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

operational. By the end of the year, the Atlas had become the first U.S.
long-range ballistic missile equipped with a nuclear warhead to be
placed on alert status.
September 12: The Soviet Union launched Luna 2, the first man-made
object to reach the Moon.
December 30: The Navy commissioned the USS George Washington, the first
U.S. ballistic-missile-carrying submarine, at Groton, Connecticut.
1960
1959–60
January 25: An Army MIM–23 Hawk antiaircraft missile intercepted and
shot down an unarmed MGR–1 Honest John surface-to-surface rocket
in the first known destruction of one ballistic missile by another.
April 1: Television Infrared Observation Satellite (TIROS) I, the world’s first
meteorological satellite, was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida,
atop a Thor missile.
May 1: Francis Gary Powers, a Central Intelligence Agency U–2 pilot, was
shot down over Sverdlovsk in the Soviet Union. Captured and put on
trial for espionage, he was later exchanged for a Soviet agent captured
by the United States.
May 23: The Air Force began one of its largest humanitarian airlifts to
relieve the victims of a series of earthquakes in Chile. Within a month,
cargo aircraft had delivered more than 1,000 tons of relief equipment
and supplies from bases in the United States, some 4,500 miles away
from the stricken region. The airlift was called Operation AMIGOS.
July 8: Operation NEW TAPE began after chaos threatened the newly independent
Democratic Republic of the Congo in Africa. After evacuating
U.S. citizens by air and delivering food, the Air Force began transporting
United Nations troops from all over the world to the country.
The airlifts continued for four years.
August 1: The 43d Bombardment Wing at Carswell Air Force Base, Texas,
accepted the first operational B–58 Hustler medium bomber. The first
U.S. supersonic bomber, the delta-wing aircraft could fly at twice the
speed of sound and could be refueled in flight.
August 11: Navy frogmen made the first recovery of an object ejected from
an orbiting satellite when they retrieved a 300-pound capsule from the
Air Force’s Discoverer XIII.
August 16: Capt. Joseph W. Kittinger, Jr., USAF, jumped from an aircraft
102,800 feet over Tularosa, New Mexico, and landed unharmed 13
minutes, 45 seconds later. He fell freely for 84,700 feet and reached a
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