This Week In AFLCMC History – August 12 - 18, 2024

  • Published
  • By Air Force Life Cycle Management Center History Office
12 Aug 1982 (Wright-Patterson AFB)
On today’s date in 1982, a $115.3 million contract to expand the Wright-Patterson AFB Medical Center was awarded to Blount Inc. of Montgomery, Alabama. Formal groundbreaking occurred on 14 September 1982. The project was originally scheduled to be completed in 1987, but would not actually get finished until 1989 (and end up costing closer to $123 million). Altogether this project expanded the medical center from 297,000 square feet to 657,000 square feet—and, in doing so, made the Wright-Patterson AFB Medical Center the “second largest hospital in the U.S. Air Force.”
 
13 Aug 1944 (Armament Directorate)
Today, 80 years ago, two GB-4 Glide Bombs were launched against the Nazi’s hardened submarine pens at Le Havre, France, as part of the larger Operation APHRODITE (see the feature article in the 29 Jul edition of Heritage Hangar). Initially conceptualized by the British, the glide bomb “kit” added wings, control surfaces, and automatic/remote controls to a conventional air-dropped bomb or torpedo for greater range and accuracy. The GB-4 was the first to use TV guidance and was aimed by radio from a control plane. The program was managed at Wright Field, briefly tested at Eglin, then sent to England for operation-al evaluation under APHRODITE. Its vulnerability to antiaircraft fire, complex controls, and camera that didn’t work in poor weather curtailed GB-4 development. How-ever, the glide bomb’s guidance and control conversion “kit” approach pioneered the methods used on modern precision-guided munitions.
 
14 Aug 1954 (Bombers Directorate)
Seventy years ago today, a send-off ceremony occurred at Convair’s Fort Worth production facility, marking the delivery of the company’s last B-36 Peacemaker to the Air Force. The ceremony was attended by nearly 11,000 people, and included several special events and even live music. Today, only 4 out of the nearly 400 B-36s built that still exists and can be found at the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson, AZ. The B-36, which never saw combat, bridged the gap between the bombers of World War II and the all-jet-engine B-52s that followed it in the latter part of the 1950s.
 
15 Aug 1984 (Hanscom AFB/Digital Directorate/Agile Combat Support Directorate)
Today, 40 years ago, the Electronic Systems Division (ESD) awarded a two-phase, firm-fixed-price contract for a trainer that would simulate the physical and functional characteristics of the E-3 Sentry’s operational Data Processor and Data Display equipment and computer programs. The contract was won by Logicon, Inc., of San Diego, California. The E-3 is also known as the AWACS, which is short for Airborne Warning and Control System.
 
16 Aug 1922 (AFLCMC)
On today’s date in 1922, the Sperry airway light beacon was demonstrated at McCook Field, Ohio. In the early 1920s, only the brave or foolhardy attempted to fly cross-country at night. Few areas between major cities were illuminated, making navigation nearly impossible; instruments for safely flying in the dark or bad weather were immature; and landing fields lacked any lights at all. As a result, the Engineering Division (AFLCMC’s predecessor) at McCook Field worked diligently to rectify those problems. The father-and-son contractor team of Elmer and Lawrence Sperry were frequent collaborators with the Engineering Division, and responsible for many significant aerial technology inventions, including navigation instruments. They had also produced searchlights for Navy ships, which they converted into a truck-mounted version for airfields. It produced a 300 million candlepower beam that could be seen for 75 miles. Lawrence Sperry tragically perished in 1923 when his plane went down over the English Channel.
 
18 Aug 1999 (Mobility & Training Aircraft Directorate)
Twenty-five years ago today, Air Mobility Command launched a C-5 Galaxy from the 436th Airlift Wing at Dover AFB, Delaware, carrying 5 search and rescue dogs, 56,000 pounds of equipment, 3 vehicles, and 70 search and rescue specialists from the United States Agency for International Development. They were flying to Izmit, a city in Turkey about 50 miles east of Istanbul. The relief team’s flight—the first flight of Operation AVID RESPONSE (which lasted until 10 September, and involved 20 missions in total)—was en route to help survivors of the worst earthquake Turkey had suffered in at least 60 years: A magnitude 7.4 earthquake that hit the day before, with its epicenter in Izmit, and that leveled thousands of buildings, and killed more than 10,000 people. Two KC-10s from the 305th Air Mobility Wing refueled this first C-5 sortie on its non-stop flight to Turkey. _ 
 
 
50 Years Ago This Week in AFLCMC History: 17 Aug 1974
First Flight of Compass Cope R (Ryan YQM-98A)
 
While “drone warfare” has become the subject of much discussion and development in very recent conflicts, few recall that in the 1970s the US Air Force had a robust portfolio of what was then called “remotely-piloted vehicles” (RPVs), which flew thousands of tactical sorties in Vietnam and numerous surreptitious strategic reconnaissance missions over our Cold War competitors. Half a century ago, one of these, the Teledyne-Ryan YQM-98 made its first flight.
 
The Compass Cope project was the second major RPV effort of the 1970s—overtaking and replacing an earlier RPV program, Compass Dwell, in 1973, both of which were high-altitude, long-endurance platforms. Compass Cope was, notably, the first time a major aerospace company got involved in competing for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) project; previous ones were the province of niche manufacturers.
 
In the case of Compass Cope, one of each type of company became involved in it. Boeing was initially the program’s sole-source contractor, but then Ryan Aeronautical, which had produced the successful series of Fire-bee drones, was added later to introduce competition. Notably, the companies’ entries for the Compass Cope contract were not officially in a “fly off” with each other—they were always pitched as “technology demonstrators,” but both Boeing and Ryan knew that, at the end of the day, they were in de facto competition with one another for the contract.
 
The Compass Cope system was ultimately meant to provide the Air Force with an aerial reconnaissance drone that could takeoff and land on a runway on its own, without manned piloting, and then be controlled aerially for up to 24 hours at a time—where it could ideally conduct surveillance, act as a communications relay, and collect atmospheric sampling. Tactical Air Command envisioned the Compass Cope aircraft as a loitering, tactical battlefield asset, carrying a 750-pound payload while flying at 70,000 feet and actively providing voice and video relay to allied forces.
 
Despite being a smaller company, Teledyne Ryan had probably the world’s most extensive experience with drone development and operations, based on its Firebee family. It further modified that platform into the YQM-98A “R-Tern” (or Compass Cope R) for this contract, which had its first flight at Edwards AFB, fifty years ago, 17 August 1974.
 
Boeing’s entry in the competition for was the YQM-94A Gull (or Compass Cope B), with a 90-foot wingspan. Impressively, the company even demonstrated the ability to control its drone using satellite communications, believed to be a first-ever. Boeing won the contract, but it was ultimately a hollow victory. The Air Force cancelled Compass Cope in 1977 in favor of upgrading the manned Lockheed U-2 spy plane (as the U-2R). Its demise signaled the approaching end of the Air Force’s drone programs, which had ceased entirely by the early 1980s, resulting in the loss of significant experience that was subsequently rebuilt in the post-9/11 era.