On This Day in History

1923:  The Army’s first all-metal airplane, the Gallaudet CO-1, Liberty 400, makes its first flight. The Air Service engineering division designed the aircraft.

  1944: BATTLE OF THE PHILIPPINE SEA. Through 20 June, American pilots shoot down 476 Japanese aircraft in “The Marianas Turkey Shoot.” The US loses 130 planes.

  1936: Seversky Aircraft receives a contract to build P-35s, the Army’s 1st single-seat fighter with a closed cockpit and retractable landing gear.

1970: A C-130 flies the final Blind Bat flare mission over the Barrel Roll area of Laos, then returns to Naha AB, Japan.

1965: Carl L. Norden, inventor of the Norden bombsight, dies. His device was widely used by American bombers in WW II.

1943: Eighth Air Force loses 26 of 60 bombers in a raid on Kiel, Germany, demonstrating the need for fighter escorts.

1918: The 96th Aero Squadron carries out the first American daylight-bombing mission in World War I from Amanty Airdrome.

1967: USAF starts evacuating 1,300 military and civilian Americans from Middle East due to Arab-Israeli War.

  1953:  The Thunderbirds – officially known as the 3600th Air Demonstration Flight – give their first performance, at Luke AFB, AZ, flying the F-84G.

1912: Capt Charles DeForest Chandler becomes the first person to fire a machine gun from an airplane in the US.