Air Force Trivia
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108 free Air Force trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
52 free Air Force trivia questions with answers. The United States Air Force is the largest air force on Earth, and it has been independent only since 1947. This quiz covers the story from the Army Signal Corps' first aeronautical division to today's stealth bombers and the Space Force spin-off: the founding, the ranks and uniforms, the Academy at Colorado Springs, the Thunderbirds, Air Force One and the presidential planes before it, and the aircraft everyone knows, from the B-52 that will fly into the 2050s to the A-10 Warthog and the SR-71. History gets its share too: Chuck Yeager and the sound barrier, the Tuskegee Airmen, the Doolittle Raid, the Enola Gay, the Berlin Airlift, Curtis LeMay and Strategic Air Command, plus a few questions on the RAF and the Battle of Britain for context. It suits veterans, cadets, aviation buffs and anyone who has stood at an air show. Easy questions come first, obscure ones later. Every answer was checked against the Wikipedia articles on the Air Force, its aircraft and its history, and each question shows the sentence that supports it once you answer. Free, no signup.
30 of 108 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The 1947 act that made the Air Force a separate service also created which intelligence agency?
The CIA
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.
Q 02The Air Force traces its origins to 1 August 1907 as a division of which Army branch?
The Signal Corps
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.
Q 03Which future Missouri senator became the first Secretary of the Air Force?
W. Stuart Symington
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.
Q 04Which supersonic swing-wing bomber entered Air Force service in 1986?
B-1B Lancer
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.
Q 05Who is the only person ever to hold the five-star rank of General of the Air Force?
Henry 'Hap' Arnold
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.
Q 06Which Air Force captain broke the sound barrier in the rocket-powered Bell X-1?
Chuck Yeager
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.
Q 07Which Air Force base became home to the Red Flag air-combat exercise in 1975?
Nellis AFB, Nevada
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.
Q 08Where is the US Air Force Academy located?
Colorado Springs, Colorado
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.
Q 09The Air Force Academy trained its first cadets at a base in which city?
Denver
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.
Q 10What is the name of the Air Force's official aerial demonstration squadron?
The Thunderbirds
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.
Q 11Which aircraft did the Air Force's aerial demonstration squadron switch to in 1983?
F-16 Fighting Falcon
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.
Q 12The call sign 'Air Force One' was created after a 1950s mix-up involving which president's plane?
Dwight Eisenhower
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.
Q 13Which industrial designer, known for the Lucky Strike pack and the Shell logo, created the blue-and-white presidential jet livery of 1962?
Q 21Which 1964 Cold War satire follows an Air Force bomber crew ordered to drop nuclear bombs on the Soviet Union?
Dr. Strangelove
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.
Q 22The B-2 Spirit has which unusual aircraft layout?
Flying wing
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.
Q 23The B-2 Spirit, in service from 1997, first flew in combat during which conflict?
The Kosovo War
Raymond Loewy
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.
Q 14The presidential VC-25A jets, delivered in 1990, were modified versions of which airliner?
Boeing 747
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.
Q 15What was the nickname of the first purpose-built presidential aircraft, which flew FDR to Yalta?
The Sacred Cow
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.
Q 16Members of the Space Force, which was carved out of the Air Force in 2019, are officially known as what?
Guardians
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.
Q 17What was the name of the shade chosen for the Air Force's first dress uniform?
Uxbridge blue
Uxbridge blue, shade 1683, was developed at the Bachman-Uxbridge Worsted Company in Uxbridge, Massachusetts, for the new service's blue dress uniform.
Q 18At which rank does an airman first become a non-commissioned officer?
Staff Sergeant
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.
Q 19Who became the first Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force in 1967?
Paul Airey
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.
Q 20Which bomber, in Air Force service since 1955, was still flying combat missions more than 60 years later?
B-52 Stratofortress
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.
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.
Q 24The A-10 Thunderbolt II, better known as the Warthog, was designed around which weapon?
A 30 mm rotary cannon
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.
Q 25Which base is home to the US Air Force Test Pilot School?
Edwards AFB, California
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.
Q 26How many F-22 Raptors were ultimately built after the programme was cut in 2009?
195
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.
Q 27The F-22 first saw combat in 2014 during airstrikes in which country?
Syria
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.
Q 28The SR-71 Blackbird was built mostly of which metal?
Titanium
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.
Q 29In 1974 an SR-71 Blackbird set a record by flying from New York to which city in under two hours?
London
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.
Q 30The SR-71 was developed by which famous Lockheed division?
Skunk Works
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.