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

1944–45
September 10: The C–82, the first airplane designed in World War II to
carry cargo exclusively, first flew at the Fairchild aircraft plant in
Hagerstown, Maryland.
September 14: For the first time, Col. Floyd B. Wood, Maj. Harry Wexler,
and Lt. Frank Reckord deliberately flew an aircraft—a Douglas A–20—
into a hurricane to collect scientific data; they returned safely.
September 17: Operation MARKET GARDEN began when 1,546 Allied aircraft
and 478 gliders carried airborne troops to the Netherlands in an
attempt to secure bridges on the way to cross the Rhine River at Arnhem,
the Netherlands.
October 24: Capt. David McCampbell of the Navy shot down nine Japanese
fighters in a single day, a record unequaled by any other U.S. pilot.
McCampbell later became the Navy’s leading ace, with 34 aerial victories.
November 3: The Japanese first launched balloons with bombs attached,
hoping the jet stream would carry them eastward across the Pacific to
the United States. Some of the bomb balloons reached North America
but caused little damage.
November 24: For the first time, B–29s bombed Tokyo. Previously unable to
reach the Japanese capital from China, they took off this time from
bases in the Mariana Islands. This was the first mission of XXI Bomber
Command, under Brig. Gen. Haywood S. Hansell, Jr., and the first
time Tokyo had been bombed since the Doolittle raid of April 18,
1942.
December 17: The 509th Composite Group, the first organization with the
mission of dropping atomic weapons, was activated under the command
of Col. Paul W. Tibbets, Jr., at Wendover Field, Utah. On the
same day, Maj. Richard Bong of the Army Air Forces shot down his
40th enemy airplane in the Pacific—the highest total of any U.S. ace.
December 21: Gen. Henry H. Arnold became General of the Army. No
other airman has ever held five-star rank.
December 26: Maj. Thomas B. McGuire, Jr., shot down four enemy airplanes
for a total of 38, making him the second-leading U.S. ace—behind
only Maj. Richard I. Bong. McGuire died in combat 12 days later.
1945
January 17: B–29s flew for the last time from Chengtu, China, when 91
Superfortresses took off to bomb a Japanese airfield at Shinchiku, Formosa.
Capure of the islands of Tinian, Guam, and Saipan in the Mari-
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