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

1976–77
earthquake. The aircraft also transported 696 medical, engineering,
and communications personnel. The effort was called Operation
EARTHQUAKE.
March 22: The first A–10 Thunderbolt was delivered to Davis-Monthan Air
Force Base, Arizona, for test and evaluation. The heavily armored jet
attack aircraft, armed with a heavy Gatling gun in the nose and
equipped with straight wings able to carry a variety of air-to-ground
munitions, was designed for close air support missions.
May 23–June 9: After Typhoon Pamela hit Guam, C–5s, C–141s, and one
C–130 airlifted 2,652 tons of relief equipment and supplies to the
island.
June 28: Joan Olsen became the first woman cadet to enter the Air Force
Academy and the first woman to enter any of the three Department of
Defense service academies.
July 3: Using C–130 aircraft, Israeli commandos led an assault on Entebbe
airport in Uganda, rescuing 105 hostages held by pro-Palestinian terrorists.
July 15: Consolidated interservice aerial-navigation training began for Navy
and Marine Corps personnel at Mather Air Force Base, California.
July 20: The Viking I space probe landed successfully on the surface of the
planet Mars and began transmitting television photographs of the
Martian landscape.
September 6: A Soviet pilot landed his MiG–25 Foxbat jet fighter in
Hokkaido, Japan, and asked for asylum in the United States. Japanese
and U.S. officials closely examined the aircraft and on November 15,
returned it, dismantled, to the Soviet Union.
September 16: The United States officially returned Eniwetok Atoll, site of
the first U.S. hydrogen bomb explosion, to its former inhabitants.
September 29: The first of two groups of 10 women pilot candidates entered
undergraduate pilot training at Williams Air Force Base, Arizona—the
first time since World War II that women could train to become pilots
of U.S. military aircraft.
1977
January 8: The first YC–141B (stretched C–141 Starlifter) rolled out of the
Lockheed-Georgia Marietta plant. Equipped with in-flight refueling
capability, it was 23.3 feet longer than the original C–141A, enabling it
to carry more troops and cargo.
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