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

Group, treated wounded U.S. soldiers during a battle in Vietnam. This
action merited the posthumous awarding of the Medal of Honor.
April 12: B–52 bombers struck targets in North Vietnam for the first time,
hitting a supply route in the Mu Gia Pass about 85 miles north of the
border.
April 26: Maj. Paul J. Gilmore, pilot, and 1st Lt. William T. Smith, weapon
system officer, became the first USAF aircrew to destroy a MiG–21. Flying
escort for F–105 Thunderchiefs near Hanoi when the flight was
attacked, the F–4C crew shot down the MiG with a Sidewinder missile.
June 2: Surveyor I became the first U.S. spacecraft to make a soft landing on
the Moon.
June 16: A Titan IIIC boosted seven experimental communications satellites
and one gravity-gradient satellite into orbit 18,000 nautical miles above
the equator. The satellites demonstrated the feasibility of a global military-communications
satellite system.
September 20: Lt. Col. Donald M. Sorlie became the first USAF pilot to fly
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration lifting body from
the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards Air Force Base, California.
Air-launched from a B–52 at an altitude of 45,000 feet, the craft
reached a speed of nearly 400 miles per hour during the three-andone-half-minute
flight. It tested the concept that a space capsule could
fly back from outer space rather than falling by parachute into the sea
for ship recovery.
November 14: A C–141 Starlifter became the first jet aircraft to land in the
Antarctic. Commanded by Capt. Howard Geddes, 86th Military Airlift
Squadron, Travis Air Force Base, California, the aircraft landed on the
ice at McMurdo Sound after a 2,200-mile flight from Christchurch,
New Zealand.
1967
1966–67
January 2: In Operation BOLO, F–4 Phantom pilots of the 8th Tactical
Fighter Wing shot down seven MiG–21s over the Red River Valley,
North Vietnam, to establish a one-day aerial victory record, matched
only once, on May 13, 1967, during the Vietnam War. Col. Robin Olds,
8th Tactical Fighter Wing commander, shot down a MiG–21 to become
the only USAF ace with aerial victories in both World War II and Vietnam.
January 27: Three astronauts, Lt. Col. Virgil Grissom and Lt. Col. Edward H.
White, USAF, and Lt. Cmdr. Robert B. Chaffee, United States Navy,
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