Published on June 30, 2012 On this date in aviation history, the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy cargo plane made its first flight.  One of the largest cargo aircraft in history, the aircraft has formed the backbone of the USAF’s heavy strategic cargo lifting capability for nearly 50 years, despite numbering just under 100 aircraft in total [...]

Published on June 29, 2012 Aftermath and Cover Up of the Shootdown Qaddafi had escaped clean and clear from the aerial assassination attempt.  He would live on, the penultimate survivor, until Libya’s “Arab Spring” of 2011.  France would never speak publicly about the events of that night. Italy too would choose a policy of silence [...]

Published on June 28, 2012 Setting the Stage for the Shootdown In 1980, the international community was arrayed against an increasingly belligerent Libyan government under the leadership of the dictator, Col. Muammar Qaddafi.  In the United States, the Jimmy Carter Administration was in its final year and embroiled in an election race against an upstart [...]

Published June 27, 2012 For years, people have wondered exactly what happened to TWA 800.  What is known is that on the night of July 17, 1996, a Boeing 747 was lost off the coast near East Moriches, New York — and all 230 people on board died.  An extensive accident investigation followed but was [...]

Published on June 26, 2012 Sixty-four years ago, on June 26, 1948, the United States, Britain, and France launched an emergency airlift to provide food and fuel to over 2.5 million German citizens living in the Western Zones of Berlin. The city had been partitioned between the victorious allied powers at the end of the [...]

Published on June 25, 2012 In 1924, two great nations were pressing the limits of aviation to prove that no part of the civilized world was out of reach of the airplane.  Britain’s Royal Air Force had assembled a team of flyers to become the first nation to complete a circumnavigation of the globe by [...]

This Week’s Hints to help you along: An early unmanned aerial vehicle that was successfully flown many times. That’s not a test boom on the nose, but rather a spike for a lawn-dart sort of landing at the end of each flight. Capable of over 2,000 mph utilizing an ramjet engine — yes, that’s about [...]

Published on June 24, 2012 “With the steady fortitude of an old voyager,” 13 year old Edward Warren acknowledged the crowd below with a “significant wave of his hat.”   Attached to a tether, Warren flew upward on the first “American Aerostatick Balloon” before a “a numerous and respectable Congress of People.”  After the flight, Warren [...]

Published on June 23, 2012 On this date in aviation history, Wiley Post and his navigator, Harold Gatty, took off from Roosevelt Field, Long Island, in New York on a bid to make a record-setting flight around the world.  Although it seems strange, the record to beat hadn’t been set by an airplane, but rather [...]

  Published June 22, 2012 “How many enemy aircraft there were; but we have courage, like eagles pursuing swallows, and we overwhelmed the enemy. About 5:30 pm, I spotted 25-26 more flying at about 2,000 meters — on the first pass, one was going down in flames and one by one others went down in [...]

Published on June 21, 2012 In the mid-afternoon of June 21, 1985, Braathens SAFE Flight 139 took off from Trondheim Airport enroute to Oslo, Norway.  The aircraft, a Boeing 737-205 dubbed “Harald Gille” and registered as LN-SUG, carried 121 passengers and crew.  Among them was Stein Arvid Huseby, a then 24 year old Norwegian man [...]

Published on June 20, 2012 “Know all ye, inhabitants of this city, that this day shall not end before you will see the wonder of wonders, a man who will fly with wings of cloth from the the tower of the Cathedral Sé ao Campo de São Mateus!”  So said João de Almeida Torto on [...]

Published on June 19, 2012 On this date in aviation history in 2002, Steve Fossett launched in the balloon “Spirit of Freedom” from Northam, Western Australia, in a bid to become the first person to circumnavigate the balloon solo in a balloon.  The journey ahead would be rigorous, spanning 13 days, 8 hours and 33 [...]

This Week’s Hints to help you along: To our knowledge, the only aircraft in history ever traded in exchange for coffee beans. First successfully flew across the Atlantic several months before Charles Lindbergh. Extra credit offered if you can translate the naval flags. So do you know what this plane is?       Post [...]

Published on June 18, 2012 On this date in aviation history, Max Immelmann, the German ace whose reputation had spawned the “Fokker Scourge,” was killed in France.  Before his death, Immelmann was officially credited with shooting down 15 aircraft (and non-official records are conclusive that he brought down at least 17 enemy airplanes).  Yet his [...]

Published June 17, 2012 On this date in 1928, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean — as a passenger, not a pilot.  How this came to be is something of an interesting tale — and Mrs. Amy Phipps Guest, a 54 year old socialite, might well have been the [...]

Published on June 16, 2012 On this date, 49 years ago, Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova became the first woman to rocket into space, launching on Vostok 6 to begin nearly three days in orbit.  In that time, she made 48 orbits of the Earth, reaching as high as 144 miles of altitude before landing at Pavinskiy [...]

Published on June 15, 2012 Resolution of the Incident Predictably, when the Swedish Government approached the Soviets regarding their responsibility for the two aircraft, i.e., the loss f both the ELINT aircraft and the subsequent search and rescue plane, the Soviets denied any involvement. However, when faced with eye-witness reports of the downing of the [...]

Published on June 14, 2012 The crew watched as MiGs circled around for another pass. As this was happening, pilots Sven Törngren and Olof Arbin turned the PBY Catalina to the west, taking a heading toward Swedish airspace. Just two minutes later at 04:11 am, the Swedish Catalina transmitted a second message: “We are being [...]

Published on June 13, 2012 Without warning, at approximately 11:23 am, a MiG-15bis piloted by Soviet Air Force Captain Osinskiy rolled in on the aircraft and rapidly closed the distance. Osinskiy lined up on an easy target — a big twin-engined cargo plane that had been converted to intelligence gathering purposes. At the last moment, [...]

Published on June 12, 2012 On this date in 1979, the first man-powered aircraft made a flight across the English Channel to win the Kremer Prize. The aircaft, the Gossamer Albatross, was pedaled across by amateur cyclist Bryan Allen, whose thin body build and well-trained muscles were essential to the success of the flight. The [...]

This Week’s Hints to help you along: The markings might help, but then again maybe not. Delivered in 1942 to this country’s air force. Served as a foreign air force’s training plane, like the venerable SNJ/T-6 Texan. Production ceased in 1943 with almost 1,400 built by two manufacturers. So do you know what this plane [...]

Published on June 11, 2012 The cold of White Island, in the Arctic north, is unrelenting. Known as Kvitøya, Arctic Norway, the site is desolate and uninhabited. It is also the place where in 1930 the remains of a balloon expedition and the bodies of three men were discovered frozen in the permafrost. After an [...]

Published on June 10, 2012 RAF/RCAF pilot George “Buzz” Beurling was already an experienced pilot when he arrived in Malta on the eve of the opening of the battle for the island.  He had come under a bit of a cloud, having disobeyed orders in flight over France when he had deserted his formation to [...]

Published June 9, 2012 The Pacific Ocean is a vast body of water that served as a serious challenge to aviation. It wasn’t until 1928 that the first flight made it across the Pacific at the hands of Charles Kingsford Smith.  His aircraft, a Fokker F.VIIb-3m which he christened the “Southern Cross,” carried a crew of [...]

Published on June 8, 2012 On this date in aviation history, Frenchman Gabriel Voisin was able to achieve the first ever flight of a powered aircraft — a seaplane — off of the surface of the water. Using a Voisin-designed Hargrave-type box-kite aircraft design that he named, “La Rapiere,” to which he affixed floats of [...]

Published on June 7, 2012 On this date in 1927, RAF pilot Flight Lieutenant O. E. Worsley took the first flight in Britain’s newly constructed entry to the Schneider Cup, the Supermarine S.5 racer. The Italians, having achieved victory in 1925, had set the race date for September 1927 and Supermarine had undertaken extraordinary efforts [...]

Published on June 6, 2012 In the late hours of the night of June 5/6, 1944, the largest airborne armada ever assembled was formed up over England to support the invasion of France — it was D-Day and this was Operation Neptune. Squadron after squadron of C-46s and C-47s and other aircraft took off from [...]

Published on June 5, 2012 Exactly seventy years ago today, the Battle of Midway was fought. It was the turning point of the war in the Pacific against the Japanese. The first months of America’s involvement in World War II had been a dark time.  The Japanese had only just struck Pearl Harbor on December [...]

Published on June 4, 2012 On June 4, 1783, the two Montgolfier brothers, Joseph-Michel Montgolfier and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier, demonstrated their unmanned hot air balloon at Annonay, Ardèche, France. Called a globe aérostatique by the brothers, the Montgolfier balloon was and remains to this day an astonishing invention — with it, the two brothers were the [...]

This Week’s Hints to help you along: The tail markings are a good tip off that this aircraft is Italian by design. The paint scheme might indicate that it was a Navy Seaplane. It could fly over 1,000 miles in just five hours, ideal for maritime reconnaissance. Only a handful were built, and sadly, the [...]

Published June 3, 2012 Today in aviation history, exactly sixty-four years ago, in the clear skies over Israel, the newly formed Israeli Air Force scored its first victories. The small aviation contingent of the newly formed Israel Defense Forces (IDF), had little equipment, no supplies, no organization and few pilots. Most were able to fly [...]

Published on June 2, 2012 On this day in aviation history, 102 years ago on June 2, 1910, the early British aviation pioneer and automotive innovator Charles Rolls successfully completed the first non-stop double crossing of the Channel from Dover, England. In just one hour, 35 minutes, he took off from Dover, England, flew to [...]

Published on June 1, 2012 Today in aviation history, 81 years ago on June 1, 1931, the US Coast Guard introduced its first dedicated search and rescue aircraft, a Douglas RD as the first of a new fleet of aircraft that were dubbed the “Flying Life Boats” (designated FLBs). As maritime shipping increased steadily in [...]