An unarmed Boeing LGM-30B Minuteman I ICBM is successfully launched from an underground silo 10 miles north of Newell, S.D. It is the first time a site other than Vandenberg AFB, Calif., or Cape Kennedy (Canaveral) AFS, Fla., is used for an ICBM launch.
Happy Birthday US Air Force: 78 Today
Sept. 18, 2025
Seventy-eight years ago today, on Sept. 18, 1947, Supreme Court Chief Justice Fred Vinson swore in Stuart Symington as the first ever Secretary of the Air Force, and the Air Force officially became the first new military service since the Revolutionary War.