During the years what seemed impossible to many was considered routine day-to-day operations to the aircrews of the 1607th Air Transport Wing . In December 1958 , a Dover AFB C-133 airlifted the heaviest load in the history of aviation when it carried 118,000 pounds of cargo to an altitude of 10,000 feet , breaking the former world record held by a Soviet Tupolev Tu-104 “ Camel ” ; on 7 February 1960 , a Dover C-124 with a 15th Air Transport Squadron aircrew flew a record breaking non-stop flight from Hickam AFB , Hawaii to Dover AFB in eighteen hours and forty minutes ; a C-124 of the 1st Air Transport Squadron was assigned temporary duty to the 54th Air Rescue Squadron at Goose Bay , Labrador to aid in the rescue of 26 passengers and 8 crew members of a Norwegian vessel ice bound off the coast of Greenland ; in March 1956 , 22,000 pounds of emergency polio equipment and supplies were airlifted to Buenos Aires to help combat a polio outbreak ; the AMIGO Airlift , mercy missions to Santiago , Chile in May 1960 , when an earthquake literally re-made parts of that country ; in 1962 , the four month round the world tour of John Glenn ’s space capsule Friendship 7 ; many re-supply missions from Thule Air Base , Greenland to the northern most weather outposts at Nord , Greenland and Alert , both within just some 500 miles of the North Pole ; the delivery of a telespectrograph to Ascension Island in support of the space project FIRE . It was the first time such an instrument was airlifted as a complete unit ; the airlift of supplies and emergency equipment to Alaska after an earthquake struck that state in March 1964 ; the presidential support mission of John F. Kennedy , in July 1963 , when he spoke the famous words “ Ich Bin Ein Berliner , ” at the Berlin Wall . These are but a few of the approximate 75 significant events added to the normal day to day global airlift operations , of which the 1607th Air Transport Wing was involved . During its twelve-year history at Dover , the 1607th ATW accumulated 1,076,483 transport flying hours or an approximate equivalent distance of 235 million nautical miles
earthquake struck that state in March 1964
1964 Alaska earthquake
1607th Air Transport Wing