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

1944
naval air power never again posed a serious threat to U.S. forces in the
Pacific.
June 22: After the second Operation FRANTIC mission of the previous day,
the Luftwaffe attacked Army Air Forces B–17s at Poltava in the Soviet
Union, destroying 47 and damaging 19 more.
July 8: Lt. Col. Clifford Heflin flew a C–47 on the first mission into France
to rescue Allied airmen who had parachuted behind enemy lines.
July 17: Ninth Air Force dropped napalm bombs for the first time, releasing
them from P–38s on a fuel depot at Coutances, near Saint-Lô, France.
Napalm, a jellied gasoline, was a revolutionary incendiary compound
with immense destructive potential.
July 25: In Operation COBRA, almost 1,500 Eighth Air Force heavy bombers
conducted saturation bombing of the Saint-Lô area of northern
France to allow Allied forces to break through German lines. Although
the operation succeeded in its ultimate objective, some of the bombers
hit the wrong area and killed or wounded almost 500 U.S. troops. Lt.
Gen. Lesley J. McNair, commander of the U.S. Army Ground Forces,
was one of the fatalities.
August 4: Eighth Air Force launched the first Operation APHRODITE mission,
sending a radio-controlled B–17 bomber against a German V–1
rocket site in the Pas de Calais area of France. The pilotless bomber
carried 10 tons of TNT. Largely experimental, Operation APHRODITE
was abandoned after the number of V–1 attacks on Great Britain
decreased, partly because conventional bombing could destroy the V–1
sites and partly because Allied ground advances took site areas.
August 8: Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force announced
the establishment of Combined Airborne Headquarters under Lt.
Gen. Lewis H. Brereton of the Army Air Forces. Eight days later, the
new organization was renamed the First Allied Airborne Army.
August 10: Japanese resistance on Guam ended, giving the United States full
control of three of the Mariana Islands—Guam, Tinian, and Saipan—
for the construction of B–29 bomber bases.
August 28: Maj. Joseph Myers and 2d Lt. Manford O. Croy, Jr., 82d Fighter
Squadron P–47 pilots, shared credit for the first aerial victory over a jet
aircraft—a German Me–262.
September 8: The Germans launched V–2s—the world’s first ballistic missiles—against
Paris and London. Rocket scientist Wernher von Braun
had developed the missile, almost impossible to intercept because of
its speed, at a secret base at Peenemünde, Germany.
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