September 24, 1987. The Air Force's Thunderbirds fly for a crowd
 of 5,000 in Beijing. It has been nearly forty years since a US com-
 bat aircraft flew over and landed on Chinese soil.
     January 1, 1988. SAC changes its missile crew assignment policy
 to permit mixed male/female crews in Minuteman and Peacekeeper
 launch facilities.
     January 20, 1988. The 100th and final B-1B bomber rolls off the
 line at Rockwell's plant in Palmdale.
     February 10, 1988. The 2,000th F-16 fighter built is accepted by
 Singapore.
     March 3, 1988. The Pioneer 8 solar orbiter, which was launched
 November 8, 1968, with a six-month life expectancy, is finally de-
 clared defunct.
     May 23, 1988. The Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey, the world's first
 production tiltrotor aircraft, is rolled out at Bell Helicopter
 Textron's plant in Arlington, Tex.
     August 2, 1988. As evidence of thawing superpower relations, US
 Secretary of Defense Frank C. Carlucci is given the opportunity to
 inspect the Soviet Tu-160 "Blackjack" strategic bomber during a
 visit to Kubinka AB, near Moscow.
     September 29, 1988. Launch of the space shuttle Discovery ends
 the long stand-down of the US manned space program in the wake of
 the Challenger disaster.
     October 25, 1988. A US Navy S-3 Viking antisubmarine warfare
 aircraft from the carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) is given
 a $21 parking ticket after the crew overshoots a runway at a base
 in southern England and lands on a public road.
     November 6, 1988. The Air Force launches its last Martin
 Marietta Titan 34D booster from Vandenberg AFB, Calif. It carries
 a classified payload.
     November 7, 1988. The U.S. Postal Service issues a sixty-five-
 cent commemorative stamp bearing the likeness of Gen. H.H. Arnold
 in ceremonies at the Arnold Engineering and Development Center at
 Arnold AFB, Tenn.
     November 10, 1988. The Air Force reveals the existence of the
 Lockheed F-117A Stealth fighter, operational since 1983.
     November 12, 1988. Soviet cosmonauts Vladimir Titov and Musa
 Manarov break the world space endurance record as they remain on
 board the space station Mir ("peace") for their 326th day in orbit.
     November 19, 1988. Boeing KC-135R tanker crews from the 19th
 Air Refueling Wing (Robins AFB, Ga.), 340th ARW (Altus AFB, Okla.),
 319th Bomb Wing (Grand Forks AFB, N.D.), and 384th BW (McConnell
 AFB, Kan.) set sixteen class time-to-climb records in flights from
 Robins AFB. Nine of the records still stand.
     November 22, 1988. Northrop and the Air Force roll out the B-2
 stealth bomber at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, Calif.
     November 30, 1988. The Soviets roll out the An-225 transport,
 the world's largest airplane.
     December 9, 1988. The first Sierra Research/de Havilland Canada
 E-9A airborne telemetry data relay aircraft is delivered to the Air
 Force's 475th Weapons Evaluation Group at Tyndall AFB, Fla.
     December 29, 1988. The first operational dual-role (air superi-
 ority and deep interdiction) McDonnell Douglas F-15E fighter is
 delivered to the Air Force.
     January 4, 1989. Two Libyan MiG-23 "Flogger" fighters, display-
 ing hostile intentions, are shot down over international waters by
 an element of US Navy F-14 Tomcats operating from the carrier USS
 John F. Kennedy (CVN-67).
     February 14, 1989. The first McDonnell Douglas Delta II space
 booster is launched from Cape Canaveral AFS, Fla. The 128-foot-tall
 rocket boosts the first operational NS-7 Navstar Block II Global
 Positioning System satellite into orbit.
     February 16, 1989. Northrop completes the 3,806th and final air-
 craft in the F-5/T-38 series. The milestone aircraft, an F-5E, will
 later be delivered to Singapore.
     March 1, 1989. The first General Dynamics F-16A modified under
 the Air Force's air defense fighter program is delivered to the Air
 National Guard's 114th Tactical Fighter Training Squadron at
 Kingsley Field, Ore.
     March 19, 1989. Bell pilot Dorman Canon and Boeing pilot Dick
 Balzer make the first flight of the Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey at Bell
 Helicopter Textron's Flight Research Center in Arlington, Tex.
     March 21, 1989. NASA completes the flight test of the Mission
 Adaptive Wing, a modification to the advanced fighter technology
 integration (AFTI) F-111 that allows the curvature of the aircraft's
 leading and trailing edges to be varied in flight. The MAW completes
 144.9 hours on fifty-nine flights.
     March 30, 1989. Fairchild delivers the first of 10 C-26A opera-
 tional support aircraft to the Air National Guard's 147th Fighter-
 Interceptor Group at Ellington ANGB, Tex. The C-26 is the military
 version of the Metro III commuter aircraft.
     April 17, 1989. Lockheed delivers the fiftieth and last C-5B
 Galaxy transport to the Air Force in ceremonies at Marietta, Ga.
     April 17-18, 1989. Lockheed pilots Jerry Hoyt and Ron Williams
 set sixteen class time-to-climb and altitude records in separate
 flights in a NASA U-2C at the Dryden Flight Research Facility at
 Edwards AFB, Calif.  The thirty-two-year-old aircraft, which was
 loaned to NASA in 1971, is retired to a museum after the flights.
 The records still stand.
     May 4, 1989. Air Force Maj. Mark C. Lee releases the Magellan
 probe from the payload bay of the space shuttle orbiter Atlantis
 during the first day of the four-day STS-30 space mission.  The
 twenty-one-foot-tall, 7,604-pound Magellan probe is designed to map
 Venus with its synthetic aperture radar.
     May 22, 1989. Donald B. Rice becomes Secretary of the Air Force.
     June 10, 1989. Capt. Jacquelyn S. Parker becomes the first fe-
 male pilot to graduate from the Air Force Test Pilot School at
 Edwards AFB. End of Part 34
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