On September 18, 1947, the U.S. Air Force officially became an independent branch of the military. So today marks its 79th birthday.
I thought this early-1950s recruiting commercial was a great way to look back at just how young the Air Force still was at the time.
The cartoon wasn’t simply advertising enlistment. It was recruiting young men for the Aviation Cadet program, where successful candidates could become pilots or other flying officers.
And check out the sales pitch: jets, travel, officer’s wings — and more than $5,000 a year after graduation.
There was a reason the Air Force was advertising so aggressively. Historical records show it was dealing with a serious shortage of Aviation Cadet applicants in the early 1950s. Requirements were adjusted, the minimum age was lowered to 19, and recruiting teams were sent onto college campuses looking for candidates.
It’s also easy to forget just how new everything was. The Air Force hadn’t even celebrated its tenth birthday yet, and the Air Force Academy didn’t exist when this recruiting push began. Congress wouldn’t authorize the Academy until 1954.
And since we’ve been paying more attention to the music in these old commercials, I looked into that too. I couldn’t find a reliable credit for the jingle used in this particular ad, so I’m not going to guess.
But here’s something I never knew about the official Air Force Song.
Robert Crawford wrote what became “Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder” in 1939 — and according to Air Force history, he first came up with the melody while flying from Bridgeport, Connecticut, to Trenton, New Jersey.
Even better, the first page of Crawford’s original handwritten score eventually went much farther than Bridgeport or Trenton — Apollo 15 carried it to the surface of the Moon in 1971.
From a brand-new independent service in 1947 to the Moon barely 24 years later.