126

UNITED STATES NAVAL AVIATION 1910-1995

1943-Contin ued

21 April Captain Frederick M. Trapnell made a flight

in the Bell XP-59A jet Airacomet at Muroc, Calif.-the

first jet flight by a U.S. Naval Aviator.

3 May Air Transport Squadron 1 (VR-l), based at

Norfolk, Va., extended the area of its operations with a

flight to Prestwick, Scotland, via Reykjavik, Iceland.

This was the first R5D operation in the Naval Air

Transport Service.

4 May The first regular patrols began from

Amchitka, Aleutian Islands, extending the search cov-

erage by Fleet Air Wing 4 beyond Attu toward the

Kurile Islands.

4 May To expedite the evaluation of the helicopter

in antisubmarine operations, the Commander-in-Chief,

U.S. Fleet directed that a "joint board" be formed with

representatives of the Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Fleet;

the Bureau of Aeronautics; the Coast Guard; the

British Admiralty and the Royal Air Forces. The result-

ing Combined Board for the Evaluation of the Ship-

Based Helicopter in Antisubmarine Warfare was later

expanded to include representatives of the Army Air

Forces, the War Shipping Administration and the

National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.

7 May Navy representatives witnessed landing trials

of the XR-4 helicopter aboard the merchant tanker

Bunker Hill in a demonstration sponsored by the

Maritime Commission and conducted in Long Island

Sound. The pilot, Colonel R. F. Gregory, AAF, made

about 15 flights, and in some of these flights he land-

ed on the water before returning to the platform on

the deck of the ship.

11-30 May Occupation of Attu-Air support for the

landing of Army troops (11 May) and for their operations

ashore was provided by Navy and Marine units on the

escort carrier Nassau (11-20 May), and by the Navy and

Army units of North Pacific Force (11-20 May). This was

the first use of CVE based aircraft in air support in the

Pacific and the debut of a Support Air Commander afloat.

His team consisted of three officers and a radioman and

his post was a card table aboard Pennsylvania (BB 38).

Colonel W. O. Eareckson, USA, an experienced Aleutian

pilot, was in command of the unit.

15 May The Naval Airship Training Command was

established at Lakehurst, N.J., to administer and direct

lighter-than-air training programs at the Naval Air Centers,

Lakehurst and Moffett Field, Calif., and to direct the

Experimental and Flight Test Department at Lakehurst.

18 May The program for the use of gliders as trans-

ports for Marine Corps combat troops was canceled,

thereby returning the Navy's glider development to an

experimental basis.

22 May Grumman Avengers of VC-9, based on

Bogue, attacked and sank the German submarine U-

569 in the middle north Atlantic scoring the first sink-

ing of the war by escort carriers on hunter-killer patrol.

24 May Special Project Unit Cast was organized at

NAS Squantum, Mass., to provide, under Bureau of

Aeronautics direction, the services required to flight

test the electronics equipment being developed at the

Radiation and Radio Research Laboratories.

7 June The establishment of NAF Attu, within 1

week of its capture from the Japanese, brought Fleet

Air Wing 4 bases to the tip of the Aleutian chain, near-

ly 1,000 miles from the Alaskan mainland and 750

miles from Japanese territory in the Kuriles.

7 June Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Fleet established a

project for airborne test, by Commander, Fleet Air, West

Coast, of high velocity, "forward shooting" rockets.

These rockets, which had nearly double the velocity of

those tested earlier at Dahlgren, Va., had been devel-

oped by a rocket section, led by Dr. C. C. Lauritsen, at

the California Institute of Technology under National

Defense Research Committee auspices and with Navy

support. This test project, which was established in

part on the basis of reports of effectiveness in service

of a similar British rocket, completed its first airborne

firing from a TBF of a British rocket on 14 July and of

the CalTech round on 20 August. The results of these

tests were so favorable that operational squadrons in

both the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets were equipped with

forward firing rockets before the end of the year.

10 June Lieutenant Commander Frank A. Erickson,

USCG, proposed that helicopters be developed for

antisubmarine warfare, "not as a killer craft but as the

eyes and ears of the convoy escorts." To this end he

recommended that helicopters be equipped with radar

and dunking sonar.

15 June President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved a

ceiling of 31,447 useful planes for the Navy.

28 June A change in the design of the National Star

Insignia added white rectangles on the left and right

sides of the blue circular field to form a horizontal bar,

and a red border stripe around the entire design. The

following September, Insignia Blue was substituted for

the red.