 An independent Air Force. A dream that began with the vision and foresight of remarkable men. A dream that would take 40 years to realize. Protection. It must have an Air Force second or not. An aviation felt the need for a separate Air Force. 35 years ago, September 18, 1947. On board his plane, the Constitution, President Harry Truman signs a document and America has an Air Force. Its first chief of staff, General Carl Spotz. The most important is that... In June 1982, some of these remarkable men gathered during graduation week at the Air Command and Staff College, Maxwell Air Force Base for what was called a walk through history. Air Force now interviewed some of these pioneers to get their perspective on the parts of Air Force history which they made. Their thoughts take us back through 75 years before there was an Air Force. To the very beginnings of military aviation. Some 60 years ago, the word was at war. That war was probably the first time that there was an opportunity to use an aircraft of any type for wartime purposes. I flew south with camels. Colonel George Vaughn flew the legendary little fighter against Germany's best and became America's fourth-ranking World War I ace. When it was flown properly by a man who knew how to handle it, I don't believe there was a more maneuverable airplane in war than the south with camels. Possibly maybe the German Falker triplane. The airplane. A new dimension is added to the grim business of war. Less than 10 years from the day the army accepted its first plane. It will take another quarter century before air power reaches maturity and another war to force the issue. December 7th, 1941. America again goes into battle. This time with a young air corps fighting on two fronts. The inexperienced crews of the 305th bomb group arrive in Scotland from the States. Their commander, Colonel Curtis E. LeMay. I found that the bombing accuracy was very poor. As a matter of fact, we didn't know where half the bombs we hauled across the channel fell. Further investigation showed that everyone was taking a basic action on the bombing run. So it was apparent that bombardiers were not having an opportunity to use equipment and get good results. So in our stupidity, we decided to make a straight-in run from the time we saw the target. First mission using different tactics. A straight-in run combined with flying a tight box formation. It was seven minutes from the time we saw the target until the bombs fell off the shackles. A long seven minutes for everyone concerned. LeMay's group was so successful that their tactics were adopted by the entire 8th Air Force. In the Pacific, fighter operations make headlines. Colonel John Mitchell plans a bold, daring mission to shoot down the commander-in-chief of the Japanese Imperial Navy. Ground crews modify his P-38s for extended range and performance. We took off from Guadalcanal. I was leading the flight. We knew that he would be in a Betty-type bomber and that he would be escorted by zeroes. When I made landfall, I was about one minute ahead of the time that I had planned to be there, but it was rather incredible when you think about it because it was, as I said, I had no checkpoints or anything else all the way up there. So it was unbelievable, almost, that we happened to be there at the time we knew that we had our man. I knew that we had him. Of course, as soon as this happened, we got the hell out of there because the mission was accomplished. Left the airplane, we took over manual control, made it an extremely steep turn to try and put as much distance between ourselves and the explosion as possible. In the States, Colonel Paul Tibbets is selected to prepare and lead history's first nuclear strike force. The bomb had explosion, had exploded, everything was a success, so we turned around to take a look at it. We completed our turn, we came back around, and we saw really nothing. We had in front of us before a perfectly clear and unmistakable Japanese city below us, and now there was nothing but a boiling mass of debris down there covered by cloud with this big mushroom effect going up from it. He had named the fateful aircraft Inola Gay after his mother. My mother had been the one person in our family who, when I said I didn't want to be a doctor, I would rather go fly airplanes. She's the one that gave me the necessary encouragement to go ahead. The old man said, you're going to kill yourself, one of those school machines. And my mother said, Paul, you go ahead and fly, you're going to be all right. The bomber was released and left the airplane. In that 51 seconds, which I think is the longest 51 seconds I've ever lived in my life, everything went through my mind. I was really going back over a period of about 10 months, 10 to 10 and a half months of really hard work to get to that particular point. So my thought was, well, the damn thing worked. I was perfectly relieved as soon as it exploded. The weight of the world was off of my shoulders. We were successful. Years that followed the creation of the Air Force, the research and development projects initiated during and immediately after the war began to bear fruit. General Frank Everest recalls. Many, many scientists and engineers said, we will never go through the sound barrier. Obviously, it was immediately crashed by Jager, the first guy to fly it through the speed of sound. Jager, of course, checked me out in the X-1 and he had finished taking it up through Mock One and I was going to go fowl it to. I rode in the cockpit of the B-29 because the B-29 climbed at 180 miles an hour and the stalling speed of the X-1 was 240 indicated. So I waited until I got above 12,000 feet before I came down a ladder and got into the cockpit of the X-1. On that particular flight, after dropping at 25,000 feet and in a slight climb with four rocket chambers on, I was sitting there looking at about nine, five, nine, six Mach number indicated when the Mach meter began to fluctuate and went off the scale and went off the scale, all the buffeting stopped on the airplane and started flying real smooth and I got back some elevator effectiveness. The most important thing that came out of the whole X-1 program found out that we needed a flying tail on the airplane if we were going to operate into regions of speed of sound. June 22, 1948, the Soviet's blockade Berlin. Faced with the prospect of abandoning the city of 2 million people, the decision is made to resupply Berlin solely by airlift. Colonel Gale Halverson was there. I'll let you men know you might be on your way tonight. Going to fly supplies, flour, food, medicine. We're going to be flying coal on those airplanes we got in the flight line. Within two days of that announcement, I was knocking coal dust out of my hat. The men who flew it were indeed a gallant band of men. The people who conceived it certainly had great imaginations and sometimes those who flew it thought their imaginations were too good. Flying into Tempelhof in the middle of the winter, a foggy, smoggy day, coming right over those buildings and dropping into Tempelhof with a maximum plus load of coal, for instance, it was a rather hair-raising experience. As we got into it more deeply, it was evident that the eyes of the world were upon this struggle, the first major Cold War confrontation. So through air power, peace was promoted. September 1951, the North Koreans crossed the 38th parallel. An area between the Yalu and Chongchon rivers is dubbed Miig Alley. Veteran World War II ace, Colonel Francis Gaby Kibreski, master of the close kill, explains. So I recall that day the Miig came out of the Yalu Sanctuary and crossed the river and there were about 16 of them flying together in formation and I had a formation of four airplanes. At that moment, I dispelled everything from my mind with one exception. I was determined to shoot down that lead airplane that was my fifth airplane that closed in real close again. Of course, in many of my instances, I flew through the airplane. The airplane exploded and there was no question in my mind that he was destroyed. It was the Air Force's first jet war and the results were impressive, a better than 10 to 1 kill ratio. With the war over, the United States Air Force leaps into the future, moving toward an all-jet combat force. In production, three new fighters, the F-100, the F-101 and F-102. The B-47 bomber is in production and the B-52 is in development. In February 1954, the Air Force reports a technological breakthrough. Thermonuclear warheads, small enough to be delivered by rockets over long distances. The Air Force has a new mission, the guiding force behind it, General Bernie Schriever. There was no question that the ICBM would be coming along once you had the V-2. As a matter of fact, the Germans had on the drawing boards an intercontinental ballistic missile. Space opened up new opportunities for manned flight as well. From the flying laboratories of the X-2 and 3, there evolved a new kind of aircraft capable of flying into space. At the controls of the X-15, Major Pete Knight. We either went on a speed mission or an altitude mission. Both missions started out about the same way, dropping off of the 52, rotating and climbing at a specific climb attitude. And then either pushing over to zero G and coming level at about 80 or 100,000 feet for a speed mission, or holding that attitude and allowing the airplane to climb and shutting down the engine at a predetermined Mach number, which then would determine the altitude at which the airplane flew. Now, as we went on the altitude missions, during the climb, we were controlling the airplane with a right-hand side-stick controller. And as we exited the atmosphere, we transitioned to a left-hand controller and flew the airplane with the reaction controls. Now, the significance of the flights of the X-15 was certainly as a research airplane. Re-entering the air-satmosphere and flying it back, landing it tangentially on the lakebed as a normal airplane after having operated in space. These kinds of things were demonstrated in the X-15 and were then used as we progressed on to both the X-20 and the space shuttle. Vietnam. The Air Force is again committed to combat operations. Man and machine are tested in the jungles of Southeast Asia. Of our most vital efforts, the rescue of our downed air crews proves a tremendous success. But, inevitably, some of our pilots are captured. Mrs. Aldova Ford, wife of Captain David E. Ford, shot down in 1967. I first learned of it the typical way two Air Force men come out to the house. It was on a Sunday. We just got home from church. And I looked out the window and saw them coming and I knew then that he was either dead or missing. I wrote him a letter two weeks before he was captured and told him if he did get captured, please try not to be a hero because he had a family. Captain Ford, now a Lieutenant Colonel, returned with other POWs in Operation Homecoming, 1973. I feel that I walked out to that C-141 in Hanoi with my head held high and I felt about 10 feet tall. We brought our honor home with us. A little scarred, but we brought it home. In the 70s, a major force modernization begins. Its purpose to take us into the 1990s is a potent effective fighting force. New weapon systems include the F-15 and 16, the A-10, the B-1, AWACS. C-141s are stretched and made air-refutable. C-5 wings are modified to extend their life. The KC-10, new aircraft to meet the needs of a changing Air Force. With the coming of the space age, the Air Force takes on ever-increasing responsibilities. To meet these new challenges, the Air Force announces the activation of space command on September 1st, 1982. Under the command of General James Hardinger, it's headquartered at Colorado Springs. Vice Commander, Lieutenant General Richard Henry. The use of space is revolutionizing warfare. Space is a place. It is the mountaintop and the ridge line of the future. The probably most exciting aspect of looking at the military use of space is to recognize that despite all of the achievements that we have accomplished during the last 25 years, this is still, and compared to the history of air power, only 1928. And the future then becomes very exciting as we learn more how to use this place called space for the support of our operational forces here on Earth. The future will be whatever a man wants it to be. We have the power to make our world the way we want it. And this is true of the future of the Air Force. Remarkable men with dreams and vision of what would be brought our Air Force to life 35 years ago. Through our dreams and vision today, we will shape the Air Force of tomorrow.