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

August 22: President George H. W. Bush authorized a 90-day call-up of
200,000 reservists for Operation DESERT SHIELD. Eventually, more
than 20,000 USAF reservists and 12,000 Air National Guard personnel
served in that operation and its successor, DESERT STORM.
August 23: The 89th Military Airlift Wing received the first of two Boeing
VC–25A presidential transport aircraft at Andrews Air Force Base,
Maryland. The VC–25A was a modified 747–200B commercial transport
that replaced the VC–137C for service as Air Force One.
September 8: Marcelite Jordan Harris became the first black woman to hold
the grade of brigadier general in the Air Force.
September 18–28: The 436th and 438th Military Airlift Wings transported
107 pallets of tents, cots, and blankets to Jordan for the relief of some
100,000 foreign workers who had fled from Kuwait because of the
Iraqi invasion.
October 1: Air Force Systems Command relinquished Patrick Air Force
Base, Florida, and the space-launch mission to Air Force Space Command.
December 29: The 169th Tactical Fighter Group was the first Air National
Guard unit to deploy to the Persian Gulf region for Operation
DESERT SHIELD.
1991
1990–91
January 15: Strategic Air Command relinquished Vandenberg Air Force
Base, California, and its launch facilities to Air Force Space Command.
January 17: Operation DESERT STORM, the liberation of Kuwait from Iraqi
military occupation, opened with a massive barrage of air and cruisemissile
strikes against targets in Iraq and Kuwait. USAF special operations
MH–53 helicopters initiated combat by leading an Army helicopter
force that destroyed enemy radar sites. During the first 14
hours, aircraft from a U.S.-led coalition flew more than 1,200 combat
sorties. B–52G Stratofortress crews from the 2d Bomb Wing of Eighth
Air Force, Strategic Air Command, flew from Barksdale Air Force
Base, Louisiana, to launch 35 cruise missiles against targets in Iraq and
returned home, completing the longest bombing mission in history.
Constituting less than 2.5 percent of all coalition aircraft, the F–117A
stealth fighter-bomber successfully attacked over 31 percent of Iraqi
strategic targets the first day.
January 21: Capt. Paul T. Johnson, USAF, in his A–10 Thunderbolt II aircraft,
located a Navy fighter pilot who had ejected in Iraqi territory. The A–10
destroyed a threatening Iraqi truck to allow a USAF MH–53J Pave Low
137