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

1950
August 16: In the largest employment of air power in direct support of
ground forces since the Normandy invasion of World War II, 98 B–29s
dropped more than 800 tons of 500-pound bombs on a 27-square-mile
area near Waegwan, where large numbers of enemy troops were suspected
to be concentrating for an attack on Taegu.
September 15: U.S. ground forces supported by U.S. Navy and Marine
Corps air strikes invaded Inchon near Seoul in South Korea, far to the
rear of enemy lines. The invasion, coupled with a USAF-supported
Eighth Army advance from the Pusan perimeter that began the next
day, turned the tide of the Korean War, eventually forcing the North
Korean army to withdraw from South Korea.
September 15–October 28: The first contingent of 27th Fighter Escort Wing
F–84E Thunderjet fighters left Bergstrom Air Force Base, Texas, on
September 15, arriving in West Germany on September 18. The second
contingent left Texas on October 15, arriving in West Germany on
October 28. The 27th Fighter Escort Wing received the Mackay Trophy
for this flight, the first mass deployment of jet-powered fighters flying
over the Atlantic Ocean from the United States to Europe.
September 18: Forty-two B–29s of the 92d and 98th Bombardment Groups
dropped 1,600 bombs on enemy troop concentrations near Waegwan,
allowing Eighth Army to advance rapidly from the Pusan perimeter
toward Seoul, Korea.
September 22: Col. David C. Schilling, USAF, completed the first nonstop
flight over the Atlantic by a jet aircraft, landing his F–84 Thunderjet at
Limestone, Maine, after flying 3,300 miles from England in 10 hours,
one minute. He refueled three times from various converted bombers
on the way.
September 29: Capt. Richard V. Wheeler, USAF, made a record parachute
jump from an altitude of 42,449 feet at Holloman Air Force Base, New
Mexico.
October 10: The first Air National Guard units were mobilized because of
the Korean conflict. Eventually, 66 of the Guard’s combat flying units
were mobilized, and some 45,000 air guardsmen—approximately 80
percent of the force—were called into federal service during the war.
October 20–23: In the first airborne operation of the Korean War, more
than 100 C–119s and C–47s dropped some 4,000 troops of the Army’s
187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team and over 600 tons of
materiel at Sukchon and Sunchon, 30 miles north of Pyongyang.
November 8: In history’s first battle between jet aircraft, Lt. Russell J. Brown
in an F–80 Shooting Star shot down a North Korean MiG–15. Seventy
B–29 Superfortresses conducted the largest incendiary raid of the
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