United States Air Force

The Flag of the United States of America, circa 2033.

The United States Air Force, also known by its initals USAF, or more popularly as the Air Force, was a branch of the military of the United States of America on Earth. The Air Force was the branch of the military that concentrated mainly on aerospace and related services. Originally, the Air Force was part of the United States Army, when it was known as the Army Air Corps. On September 18 1947, the Air Force was created as a separate branch of the military. The Air Force used its own special rank structure for enlisted personnel, but the officer rank structure was based on that of the U.S. Army.

In the late 1960s, Captain John Christopher served as a fighter pilot in the Air Force. In July 1969, he was dispatched to intercept a large unidentified flying object that appeared over the United States. This object was the USS Enterprise, which in the process of escaping the gravity of a singularity had been slingshot 300 years backwards in time.

When the Enterprise tried to put a tractor beam on his fighter jet, the Bluejay 4, was unable to handle the strain and broke up. Christopher was beamed on board. Kirk was going to take him back to the 23rd century, but changed his mind when he learned that Christopher's son would command the first space probe to Saturn. Spock was able to use a forward slingshot maneuver to return the Enterprise to the 23rd century, and to also return Christopher to his own time, unaware of what had happened. (TOS episode: "Tomorrow is Yesterday")

Connections

Internal links

• United States Armed Forces

External links

• United States Air Force article at Memory Alpha, the wiki for canon Star Trek.
• United States Air Force article at Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.