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