The Navy airship USS Macon (ZRS-5) crashes off the California coast with two fatalities out of a crew of 83. This loss effectively ends the Navy’s rigid airship program.
The Air Force awarded a $13.08 billion contract to the Sierra Nevada Corporation on April 26 for its Survivable Airborne Operations Center aircraft, the successor to the service’s E-4B “Doomsday” plane. Like the E-4B, officially called the National Airborne Operations Center, the SAOC will be meant to withstand a nuclear attack and keep…