The U.S. State Department angrily accused the Soviet Union of
shooting down an unarmed T-39 Sabreliner aircraft of the United
States Air Force (similar to above) while on a training mission
over Erfurt, East Germany, by a MiG-19 jet fighter of the Soviet
Air Force. Three U.S. officers aboard the plane were killed in the
incident.

According to the U.S. military, the jet became disoriented by a
violent storm that led the plane to veer nearly 100 miles off
course.

The Soviet attack on the plane provoked angry protests from
the Department of State and various congressional leaders,
including Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, who charged that the
Soviets had intentionally downed the plane “to gain the
offensive” in the aggressive Cold War maneuvering.

For their part, the Soviets refused to accept U.S. protests and
responded that they had “all grounds to believe that this was
not an error or mistake…It was a clear intrusion.”

Hubert Horatio Humphrey Jr.
(May 27, 1911 – January 13, 1978)

On June 24, 1997, U.S. Air Force officials release a 231-page report dismissing long-standing claims of an alien spacecraft crash in
Roswell, New Mexico, almost exactly 50 years earlier.

Public interest in Unidentified Flying Objects, or UFOs, began to
flourish in the 1940s, when developments in space travel and the
dawn of the atomic age caused many Americans to turn their
attention to the skies. The town of Roswell, located near the Pecos
River in southeastern New Mexico, became a magnet for UFO
believers due to the strange events of early July 1947, when Air 
Force officials announced they had recovered the wreckage of 
a “flying disk.” A local newspaper put the story on its front
page, launching Roswell into the spotlight. 

Major Jesse Marcel from the Roswell Army Air Field with
debris found 75 miles north west of Roswell, NM, in June
1947. The debris has been identified as that of a radar
target.

Charles “Chuck” Yeager with the Bell X-1.

Charles Elwood Yeager (February 13, 1923 – December 7, 2020)

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WCHS/WVAH) — West Virginia native,
United States Air Force officer and record-setting test pilot,
Charles “Chuck” Yeager has died.

Yeager’s wife, Victoria, announced via Twitter that Yeager
passed away just before 9:00 p.m. Monday night.

The Lincoln County native, considered one of the greatest
pilots of all-time, was the first man to break the sound barrier
when he exceeded Mach 1 as he flew the experimental Bell
X-1 rocket plane over Edwards Air Force Base in California
in 1947.

He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom (below).

Yeager also appeared in the 1983 film “The Right Stuff” and
Charleston’s Yeager Airport is named in his honor.

On June 24, 1997, U.S. Air Force officials release a 231-page report dismissing
long-standing claims of an alien spacecraft crash in Roswell, New Mexico,
almost exactly 50 years earlier.

Buzz Aldrin (Edwin Eugene Aldrin Jr.)

The second person to ever walk on the moon, Buzz Aldrin was the pilot of
NASA’s Apollo 11 mission and was a member of the third group of astronauts
ever selected by NASA. He served as an astronaut from his selection in 1963
until his retirement in 1971. Aldrin served as an U.S. Air Force officer and had
a Command Pilot rating. Appropriately enough, his mother’s maiden name
was Moon.

Aldrin walks on the surface of the Moon during the Apollo 11 mission
in 1969.