108 Fun Facts About Air Force

The 1947 act that made the Air Force a separate service also created which intelligence agency?

The CIA and the independent Air Force both date from the National Security Act, which reorganised the military after the Second World War under a single Secretary of Defense.

The Air Force traces its origins to 1 August 1907 as a division of which Army branch?

The Signal Corps set up its Aeronautical Division with one officer and two enlisted men, two years before the Army took delivery of its first aeroplane from the Wright brothers.

Which future Missouri senator became the first Secretary of the Air Force?

W. Stuart Symington left the presidency of Emerson Electric for Washington; the Air Force counts its birthday from 18 September 1947, the day he took office.

Which supersonic swing-wing bomber entered Air Force service in 1986?

B-1B Lancer crews call it the 'Bone', from B-One. President Carter's administration cancelled the original B-1 in 1977, and the programme was revived under President Reagan in 1981.

Who is the only person ever to hold the five-star rank of General of the Air Force?

Henry 'Hap' Arnold, one of the first pilots taught by the Wright brothers, was a five-star General of the Army until Congress renamed the rank in May 1949, eight months before his death; nobody has held it since.

Which Air Force captain broke the sound barrier in the rocket-powered Bell X-1?

Chuck Yeager never took off from a runway that day: the rocket-powered X-1, named Glamorous Glennis after his wife, was dropped from the bomb bay of a B-29 before he lit its engine and passed Mach 1.

Which Air Force base became home to the Red Flag air-combat exercise in 1975?

Nellis AFB, Nevada, has hosted Red Flag since 1975; the exercise prepares aircrews for combat by pitting visiting 'Blue' forces against a 'Red' team of Nellis pilots trained to play the enemy.

Where is the US Air Force Academy located?

Colorado Springs, Colorado, was announced as the site in June 1954 after a commission toured the country and named three finalists; the losers were Alton in Illinois and Lake Geneva in Wisconsin.

The Air Force Academy trained its first cadets at a base in which city?

Denver's Lowry Air Force Base swore in the first 306 cadets in July 1955 because the permanent campus was not ready; the class moved to it in 1958 and graduated the following year.

What is the name of the Air Force's official aerial demonstration squadron?

The Thunderbirds formed in 1953 on the F-84 Thunderjet; after the 1973 oil crisis the team gave up its front-line fighters for a small supersonic trainer that burned far less fuel.

Which aircraft did the Air Force's aerial demonstration squadron switch to in 1983?

The F-16 Fighting Falcon came in after the January 1982 'Diamond Crash', in which four of the team's T-38 Talons were lost together and all four pilots killed; the squadron sat out that season to retrain.

The call sign 'Air Force One' was created after a 1950s mix-up involving which president's plane?

Dwight Eisenhower's Lockheed Constellation and a commercial airliner, both using the number 8610, entered the same airspace, so a unique call sign was created for any Air Force plane carrying the president.

Which industrial designer, known for the Lucky Strike pack and the Shell logo, created the blue-and-white presidential jet livery of 1962?

Raymond Loewy criticised the old presidential jet as garish; working with Kennedy, he settled on the blue scheme, with lettering in a typeface like that of the Declaration of Independence.

The presidential VC-25A jets, delivered in 1990, were modified versions of which airliner?

The Boeing 747 beat a rival DC-10 bid for the job; the two jets were ordered under Ronald Reagan, but trouble with their communications wiring delayed delivery until 1990, when George H. W. Bush was president.

What was the nickname of the first purpose-built presidential aircraft, which flew FDR to Yalta?

The Sacred Cow, a Douglas VC-54C, had a battery-powered lift built in to raise Roosevelt in his wheelchair, yet it carried him only once, to Yalta in February 1945; Harry Truman inherited it two months later.

Members of the Space Force, which was carved out of the Air Force in 2019, are officially known as what?

Guardians was announced by Vice President Mike Pence in December 2020, at a ceremony marking the Space Force's first birthday; it echoes 'Guardians of the High Frontier', an old Air Force Space Command motto.

What was the name of the shade chosen for the Air Force's first dress uniform?

Uxbridge blue, shade 1683, was developed at the Bachman-Uxbridge Worsted Company in Uxbridge, Massachusetts, for the new service's blue dress uniform.

At which rank does an airman first become a non-commissioned officer?

Staff Sergeant, pay grade E-5, is the first NCO rank; until 1991 the Air Force also had an E-4 sergeant who counted as one, and scrapping that rank left its NCOs starting a grade later than the Army's.

Who became the first Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force in 1967?

Paul Airey, a former B-24 radio operator-gunner held as a prisoner of war in Germany, became the first Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force on 3 April 1967, serving until 1969.

Which bomber, in Air Force service since 1955, was still flying combat missions more than 60 years later?

The B-52 Stratofortress fleet still flying was all delivered by 1962; instead of retiring it, the Air Force is fitting new engines and radar so the type can serve into the 2050s.

Which 1964 Cold War satire follows an Air Force bomber crew ordered to drop nuclear bombs on the Soviet Union?

Dr. Strangelove was made without Air Force help: refused access to real bombers, designer Ken Adam had to work out the cockpit set from technical magazines.

The B-2 Spirit has which unusual aircraft layout?

Flying wing designs have no tail fin or separate fuselage, which helps the B-2 hide from radar; the bomber proved so costly that the order was cut and only 21 were ever built.

The B-2 Spirit, in service from 1997, first flew in combat during which conflict?

The Kosovo War saw B-2s take off from Missouri, bomb targets in Serbia and fly home without landing, round trips of about 30 hours for each two-pilot crew.

The A-10 Thunderbolt II, better known as the Warthog, was designed around which weapon?

The A-10 was built around a 30 mm rotary cannon, the seven-barrel GAU-8 Avenger, which is so large that the jet's nose wheel is mounted off-centre to make room for it.

Which base is home to the US Air Force Test Pilot School?

Edwards AFB, California, took over the school from Ohio in 1951 because the Mojave Desert offered clear skies almost all year, little air traffic and a vast dry lakebed to land on when things went wrong.

How many F-22 Raptors were ultimately built after the programme was cut in 2009?

In all 195 F-22 Raptors were built, eight test aircraft and 187 operational jets, against an original plan for 750 and a later requirement of 381.

The F-22 first saw combat in 2014 during airstrikes in which country?

Syria was where the F-22 first went to war, bombing Islamic State targets in September 2014; a fighter built to shoot down enemy jets did not score an air-to-air kill until 2023, against a Chinese spy balloon.

The SR-71 Blackbird was built mostly of which metal?

Titanium was chosen to withstand the heat of flying at more than 2,000 mph, but America could not supply enough of it, so it was secretly bought from the Soviet Union, the very country the Blackbird was built to watch.

In 1974 an SR-71 Blackbird set a record by flying from New York to which city in under two hours?

London was reached in 1 hour 54 minutes 56 seconds, at an average of about 1,800 mph; the same jet later flew from Los Angeles to Washington in 64 minutes on its way to retirement in the Smithsonian.

The SR-71 was developed by which famous Lockheed division?

Skunk Works took its name from the 'Skonk Works', a foul-smelling backwoods still in the comic strip Li'l Abner; an engineer began answering the phone that way as a joke about Lockheed's secret workshop, and it stuck.

The Tuskegee Airmen of the 332nd Fighter Group were known by which nickname?

Red Tails came from the bright red paint on the tails of the group's fighters, which told bomber crews at a glance which escort group was flying alongside them.

Which unit was the first black flying unit, and the first to deploy overseas in April 1943?

The 99th Pursuit Squadron, activated in 1941 and later redesignated the 99th Fighter Squadron, reached North Africa in April 1943 flying P-40 Warhawks before moving to Sicily and Italy.

The B-29 Enola Gay was named after whom?

The pilot's mother, Enola Gay Tibbets, had backed Paul Tibbets when he gave up a medical career to fly; he had her name painted on the bomber's nose just before the Hiroshima mission.

Which aircraft dropped the second atomic bomb, on Nagasaki?

Bockscar, flown by Major Charles Sweeney, dropped 'Fat Man' on Nagasaki on 9 August 1945 after clouds and smoke hid the primary target, Kokura.

Which bomber did Doolittle's raiders fly off a carrier to bomb Tokyo?

B-25 Mitchells were sent on a one-way trip: after hitting Japan the 16 aircraft were meant to land in China, but none reached an airfield there, and the crew that landed in the Soviet Union was interned.

What was the US codename for the Berlin Airlift of 1948-49?

Operation Vittles was the American name and Plainfare the RAF's; in fifteen months the two air forces flew in roughly 2.3 million tons of supplies, most of it coal rather than food.

Roughly what share of the Berlin Airlift's total tonnage did the US Air Force deliver?

The US Air Force delivered about 76% of the tonnage, roughly 1.78 million of 2.33 million tons; the RAF, with Commonwealth aircrews, carried the rest.

Curtis LeMay led which nuclear-armed organisation from 1948 to 1957?

Strategic Air Command was in poor shape when LeMay arrived: in a mock raid he ordered on an Ohio city, most bombers missed their targets by a mile or more, and he spent the next nine years rebuilding it.

Whose running mate was Curtis LeMay in the 1968 presidential election?

George Wallace's third-party ticket carried five Southern states and 46 electoral votes, but LeMay damaged it by telling reporters he would use nuclear weapons in Vietnam if that was what it took to win.

The US Air Force's official song opens 'Off we go into the' followed by which three words?

'Wild blue yonder' comes from Robert Crawford's winning entry in a magazine contest with a $1,000 prize; more than 700 songs were submitted, and the judges had found little they liked before his arrived.

Global Strike Command was set up in 2009 partly in response to what?

Two weapons-handling incidents drove it: live nuclear cruise missiles mistakenly flown on a B-52 from Minot to Barksdale in 2007, and ICBM fuze components shipped to Taiwan in 2006.

Area 51 was originally acquired by the CIA in 1955 to test which aircraft?

The U-2 spy plane needed somewhere remote for its test flights, so the CIA picked Groom Lake in 1955; the agency did not officially acknowledge Area 51 until 2013, in a declassified history of the programme.

Air Force Officer Training School is located at which base?

Maxwell AFB, Alabama, stands on the site of a civilian flying school the Wright brothers opened in 1910; the Air Force's officer training has been based there since the 1990s.

Which country created an independent air force in April 1918, months before the First World War ended?

Britain created the Royal Air Force on 1 April 1918 by merging the army's Royal Flying Corps with the Royal Naval Air Service, seven months before the First World War ended.

Which RAF fighter shot down more German aircraft than the Spitfire in summer 1940?

The Hawker Hurricane grew out of a monoplane version of a Hawker biplane; its old-fashioned build soaked up battle damage, and it scored more than half of the RAF's victories that summer.

Which Royal Air Force aerobatic team has flown the BAE Hawk since 1979?

The Red Arrows make their smoke trails by squirting diesel into the hot jet exhaust, with dye added for the red and blue; each Hawk carries the liquid in a pod under its belly.

Which Air Force drone, a larger and more heavily armed successor to the Predator, carries Hellfire missiles and guided bombs?

MQ-9 Reaper crews fly it over satellite links from ground stations far from the war zone, often in the United States; the Air Force's chief hailed it as the move to a true 'hunter-killer' drone.

The KC-46 Pegasus and older KC-135 perform which Air Force role?

Aerial refuelling got off to a troubled start on the KC-46, which is based on the Boeing 767 airliner: faults in its fuel boom and the cameras used to guide it kept it from most combat tasking until 2022.

Which was the first US operational jet fighter, entering service in 1945?

The Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star, whose prototype was built in 143 days, became the first US operational jet fighter in 1945 and was redesignated F-80 in 1948.

In the US military's order of precedence, the Air Force directly follows which service?

The Navy ranks third and the Air Force fourth; the surprise is that the Marine Corps is listed ahead of the Navy, even though it is part of the Navy Department.

Which was the first operational aircraft designed with stealth technology?

The F-117 Nighthawk owes its odd faceted shape to 1970s computers, which could only work out how radar would bounce off flat panels; it entered service in 1983 but was kept secret from the public until 1988.

Which fighter is credited with more than 100 air-to-air victories and no losses in air combat?

The F-15 Eagle is as tough as its record suggests: in 1983 an Israeli crew landed one safely after a mid-air collision tore off almost the whole of its right wing.

Who became the US Air Force's first female fighter pilot in 1993?

Jeannie Leavitt was training to be an instructor pilot when the rule barring women from combat aircraft was dropped in April 1993; she switched to fighters and later commanded a fighter wing.

The National Museum of the US Air Force stands near which city, the home town of the Wright brothers?

Dayton, Ohio, is home to the world's largest military aviation museum because Army engineers at the city's McCook Field began setting aside aircraft and equipment in 1923, and the collection kept growing.

Which giant transport, the Air Force's largest aircraft, opens at both nose and tail?

The C-5 Galaxy can swallow two Abrams battle tanks or six Apache helicopters, and its landing gear 'kneels' to lower the cargo floor to truck height for loading.

Which robotic US military spaceplane landed in November 2022 after spending 908 days in orbit?

The X-37B's work is mostly classified, but on that flight it released FalconSat-8, a small satellite built by Air Force Academy cadets, and carried a Naval Research Laboratory solar-power experiment.

The first fixed-wing gunship in Vietnam, nicknamed 'Spooky', was a conversion of which transport?

The C-47 Skytrain became a gunship when three miniguns were fitted to fire out of its left side; the pilot flew a steady banked circle to keep them trained on one spot, and troops nicknamed it Puff the Magic Dragon.

Under which operation name did the coalition begin bombing Iraq in January 1991?

Operation Desert Storm opened with more than five weeks of air strikes; when the ground assault finally began, it lasted only four days before a ceasefire was declared.

Which soft-spoken public television host spent 20 years in the Air Force and retired as a master sergeant?

Bob Ross first saw the snow and mountains he later painted while stationed in Alaska. After years as a tough first sergeant, he decided he would not raise his voice once he left the military.

Which air defence organisation's Santa-tracking tradition began with a child's 1955 phone call?

NORAD inherited the tradition from its predecessor CONAD, where Colonel Harry Shoup turned a little girl's call asking for Santa into an annual publicity stunt.

On which target did the Air Force's top-secret 1958 Project A119 plan to detonate a nuclear bomb?

The Moon was chosen so that the flash would be visible from Earth. A young Carl Sagan helped calculate how the dust cloud would spread before the plan was cancelled.

Which country singer intercepted Soviet Morse code in West Germany during his four Air Force years?

Johnny Cash was said to be one of the first Americans to learn of Joseph Stalin's death, receiving the news in Morse code at his listening post in Landsberg.

Which famous adage is named after an engineer on the Air Force's rocket-sled tests of 1948–49?

Murphy's law was popularised by John Stapp, the officer who rode the rocket sled himself. He told reporters nobody had been badly hurt because his team always took it into consideration.

What did airlift pilot Gail Halvorsen drop to Berlin's children on tiny handkerchief parachutes?

Candy made the Air Force pilot a hero of the Berlin Airlift, and children knew his plane because he wiggled its wings. His operation went on to drop over 23 tons of it.

Which Hollywood actor flew B-24 bombers in wartime and retired as an Air Force Reserve brigadier general?

James Stewart became the highest-ranking actor in American military history when he was promoted in 1959. He even flew as an observer on a bombing mission during the Vietnam War.

Which Gemini and Apollo astronaut shot down two MiG-15s as an Air Force fighter pilot in the Korean War?

Buzz Aldrin flew 66 combat missions in Korea. His gun-camera footage of one enemy pilot ejecting from a damaged jet was printed in Life magazine in June 1953.

Which sunglasses brand did Bausch & Lomb create in 1936 from lenses developed for Army Air Corps pilots?

Ray-Ban grew out of work begun in 1929 with Colonel John Macready, who wanted glasses that cut the glare of the sky without fogging up at altitude as goggles did.

Which Air Force-developed technology was opened to civilians after a Korean airliner strayed off course in 1983?

GPS navigation was promised to civilians by President Reagan after Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was shot down in Soviet airspace. Its full constellation of 24 satellites became operational in 1993.

What kind of animal was Ham, the space traveller named after an Air Force laboratory at Holloman?

Chimpanzee number 65 was only renamed Ham once he was safely back on Earth. Officials reportedly feared the bad press if a named animal died on the mission.

Which animals did the Army Air Forces arm with tiny timed incendiary bombs in a Second World War experiment?

Bats proved the idea all too well in 1943, when armed ones were accidentally released and set fire to an Army airfield near Carlsbad, New Mexico.

Which Air Force study of UFOs, run from 1952 to 1969, collected more than 12,000 sighting reports?

Project Blue Book concluded that most sightings were misidentified clouds, stars or ordinary aircraft, and found no evidence that any were extraterrestrial vehicles.

Which New Mexico town's Army Air Field announced in 1947 that it had recovered a flying disc?

Roswell became a byword for aliens, but Air Force reports in the 1990s traced the debris to a top-secret balloon train built to listen for Soviet nuclear tests.

Which superhero film stars Brie Larson as Air Force fighter pilot Carol Danvers?

Captain Marvel's screenwriter asked the Air Force whether Larson, cast at 26, was too young to play an accomplished pilot. Two real Air Force pilots appear in the film as themselves.

Which Air Force Academy graduate and former F-4 pilot ditched an airliner on the Hudson River in 2009?

Sully Sullenberger lost both engines to a bird strike, yet all 155 people aboard US Airways Flight 1549 survived.

What do Air Force Reserve crews of the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron deliberately fly into?

Hurricanes were first flown into on purpose in 1943, when an instructor bet his RAF students that he could fly into a storm near Houston and come back safely.

Who built the world's first military aeroplane, bought by the US Army for $30,000 in 1909?

The Wright brothers earned $5,000 of that price as a bonus, because their Flyer beat the Army's required 40 miles per hour by two.

How many confirmed aerial victories does a military pilot traditionally need to be called a flying ace?

Five became the benchmark in the First World War, when French newspapers hailed Adolphe Pégoud as the ace after he became the first pilot to down that many German aircraft.

Which aerial salute at military funerals has one aircraft pull up abruptly and leave the rest flying on?

Missing man formation tributes have spread beyond aviation: motorsport stages them in memory of a recently deceased driver, as do American football and ice hockey for players.

What nickname did Claire Chennault's American volunteers earn in shark-faced P-40 fighters over China?

The Flying Tigers were formally a unit of the Republic of China Air Force, with pilots recruited from the US Army Air Corps, Navy and Marine Corps.

Which Merlin-engined American fighter escorted Eighth Air Force bombers on raids over Germany?

The P-51 Mustang owed its new engine to a Rolls-Royce test pilot, who suggested the swap after RAF reports praised the original's performance only at low altitude.

Which B-17 bomber, among the first to complete 25 combat missions, flew home in 1943 to sell war bonds?

Memphis Belle's nose art gained 25 bomb shapes, one for each mission, before her pilot and crew took her on a 31-city tour of America.

Which pilot commanded the B-29 Enola Gay on the atomic bombing mission to Hiroshima in August 1945?

Paul Tibbets had already made history in August 1942, co-piloting the lead plane on the first American daylight heavy-bomber mission against German-occupied Europe.

Which big-band leader vanished over the English Channel in 1944 while serving as an Army Air Forces major?

Glenn Miller led an Army Air Forces orchestra that added a full string section to a big band, making it the forerunner of many US military big bands.

Which satirical novel did Joseph Heller draw from his 60 missions as an Army Air Forces B-25 bombardier?

Catch-22 got its number late: just before publication the title was changed to avoid confusion with Leon Uris's new novel Mila 18.

Which science-fiction television writer flew 89 combat missions as an Army Air Forces B-17 pilot?

Gene Roddenberry worked as a commercial pilot after the war, then joined the Los Angeles Police Department, where he began to write for television.

Which nickname did German ace Manfred von Richthofen earn from his title and his brightly painted aircraft?

The Red Baron was officially credited with 80 victories, yet only 19 of them came in the Fokker triplane he is popularly linked with.

Which children's author flew RAF fighters in the Second World War and rose to acting wing commander?

Roald Dahl came to believe that the head injury he suffered in a wartime crash had sparked his creative genius, and the crash was the subject of his first published work.

Which former racing driver became America's top flying ace of the First World War with 26 aerial victories?

Eddie Rickenbacker received the Medal of Honor for his wartime flying and later spent many years as the head of Eastern Air Lines.

Which air power advocate was court-martialled in 1925 after accusing Army and Navy leaders of near-treason?

Billy Mitchell had staged bombing runs on anchored warships to prove that aircraft could sink battleships. He became the first person to have an American military aircraft design, the B-25, named after him.

Which organisation of women pilots ferried wartime military aircraft but only gained veteran status in 1977?

WASP members flew aircraft from the factories to military bases and towed aerial targets, freeing men for combat, and 38 of them died in the course of those duties.

Which mountain range did Army Air Forces crews cross on the wartime supply route nicknamed the Hump?

The Himalayas airlift carried about 650,000 tons of supplies from India to China in 42 months, flown without reliable charts or radio aids.

Which Navy aircraft carrier launched the Army's B-25 bombers on the 1942 Doolittle Raid against Tokyo?

USS Hornet had tried the idea out that February, when two B-25s were loaded aboard at Norfolk and flown off her deck without difficulty.

Which American swept-wing jet fighter duelled Soviet-built MiG-15s in the skies over Korea?

The F-86 Sabre borrowed from German wartime research: its automatic wing slats were based on those of the Messerschmitt Me 262.

Which Air Force officer's 1960 skydive from a balloon at 102,800 feet stood as a record until 2012?

Joe Kittinger, aged 84, was the capsule communicator who directed Felix Baumgartner through the 24-mile freefall that finally broke the record.

Which rocket-powered research plane set a speed record for crewed, powered aircraft of Mach 6.7?

The X-15 was dropped from under a bomber's wing, and several of its pilots flew above 50 miles, the height at which the Air Force counts a pilot as an astronaut.

Which flagword, also the title of a 1996 John Travolta film, reports an accident involving a nuclear weapon?

Broken Arrow has had to be used more often than most people imagine: the Defense Department officially recognises at least 32 such accidents between 1950 and 1980.

Which Air Force reconnaissance drone was modified to carry Hellfire missiles, first test-fired in 2001?

The MQ-1 Predator hit a stationary tank with all three Hellfire missiles in one February 2001 test, turning an unmanned scout into a strike aircraft.

In which country was the giant Air Force-developed MOAB bomb first dropped in combat in 2017?

Afghanistan was the target, where the bomb struck a tunnel complex used by an Islamic State offshoot. MOAB stands for Massive Ordnance Air Blast, and it had first been tested 14 years earlier.

Which Air Force jet takes its name from the twin-engined Lockheed P-38 fighter of the Second World War?

The F-35 Lightning II has picked up less official names as well: some Air Force pilots call it the Panther, and other nicknames include Fat Amy and Battle Penguin.

Which volunteer body, created days before Pearl Harbor, is the Air Force's official civilian auxiliary?

Civil Air Patrol crews flew anti-submarine patrols during the war, but the charter that made it the Air Force's auxiliary in 1948 bars it from ever again taking part in direct combat.

Which Virginia county, home to the Pentagon, holds the three soaring steel spires of the Air Force Memorial?

Arlington's memorial evokes the contrails of jets peeling apart in a 'bomb burst' manoeuvre, and its tallest spire reaches 270 feet.

Which Air Force special warfare airmen earn a maroon beret that symbolises blood sacrificed by comrades?

Pararescuemen were authorised their beret in 1966, making it only the second in the US military approved for universal wear, after that of the Army Special Forces.

What code name does the Air Force give aircraft that hunt enemy radar and surface-to-air missile sites?

Wild Weasel replaced the original name, Project Ferret, because Ferret had already been used for radar-countermeasures bombers in the Second World War.

Which triple-ace pilot's non-regulation handlebar moustache in Vietnam inspired the Air Force's Mustache March?

Robin Olds wore it as a gesture of defiance until the Air Force Chief of Staff ordered it off. Airmen now grow moustaches each March as a good-natured protest against facial hair rules.

Which wartime commander of the Tuskegee Airmen became the Air Force's first African-American general?

Benjamin O. Davis Jr. had endured years of silent treatment at West Point, where classmates rarely spoke to him outside the line of duty in the hope of driving him out.

Which Air Force colonel became the first woman to pilot, and later to command, a Space Shuttle mission?

Eileen Collins had been one of only four women chosen for her Air Force pilot training class, and she flew a transport during the 1983 invasion of Grenada.

Which science-fiction series featured two successive Air Force Chiefs of Staff appearing as themselves?

Stargate SG-1 lead actor Richard Dean Anderson was made an honorary brigadier general by one of them, General John Jumper, to match his character's promotion on screen.

Which Medal of Honor pilot was America's top ace of the Second World War, downing 40 Japanese aircraft?

Richard Bong was once grounded for breaking flying rules on a day when fellow pilots looped the Golden Gate Bridge. He died in 1945 while testing a jet fighter.