April 6, 2020 Flashback: The Navaho Missile: Part 1 During the 1950’s and 60’s the United States pushed the limits of aerospace vehicle evolution attempting to go faster and higher while exploring the edge of the unknown. As contractors hoped to clutch a big production contract, new designs jumped off the drawing boards at a rapid pace with many
Feb. 21, 2020 History in Two: New Power for an Old Soldier—Re-engining the B-52 Stratofortress There is an old joke that runs through the bomber fleet that when the B-1 and B-2 bombers are retired, the pilots will be flown home from the boneyard in the B-52 Stratofortress. With the recent proposals to re-engine the Boeing B-52 fleet, that may have some truth to it. This legendary aircraft has
Jan. 21, 2020 Hundreds gather for Hill Air Force Base’s 80th Anniversary Celebration The inaugural event held to commemorate Hill Air Force Base’s 80th anniversary was held at the Hill Aerospace Museum Jan. 18. Hundreds attended throughout the day to admire the museum’s aircraft and exhibits, and to witness the first of a number of celebratory activities that will take place during
Jan. 16, 2020 FLASHBACK: Triplesonic Interceptors: The F-103, F-108 & YF-12A "Speed is life," is a phrase used by fighter pilots and it was never more prevalent than in the late 1950’s when post-war technology was advancing at a rapid pace. The technological advancements in aviation allowed aircraft to go from piston driven fighters to rocket-powered vehicles capable of
Dec. 17, 2019 FLASHBACK: Back to the Future: The Resurgence of the Flying Wing in the 21st Century The highly anticipated B-21 Raider—named in honor of the legendary “Doolittle Raiders” who bombed Tokyo, Japan in April 1942—under development by Northrop Grumman, will be the first Air Force bomber manufactured in the twenty-first century. The concept of the “flying wing,” however, is over 100
Sept. 16, 2019 FLASHBACK: Gliders...from Wright Field to the Netherlands “I’ll tell you straight out. If you’ve got to go into combat, don’t go by glider. Walk, crawl, parachute, swim, float – anything! But don’t go by glider.”[1]Walter Cronkite, American war correspondentGlider training had become a requisite for Luftwaffe flight training post-World War I and by 1935,
Sept. 10, 2019 WWII veteran to parachute into history with help of AFRL researcher WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio – Dayton-area World War II veteran Jim “Pee Wee” Martin will return to the site of an historic battlefield this month when he parachutes into the Netherlands, through the help of Air Force Research Laboratory computer scientist Kevin Price.Martin, 98, of Xenia,
Sept. 9, 2019 Contributions of Edwards Air Force Base to the Moon Landing A number of aspects of the joint U.S. Air Force, National Aeronautics and Space Administration and U.S. Navy X-15 flight research project that began in 1958 had an impact on the development of several technologies used in Project Apollo. In particular, it influenced both the Lunar Landing Research
Aug. 13, 2019 Flashback: Hypersonic Flight to the Edge of Space While most of the country was focused on the race to space, a unique test program was just getting underway at Edwards Air Force Base in the high desert of California. This vehicle was like no other, built to withstand the temperatures of hypersonic flight as well as flight to the edge of space, the
Aug. 5, 2019 History in Two: Dyna-Soar The Dyna-Soar program (System 464L), initiated on October 10, 1957, took three separate, but related studies on manned, hypersonic weapons and reconnaissance systems (Hywards (SR-131), Bomi/Brass Bell (SR-12) and Robo (SR-126)) and merged them into a single, three-phased program. The research