One Hundred Years of Flight USAF Chronology ... - The Air University

October 1: The Air Force constituted its first heavy-repair civil-engineering
squadrons, ancestors of the Rapid Engineer Deployable, Heavy Operational
Repair Squadron Engineer (RED HORSE) units. They provided
the service with a mobile, rapid-response civil-engineer force.
October 18: The 107th Tactical Fighter Group, New York Air National
Guard, became the first tactical Air National Guard unit deployed in
peacetime to the Pacific for a joint-service exercise.
October 31: Strategic Air Command accepted its first 10 Minuteman II missiles,
assigning them to the 447th Strategic Missile Squadron at Grand
Forks Air Force Base, North Dakota. The Minuteman II was larger and
more advanced than the Minuteman I, but it could be fired from the
same silos.
November 1: Col. Jeanne M. Holm became director of Women of the Air
Force.
December 8: The secretary of defense announced plans to phase out older
models of the B–52 bombers and all B–58 bombers. Newer B–52 models
made the older ones obsolete, and the B–58 had proven impractical
because of its high fuel consumption.
1966
1965–66
January 1: Military Air Transport Service was redesignated Military Airlift
Command. At the same time, Eastern Air Transport Force and Western
Air Transport Force were redesignated Twenty-First Air Force and
Twenty-Second Air Force, respectively.
January 1: Air National Guard military airlift units began flying about 75
cargo flights a month to Southeast Asia. These flights were in addition
to the more than 100 overseas missions flown monthly by the Air
National Guard in augmenting the global airlift mission of Military
Airlift Command.
January 17: A B–52 bomber and a KC–135 tanker collided and crashed near
Palomares, Spain, killing seven of the 11 crew members. All four
nuclear bombs on board the B–52 were recovered, one only after an
extensive search.
January 22: The Air Force completed Operation BLUE LIGHT, history’s
largest airlift of troops and equipment into a combat zone. Since
December 27, 1965, more than 4,600 tons of equipment and over
3,000 troops of the Army’s 3d Infantry Brigade had flown from
Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii, to Pleiku, South Vietnam.
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