February 26-March 2, 1949. Lucky Lady II, a SAC B-50A, is flown
 on the first nonstop flight around the world. The 23,452-mile flight
 takes ninety-four hours, one minute and requires four midair
 refuelings.
     March 4, 1949. The US Navy's Martin JRM-2 flying boat Caroline
 Mars carries a record 269 passengers from San Diego to San Fran-
 cisco, Calif.
     March 4, 1949. Crews flying in the Berlin Airlift exceed one
 million tons of cargo hauled.
     March 15, 1949. Military Air Transport Service establishes Global
 Weather Central at Offutt AFB, Neb., for support of SAC.
     April 4, 1949. Meeting in Washington, D.C., the foreign ministers
 of Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxem-
 bourg, the Netherlands, Norway, and Portugal, along with the US
 Secretary of State, sign the North Atlantic Treaty.
     April 16, 1949. Company test pilot Tony LeVier and flight test
 engineer Tony Faulkerson make the first flight of the YF-94 Starfire
 prototype from Van Nuys, Calif. The Starfire, actually modified
 TP-80, is designed to serve as an interim all-weather interceptor.
     May 9, 1949. Republic chief test pilot Carl Bellinger makes the
 first flight of the XF-91 Thunderceptor jet/rocket hybrid at Muroc
 AFB, Calif. This unusual aircraft has variable incidence wings of
 inverse taper design (wider at the tips than at the roots).
     May 11, 1949. President Harry S. Truman signs a bill providing
 for a 3,000-mile-long guided-missile test range for the Air Force.
 The range is subsequently established at Cape Canaveral, Fla.
     June 2, 1949. Gen. H.H. Arnold is given the permanent rank of
 General of the Air Force by a special act of Congress.
     August 9, 1949. Navy Lt. J.L. Fruin makes the first emergency
 escape with an ejection seat in the US near Walterboro, S.C. His
 McDonnell F2H-1 Banshee is traveling at more than 500 knots at the
 time.
     August 10, 1949. President Truman signs the National Security
 Act Amendments of 1949, converting the National Military Establish-
 ment to the Department of Defense.
     September 23, 1949. President Truman announces that the Soviet
 Union has successfully exploded an atomic bomb.
     September 30, 1949. The Berlin Airlift, gradually reduced since
 May 12, 1949, officially ends.  Results show 2,343,301.5 tons of
 supplies carried on 277,264 flights. US planes carried 1,783,826
 tons.
     October 4, 1949. A Fairchild C-82 Packet crew airdrops an entire
 field artillery battery by parachute at Fort Bragg, N.C.
     November 18, 1949. A crew flying a Douglas C-74 Globemaster I,
 The Champ, lands at RAF Marham, England, after a twenty-three-hour
 flight from Mobile, Ala. On board are a transatlantic-record 103
 passengers and crew.
     January 14, 1950. General of the Air Force H. H. Arnold dies of
 a heart ailment at Sonoma, Calif.
     January 23, 1950. USAF establishes Air Research and Development
 Command, which in 1961 will be redesignated Air Force Systems
 Command.
     January 31, 1950. President Truman announces that he has directed
 the Atomic Energy Commission "to continue its work on all forms of
 atomic-energy weapons, including the so-called hydrogen or super
 bomb." This is the first confirmation of US H-bomb work.
     March 15, 1950. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a statement of
 basic roles and missions, give the Air Force formal and exclusive
 responsibility for strategic guided missiles.
     April 21, 1950. Piloted by Navy Lt. Cmdr. R.C. Starkey, a Lock-
 heed P2V-3C Neptune weighing 74,668 pounds becomes the heaviest
 aircraft ever launched from an aircraft carrier. The Neptune is
 flown off USS Coral Sea (CV-43).
     April 24, 1950. Thomas K. Finletter becomes Secretary of the Air
 Force.
     June 25, 1950. North Korea attacks South Korea to begin Korean
 War.
     June 27, 1950. President Truman announces he has ordered USAF to
 aid South Korea, which has been invaded by North Korean Communist
 forces.
     June 27, 1950. Flying a North American F-82, lst Lt. William G.
 Hudson destroys a Yak-11 near Seoul, the first enemy plane shot
 down in the Korean War.
     June 30, 1950. President Truman authorizes General Douglas Mac-
 Arthur to dispatch air forces against targets in North Korea.
     July 1, 1950. Carrier aircraft go into action in Korea, with
 strikes in and around Pyongyang. Also Lt. (j.g.) L.H. Plog and Ens.
 E.W. Brown each down a Yak-9, the first US Navy kills in air combat
 in Korea.
     September 22, 1950. Air Force Col. David Schilling makes the
 first nonstop transatlantic flight in a jet aircraft, flying a
 Republic F-84E from Manston, England, to Limestone (later Loring)
 AFB, Me., in ten hours, one minute. The trip requires three in-
 flight refuelings.
     November 8, 1950. 1st Lt. Russell J. Brown, Jr., flying a
 Lockheed F-80 Shooting Star, downs a North Korean MiG-15 in his-
 tory's first all-jet aerial combat.
     April 6, 1951. The Labor Department announces that employment
 in aircraft and parts plants increased by 100,000 people in the
 first six months of the Korean War.
     May 20, 1951. Capt. James Jabara becomes the Air Force's first
 Korean War ace. He eventually downs fifteen enemy planes in Korea.
     June 20, 1951. Company pilot Jean "Skip" Ziegler makes the
 first flight of the Bell X-5 at Edwards AFB, Calif. The world's
 first aircraft to have variable-sweep wings. On the plane's ninth
 flight, the wings are moved to the full 60 sweepback.
 End of Part 16
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