1979-Contin ued
20 June
Lieutenant Donna 1. Spruill became the first
Navy woman pilot to carrier qualify in a fixed-wing
aircraft. Lieutenant Spruill piloted a C-1A Trader to an
arrested landing aboard
Independence.
1 July
With the disestablishment of U.S. Army
Executive Flight Detachment, HMX-l became the sin-
gle source of helicopter support for the White House.
17 July
Saipan
was operating off the coast of
Nicaragua for possible evacuation of American diplo-
mats and others due to the turmoil surrounding the
fall of that government.
18 July
VP-23, flying the P-3C Orion, fired the new
Harpoon missile. VP-23 was the first operational fleet
patrol squadron to receive, fire and make an opera-
tional deployment with the Harpoon missile. On August
17, a ceremony at NAS Brunswick, Maine, marked the
introduction of the Harpoon antiship missile into opera-
tional service as an air-launched weapon.
19 July
The President announced he had instructed
the U.S. Seventh Fleet to aid the Vietnamese "boat
people" and assist them to safety. U.S. Naval Aviation
and surface units of the Seventh Fleet stepped up
patrolling, assistance and rescue efforts in support of
these Vietnamese refugees.
Vietnamese refugee boarding White Plains (AFS
4)
after being res-
cued from their
35
foot boat in the South China Sea NAH-002785
UNITED STATES NAVAL AVIATION
1910-1995
323
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Aerial view, taken by a P-3B Orion from VP-22, of boat people
aboard their small craft displaying an "50S" sign
1175289
21 July
Neil A. Armstrong, a Navy pilot during the
Korean War, was inducted into the Aviation Hall of
Fame in Dayton, Ohio. He served as an experimental
test pilot for the National Advisory Committee for
Aeronautics and flew a variety of high speed aircraft
including the X-IS. Later, after being selected as an
Astronaut by NASA, he served as command pilot of
the Gemini 8 mission, during which he participated in
the first docking of a spacecraft. His most notable
achievement came as commander of the Apollo 11
Lunar Landing Mission when he became the first man
to step on the moon.
24 July
The Bell XV-IS successfully converted in
flight from the helicopter mode to the fixed-wing
mode. The XV-IS flight test program was founded as a
joint U.S. Navy/NASA/Army research effort to evaluate
the tilt rotor concept.
27 July
The Navy's newest turbo-jet-powered aerial
target, the Northrop BQM-74C, successfully completed
its first flight over the Pacific Missile Test Center, Point
Mugu, Calif. The 33-minute flight also marked the first
airborne launch of the BQM-74C when the target was
launched from under the wing of an A-6 Intruder.
Following completion of the flight, the BQM-74C was
safely landed at sea, retrieved, and returned to Point
Mugu for inspection, refurbishment, and eventual
reuse. The BQM-74C was the only target in the world
using a Digital Avionics Processor which allowed it to
provide realistic low cost antiship cruise missile simu-
lation in training.
30
August
The first prototype of the Navy's SH-60B
Seahawk helicopter was unveiled at the Sikorsky
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