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

1958–59
intervention resulted in political negotiations that produced years of
peace.
September 3–9: Responding to Chinese Communist threats to the Taiwan
Strait, a Tactical Air Command composite air strike force (including
F–100 Super Sabre, F–101 Voodoo, B–57 Canberra, and C–130 Hercules
aircraft) deployed to the Far East as part of Operation X-RAY
TANGO. The force’s rapid and effective deployment earned it the
Mackay Trophy.
September 24: From a distance of 75 miles, a Bomarc missile pilotless interceptor,
launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, by a semiautomatic
ground-environment unit in Kingston, New York, destroyed a 1,000miles-per-hour
target flying 48,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean.
October 1: Replacing the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration was established to
control nonmilitary U.S. scientific space projects.
October 4: A British Comet IV with 31 passengers aboard completed the
first transatlantic commercial jet flight.
October 11: The Air Force launched the Pioneer I lunar probe vehicle, which
attained a height of approximately 80,000 miles before falling back to
Earth on October 13.
December 10: National Air Lines inaugurated the first jet domestic passenger
service in the United States with a Boeing 707 flight between New
York and Miami, Florida.
December 16: The Pacific Missile Range began launching operations with
the successful flight of a Thor missile, the first ballistic missile
launched over the Pacific Ocean.
December 18: The Air Force placed in orbit the first artificial communications
satellite, a Project Score relay vehicle integral with the four-ton
Atlas launcher. The next day, the satellite broadcast a taped recording
of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Christmas message—the first
time a human voice had been heard from space.
1959
January 21: The Army’s first Jupiter intermediate-range ballistic missile
struck its target area after a 1,700-mile flight test. The Jupiter eventually
became a USAF weapon system.
February 6: The Air Force successfully launched the first Titan I intercontinental
ballistic missile. With a range of 5,500 nautical miles, the two-
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