September 26, 201411 yr Author 26 September 1983 The Soviet Union's Oko satellite early warning system detects the launch of 5 missiles from the United States. Duty officer Stanislav Petrov is skeptical of its validity and judges it (correctly) to have been a false alarm. Potential nuclear catastrophe is averted.
September 29, 201411 yr Author 29 September 1990 The Lockheed YF-22 (PAV-1, serial 87-0070) takes to the air for the first time, at Palmdale, California. It goes into production and eventual service as the F-22 Raptor, but does not engage in its first operational combat mission until 22 September 2014.
September 30, 201411 yr Author 30 September 2004 The vaunted Hughes/Raytheon AIM-54 Phoenix beyond visual range air-to-air missile is retired from US Navy service. The only aircraft that could carry it, the F-14 Tomcat, follows two years later.
October 1, 201411 yr Author 1 October 1985 In response to a terrorist attack near Cyprus that killed three Israelis, the IDF carries out Operation Wooden Leg, a precision strike against the headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) at Tunis, more than 2,000 km away.
October 2, 201411 yr Author 2 October 1966 Soviet Defense Ministry newspaper Krasnaya Zuezda reports that Soviet personnel have come under fire during American air raids against SAM sites in North Vietnam. It constitutes the first public acknowledgment that the Soviets were actively training and assisting North Vietnamese missile crews, and up until this point, the Soviets had denied they had personnel in North Vietnam.
October 3, 201411 yr Author 3 October 1967 William 'Pete' Knight takes the X-15A-2 to a speed of 6,630 feet per second (4,520 mph), establishing a world aircraft speed record that still stands.
October 6, 201411 yr Author 6 October 1973 Egypt and Syria launch an attack on Israel, marking the start of the Yom Kippur War.
October 7, 201411 yr Author 7 October 2001 The United States launches military operations in Afghanistan.
October 8, 201411 yr Author 8 October 1918 During World War I and the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, former pacifist and young American soldier Cpl Alvin Cullum York - later to be known as Sergeant York - leads an attack on a German machine gun nest, taking 32 machine guns, killing 28 German soldiers, and capturing 132 others. The effort earns him the Medal of Honor.
October 9, 201411 yr Author 9 October 2006 North Korea conducts its first detonation of a nuclear device.
October 10, 201411 yr Author 10 October 1953 The Mutual Defense Treaty is established between the United States and the Republic of (South) Korea.
October 14, 201411 yr Author 14 October 1962 A U-2C piloted by Major Richard Heyser takes over 900 photographs while on a reconnaissance mission over western Cuba, among them images of what would be identified the following day as a SS-4 (NATO Sandal) medium range ballistic missile site under construction at San Cristobal, Pinar del Rio.
October 15, 201411 yr Author 15 October 2003 Shenzhou 5, the first human spaceflight by the People's Republic of China, is launched.
October 16, 201411 yr Author 16 October 1964 The People's Republic of China conducts its first nuclear weapons test, with the detonation of a 22 kiloton implosion fission device codenamed 596 (or, in the West, Chic-1), at Lop Nur.
October 17, 201411 yr Author 17 October 1941 The US Navy Benson Livermore class destroyer USS Kearny (DD-432) becomes the first US Navy to be torpedoed by a German U-boat (the Type VIIC U-568), while on patrol off Greenland. Flooding was controlled, preventing the ship from sinking and allowing her escape to Iceland.
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