For more than 50 years, the Air Force has championed the development of powered flight
by Tech. Sgt. Mark Kinkade

Where do you start cataloging the Air Force’s role in the development of powered flight? Aircraft? Flight techniques? Equipment? People?

Or, perhaps, it’s all of these. Maybe the history of powered flight and the Air Force are so deeply intertwined that separating the two is pointless. Maybe we’re better off reflecting on those significant milestones — those “famous firsts” — that have become the stuff of legend and part and parcel to the human flying experience. The best way to look forward, it seems, is to look back:

1903 to 1939
1905 — The aircraft procurement process begins when Orville and Wilbur Wright try to convince the U.S. government to purchase a Wright Flyer. Three years later, the secretary of war approves the first three bids for developing the Army’s first war plane.

1916 — Military reconnaissance flights begin over Mexico during Gen. John Pershing’s effort to capture Pancho Villa, marking the first time an aircraft is used to gather information.

1918 — The age of air-to-air combat begins when an American Expeditionary Force biplane shoots down enemy aircraft for the firsttime over the battlefields of World War I France.

1921 — Aircraft under command of Col. William Mitchell sink three captured German warships during bombing tests.

1923 — More bombing of German warships as the Army continues testing the “airpower” thing.

1940 – 1949
The war years were busy for military aviation. War necessitated technological advances, and “firsts” were as common as air raids over Germany. After the war, the world seized on air transportation as a way to get things done quickly and efficiently.

1941 — The Army successfully tests radio-controlled “robot” aircraft.

Parachute troops used for the first time during exercises in Louisiana.

The first “guided” bomb debuts: the GB-1. A few days later, the GB-8, using radio-controlled guidance, tests.

1942 — The Army Air Forces’ first helicopter, the XR-4, flies for the first time.

A B-18 Bolo attacks and sinks a German submarine off the North Carolina coast, marking the first confirmed sub kill by an aircraft in the Atlantic.

The Bell P-59A Airacomet makes its first flight at Muroc, Calif. It’s the first turbojet flight for the United States.

1943 — Col. Malcolm Grow, a surgeon with the 8th Air Force, develops the “flak vest.”

1944 — Fairchild Aviation successfully tests the C-82 Packet, the first aircraft designed exclusively for cargo carrying.
A Douglas A-20 Havoc makes the first flight into a hurricane to collect data.

1945 — More than 850 B-29 Superfortress bombers fly air strikes against Japan during one day.

The Enola Gay, a B-29, drops the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later, The Bock’s Car, another B-29, drops an atomic bomb on Nagasaki.

1946 — The Army Air Forces discloses it’s testing an aircraft with automatic takeoff, flight and landing capabilities.
Sgt. Lawrence Lambert survives the first ejection seat test. He punches out of a P-61 traveling at 302 mph more than 7,800 feet above Ohio.

1949 — Capt. James Gallagher and a crew of 14 fly a B-50 Superfortress bomber from Carswell Air Force Base, Texas, around the world without stopping in 94 hours. The first nonstop circumnavigation of the globe takes four aerial refuelings along the way.

1950-1959
The Korean War kept the Air Force busy in the first “jet-powered” air campaign. At the same time, the Soviet Union and the United States were standing toe-to-toe in the Cold War. Rockets became much more important to the service and the nation as America began to look to the stars.

1951 — 1st Lt. Russell J. Brown, flying an Air Force F-80 Shooting Star, downs a North Korean MiG-15 in the first battle between jet aircraft.

An Air Materiel Command KB-29M Superfortress tanker — flying over North Korea — conducts the first air refueling over enemy territory under combat conditions.

1952 — The YB-52 Stratofortress, the first all-jet intercontinental heavy bomber, makes its first flight.
An Air Force C-47 Skytrain makes the first successful North Pole landing.

1953 — A jet refuels a jet as a KB-47B Stratojet tanker aircraft hooks up with a B-47 Stratojet.

1955 — Air National Guard 1st Lt. John Conroy completes the first dawn-to-dusk round-trip transcontinental flight between Los Angeles and New York in 11 hours, 26 minutes, 33 seconds.

1956 — A B-52 Stratofortress drops the first airborne hydrogen bomb over Bikini Atoll in the Pacific.

1957 — A B-52 completes a 45-hour around-the-world flight, becoming the first jet aircraft to circle the globe nonstop.

The Ryan X-13 Vertijet, an experimental aircraft, proves vertical takeoff and landing is possible.

1960-1980
President John F. Kennedy promises the United States will reach the moon by the end of the decade. The focus is on the space race, the Cold War and a hotter war in a small Southeast Asian country called Vietnam.

1961 — Capt. Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom becomes the first Air Force astronaut off the ground, flying a suborbital flight to 118 miles above the earth aboard the Liberty Bell 7 capsule.

1963 — Capt. Gordon Cooper flies 22 orbits around the globe in the Faith 7 space capsule, the most of any astronaut in the Mercury program.

1964 — The SR-71 “Blackbird” reconnaissance aircraft exceeds an altitude of 45,000 feet and a speed of 1,000 mph.

1965 — Air Force F-100 Super Sabres fly the first combat missions over Vietnam.

1969 — Man sets foot on the moon for the first time. At 10:56 p.m. EDT, Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong puts his left foot on the lunar surface. He and lunar module pilot Col. Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. spend just under three hours walking on the moon. Command module pilot Lt. Col. Michael Collins remains in orbit.

1971 — On July 26, a Saturn V launch vehicle lifted off its launch pad at Kennedy Space Center, Fla., carrying the Apollo 15 spacecraft. Aboard the command module were commander Col. David R. Scott, lunar module pilot Lt. Col. James B. Irwin and command module pilot Maj. Alfred M. Worden Jr. — the first all-Air Force Apollo crew. On July 30, the lunar module “Falcon,” named for the Air Force Academy mascot, carried Scott and Irwin to the moon’s surface where they spent almost 67 hours while Worden remained aboard the command module conducting scientific experiments and photographing lunar landmarks.

1972 — Capt. Richard S. Ritchie, flying an F-4 Phantom, with his back-seater, Capt. Charles B. DeBellevue, shoots down his fifth MiG-21 near Hanoi, becoming the Air Force’s first ace since the Korean War. Two weeks later, DeBellevue also shoots down his fifth MiG.

Staff Sgt. Samuel O. Turner, the tailgunner on a B-52D bomber downs a trailing MiG-21 with a blast of .50-caliber machine guns near Hanoi.

1974 — The Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Organization carries out a midair launch of an LGM-30A Minuteman I from the hold of a C-5A Galaxy.

1976 — SR-71 pilots Maj. Adolphus H. Bledsoe, Capt. Robert C. Helt and Capt. Eldon W. Joersz set three world flight records over Beale Air Force Base, Calif.: altitude in horizontal flight — 85,068.997 feet, speed over a straight course — 2,193.16 mph, and speed over a closed course — 2,092.294 mph.

1989 — A crew from the 60th Military Airlift Wing, Travis Air Force Base, Calif., lands a C-5B transport at McMurdo Station, Antarctica. This is the first time an aircraft so large has landed on the frozen runway of McMurdo Sound.

1990 - present
The Cold War ended with the collapse of a wall, and a desert war started with a bang. A new millennium dawned on the Air Force and the future of airpower.

1991 — At 6:35 a.m. local time, B-52G crews from the 2nd Bomb Wing, Barksdale Air Force Base, La., take off to begin what will become the longest bombing mission in history. Carrying 39 AGM-86C air-launched cruise missiles, the bomber crews fly to the Middle East and launch their missiles against high-priority targets in Iraq.

In one of the most unusual air-to-air victories ever, Capt. Tim Bennett and Capt. Dan Bakke of the 4th Tactical Fighter Wing at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C., shoot down an Iraqi helicopter — probably an Mi-24 “Hind” — with a GBU-10 2,000-pound laser-guided bomb launched from their F-15E Strike Eagle.

2003 — For the first time in combat history, Air Force aircraft drop CBU-105 wind-corrected munitions dispensers. B-52 bombers drop the armor-busting sensor-fuzed weapons in central Iraq on April 2 to stop an Iraqi tank column from continuing on its route toward coalition troops.

Nine days later, a B-52 used a Litening II advanced airborne targeting and navigation pod to target facilities at an airfield in northern Iraq, also a first in combat history.

Source: http://www.af.mil/news/airman/0603/firsts.html