256

UNITED STATES NAVAL AVIATION 1910-1995

1964-Contin ued

26 November Nine helicopters of HU-2 and four

from NAS Lakehurst, N.J., assisted the Coast Guard in

the rescue of 17 men from the Norwegian tanker Stolt

Dagali cut in two by collision with the Israeli liner

Shalom off the New Jersey coast.

17 December Commander Theodore G. Ellyson,

Naval Aviator No.1, was enshrined in the National

Aviation Hall of Fame at Dayton, Ohio-first naval

officer to be so honored.

1965

1 January In accordance with

General Orders prescribing the

administration of the Navy, all

Commands were disestablished.

the provision of

organization and

Naval Air Bases

12 January The Department of Defense announced

that the Transit all-weather navigation satellite system

had been in operational use since July 1964. This sys-

tem, when completely developed, would consist of

four satellites in polar orbit and would provide a ship

at the equator with a navigational fix once an hour.

19 January Lake Champlain recovered an

unmanned Project Gemini space capsule launched

from Cape Kennedy, Fla., in a suborbital flight 1,879

miles down the Atlantic Missile Range and within 23

miles of the carrier.

7 February In retaliation for a damaging Viet Cong

attack on installations around Pleiku, a fighter-bomber

strike, launched from the carriers Ranger, Coral Sea, and

Hancock, blasted the military barracks and staging areas

near Dong Hoi in the southern sector of North Vietnam.

8 February The title and designation of Naval

Aviation Observers, l35X, were changed to Naval

Flight Officers, 132X, to be effective 1 May.

6 March A Sikorsky SH-3A helicopter, piloted by

Commander James R. Williford, took off from Hornet

berthed at North Island, Calif., and 15 hours and 51

minutes later landed on Franklin D. Roosevelt at sea

off Mayport, Fla. The flight surpassed the existing dis-

tance record for helicopters by more than 700 miles.

8 March With surface and air units of Seventh Fleet

standing by, 3,500 Marines, including a helicopter

squadron and supporting units, landed without oppo-

sition at Da Nang, an air base near the northern bor-

der of South Vietnam.

12 March Four enlisted men completed 24 days of

living in a rotating room in a test conducted at

Pensacola, Fla., by the Naval School of Aviation

Medicine to determine the spinning rate men can

endure without discomfort and to check out proce-

dures for conditioning men for space flight.

23 March Astronauts Virgil Grissom and John Young

landed their Gemini 3 spacecraft east of Bermuda roughly

50 miles from the intended splash point. The craft was

spotted by Coast Guard helicopter about 20 minutes after

the landing and within an hour the two astronauts were

picked up by helicopter and delivered to Intrepid.

26 March Seventh Fleet air units began their partic-

ipation in Operation Rolling Thunder, a systematic

bombing of military targets throughout North

Vietnam waged by land and ship based air, as pilots

from the carriers Coral Sea and Hancock launched

strikes on island and coastal radar stations in the

vicinity of Vinh Son.

15 April Carrier pilots of Seventh Fleet joined the

battle in South Vietnam with a strike against Viet Cong

positions near Black Virgin Mountain. Their attack was

so successful that future in-country missions were

assigned to Seventh Fleet, and to carry them out, one

carrier was normally operated at what was called Dixie

Station off the coast of South Vietnam. Dixie operations

continued from 20 May 1965 to 4 August 1966 when

land-based air was well enough established to handle

most of the required air attacks in that area.

19 April Six Navy and two Marine Corps aviators

emerged from two sealed chambers at the Aerospace

Crew Equipment Laboratory, Philadelphia, Pa., after a

34-day test to learn the physical effect of prolonged

stays in confined quarters and a low-pressure pure

oxygen atmosphere.

27 April As revolt in the Dominican Republic threat-

ened the safety of American nationals, Boxer sent her

Marines ashore while embarked helicopter pilots of

HMM-264 began an airlift in which over 1,000 men,

women and children were evacuated to ships of the

naval task force standing by.

10 May Seaspar, a surface-to-air version of the

Sparrow III air-to-air missile, was fired in the Pacific

Missile Range test area from Tioga County (LST 1158)

on its first shipboard test.

12 May Some 1,400 men of the 3rd Battalion, 3rd

Marines landed at Chu Lai, South Vietnam, from Iwo

Jima and an APA and LSD.