot sitting side-by-side instead of tandem. Since the mid-1950s on through to the present day, the B-52 fleet has been the backbone of the USAF’s strategic bomber capability.
 
6 Aug 1994 (Tinker AFB)
Today, 30 years ago, John Glenn, Jr.—astronaut and U.S. Senator (D-Ohio)—visited Tinker AFB, Oklahoma. He was there to voice his support for keeping Tinker AFB open, as it was at that time facing possible closure. Senator Glenn had just himself fought to keep Wright-Patterson AFB’s flight test air wing in Ohio earlier that spring, but lost—with Ohio’s flight test mission going to Edwards AFB in California. In Aug 1994, using lessons learned from his own fight, he was trying to encourage Tinker AFB to begin working immediately to stay open. He was also voicing his support for a local politician, Representative Dave McCurdy, who was running for U.S. Senate to fill a seat from which incumbent Senator David L. Boren was retiring. Senator Glenn argued that there would be no better champion for keeping the base open. In the end, McCurdy lost the Senate race to James “Jim” Inhofe, but Tinker AFB nonetheless survived the 1995 BRAC when Kelly AFB was chosen over Tinker for closure.
 
7 Aug 1964 (U.S. Military History)
Sixty years ago today, Congress passed the “Gulf of Tonkin Resolution” authorizing President Johnson “to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force” to maintain international peace in southeast Asia. The resolution was prompted by purported attacks by North Vietnamese forces earlier in the month on U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. It passed through the Senate almost unanimously, with only two Senators dissenting, and was historically important because it gave the President the authorization to rapidly escalate U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War without a formal declaration of war. Congress rescinded the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1971 as public sentiment for American involvement in the war become increasingly negative, and in 1973 passed the War Powers Resolution to limit a president’s ability to get the United States involved in future wars without Congressional consent.
 
8 Aug 1944 (Hill AFB/Fighters and Advanced Aircraft Directorate)
Today, 80 years ago, a tired P-47 Thunderbolt—a rugged WWII-era fighter plane—arrived at Hill AFB for rehabilitation. It was the first of many, with the last P-47 delivery occurring on 15 Dec 1945. Hill AFB was rehabbing the aircraft so that the Second Air Force could reuse them for training purposes.
 
10 Aug 1984 (Digital Directorate/Hanscom AFB)
On today’s date forty years ago, Under Secretary of the Army James Ambrose approved the awarding of a contract for the Joint STARS Ground Station Module (GSM) to the Motorola Corporation. This followed a May 1984 Memorandum of Agreement between the Air Force and the Army, where both services agreed on the platform for the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint STARS, or JSTARS)—the E-8 aircraft (a militarized Boeing 707)—and system requirements. The Army took responsibility for the GSM and the Downsized GSM (DGSM), while the Air Force had sole responsibility for the development of the prime mission equipment (airplane, radar, and data links), managed out of Hanscom AFB. The E-8 tracked enemy ground forces, then transmitted its targeting data to the GSM, a truck-based receiving station, for dissemination to friendly troops.
 
11 Aug 2004 (Armament Directorate)
Twenty years ago today, the Air Force Flight Test Center (AFFTC), now the Air Force Test Center (AFTC), conducted the final evaluation sortie for a new type of pod for the F-16 HTS targeting system at Edwards AFB. HTS refers to the “High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM) Targeting System” for the AGM-88 HARM. The HARM is an air-to-surface tactical missile specialized for destroying enemy radar-equipped air defense systems. The HTS was developed in the early and middle 1990s to allow F-16s to effectively take on a suppression of enemy air defenses role following the retirement of the F-4G—which had previously been relied upon for these “Wild Weasel” missions. The system as a whole consists of the pod, the missile, the aircraft’s launcher interface computer, and system software on the aircraft. The original HTS pod could only be carried on the right side of an F-16; but the pod tested on this day in 2004 could be equipped to either side, allowing for enhanced precision targeting. _
 
100 Years Ago This Week in AFLCMC History: 9 August 1924
The Re-Birth of Wright Field
 
America’s entry into the First World War in 1917 resulted in a slew of short-term actions that continue to resonate over a century later. This included leasing land for the Army’s largest aviation training base, dubbed Wilbur Wright Field, outside Dayton, Ohio, on what is now Wright-Patterson AFB’s Area A, along with the purchase of a small adjacent area for a supply depot. That was followed by the establishment of an Airplane Engineering Division to manage aircraft development, test, and acquisition. When construction of that Division’s intended home at Langley Field, Virginia stalled, military, business, and political forces combined to relocate it to a “temporary” home across from downtown Dayton, on another leased property—McCook Field.
 
The hastily constructed McCook Field was intended to last for the duration of the war, but while that conflict ended less than a year later, the Engineering Division stayed put for almost a decade. In that time, airplanes grew larger, but McCook did not, prompting the addition of its iconic “This Field is Small—Use It All” warning sign to incoming pilots. Not only was the field small, it was also surrounded by a river, homes, and downtown buildings—hardly ideal for routine aviation, much less McCook’s experimental flying, wind tunnel experiments, and testing of engines, propellers, and parachutes. As a result, there was a consistent push by the Engineering Division for a more suitable home, which was accompanied by persistent lobbying both from other municipalities to relocate it to their jurisdiction and by the airplane industry to shutter it entirely. It was only Congress’ indifference and reluctance to appropriate money to move it that kept McCook open.
 
Those forces came to a head in 1922 when it appeared relocation was imminent. Dayton’s civic and corporate leadership quickly banded together that October to save this unique asset for their city. In just days, the newly-formed Dayton Air Service Committee (DASC) raised nearly a half-million dollars in local donations to buy outright the leased Wilbur Wright Field land, which still being used as an auxiliary field for the Engineering Division and to support the Fairfield Air Depot, along with a nearly-equal portion of contiguous property to the south-west as the “new McCook Field.”
  
Much of that land was owned by a quasi-governmental regional flood control district that was man-aged by the same interests that comprised the DASC, paving the way for a quick and cheap process...or so they thought. Over the next two years, a hodge-podge of property rights stymied the Committee’s attempts to purchase (for over $260,000) and transfer the nearly 5,000 acres. Ohio Congressman Roy Fitzgerald, Washington’s biggest advocate for Dayton’s aviation interests, worked behind the scenes to execute the necessarily political machinations.
 
In February 1924, the Dayton Air Service Committee transferred the first parcels of land to the Army. Then on August 9, 1924, representatives of the DASC signed over the deeds to over 4,000 acres for the sum of $1. Those were recorded two days later and the US government, as represented by the Army Air Service, took possession of most of what’s now Wright-Patterson Air Force Base on 12 August.
 
The momentous occasion called for a formal ceremony, of course, so DASC chairman Frederick Patterson took the train to Washington DC to present the deeds in person to the War Department. Not one to pass up publicity, Air Service deputy chief Gen Billy Mitchell escorted Patterson to the White House where he met with President Calvin Coolidge and received the letter shown here. The missive, containing some factual errors, was undoubtedly the work of the President’s staff, as he was relatively hostile to any aviation investment.
 
For Wilbur Wright Field, the only change was that they now owned the land they already occupied (as the Fairfield Air Depot had since 1917). The Engineering Division like-wise continued with business as usual at McCook until Congress allocated money to actually prep the newly-acquired parcels that would be their future home. Those funds finally came through in April 1925, though groundbreaking for the first building (now Building 11) didn’t occur until a year later.
 
In the meantime, debate raged as to what to call the base. McCook Field was named for a famous Ohio civil war family that had owned part of the land the field sat on, but had no connection to aviation. In a move that caused lasting historical confusion, the War Department declared that the entire property, not just the newer half, would now be “Wright Field,” dropping “Wilbur” from the name to honor both him and Orville (who was still alive). The confusion grew in 1931 when the base actually did split in two, with “Wright Field” being confined to the southern half (now Area B) that housed the former Engineering Division. The original portion (Area A) became “Patterson Field,” named for Frank Patterson, who perished during a test flight there in 1918 and was a cousin to DASC chairman Frederick Patterson. Building construction began in April 1926 and the formal ribbon-cutting happened in October 1927. McCook Field then closed and was entirely demolished until no sign of the historic facility remained.