Hello again Folks,

Yet another week has flown by. Today I became the happy owner of a working copy of Flight Simulator 10 (FSX-Generic version, not Deluxe). You see, I bought a new system in order to be able to play this hummer. The only things I kept from my old system was the cd and dvd drives. Well, I tried to install it and it wouldn\’t install. This was about four months ago. Spoke to my \’puter guru and he said I needed to upgrade the drives as far as he knew. Well, I kept putting it off and putting it off, and finally took it in today. Turns out, in the meantime he found out about a compatibility problem between one part of one of the programs I had and Microsoft items. So he removed the offending component and Bada-Bing, Bada-Boom! FSX installed no problem. I did double my RAM to 1 Gig, per his suggestion. I was planning on spending a lot more for the drives so I went for the RAM, still got off cheap. I fooled around with it for a bit (3 very quick hours) and can\’t wait to get back to it. Hope your week went well also. Well, what say we look back for a bit and see what happened in history this week.

Be Safe,
Tom K.

10 May 1911
Lt. G.E.M. Kelly became the second Army officer killed in an airplane.

7 May 1912
An American Wright biplane, flown by Lieutenant Thomas De Witt Milling at College Park, Maryland, became the first airplane to be armed with a machine gun.

9 May 1912
In Sydney, William Hart was fined 20 Pounds for causing a herd of cattle to stampede by flying over it.

10 May 1913
Didier Masson dropped bombs from an airplane on Mexican gunships in Guaymas Bay.

11 May 1915
Continuous airship raids on England were ordered by the German High Command.

10 May 1916
The French Air Force placed an order for 268 Spad VII fighters.

7 May 1917
The first night bombing raid on London by an airplane took place.

11 May 1918
The American Expeditionary Force received the first United States built de Havilland DH4.

8 May 1927
Charles Eugene Nungesser, the French First World War fighter ace, went missing in a Levasseur PL8, during an attempted east to West crossing of the North Atlantic.

13 May 1936
Italy annexed Abyssinia.

10 May 1940
The German invasion of the Low Countries began. There was extensive use of paratroops and airborne Troops and Belgium\’s Fort Eban Emael, considered impregnable, was quickly and easily overcome by glider-borne assault troops. Luftwaffe records showed their losses for the first day were 304 gliders destroyed and 51 damaged.

10-11 May 1941
Rudolf Hess, Deputy Fuhrer of Germany, flew to the United Kingdom in a Messerschmitt Bf 110 and landed by parachute in Scotland. While the purpose of the flight is still a matter of controversy, it was thought that when he eventually identified himself, he claimed his mission was one of peace.

The RAF launched a heavy raid against Hamburg. 

13-14 May 1941
In the first major deployment of Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress aircraft in the Pacific, The United States Army Air Force flew 21 aircraft from Hamilton Field in California to Hickham Field in Hawaii.

7-8 May 1942
The Battle of Coral Sea was fought. This was the first naval action to be fought by opposing carrier-based aircraft where the surface ships on either side never sighted each other. The USN lost the USS LEXINGTON and 69 aircraft and the Japanese lost SHOHO and 85 aircraft and SHOKAKU was also damaged. 

10 May 1942
The USS RANGER, operating off the west African Gold Coast flew off 60 USAAF Curtiss P-40 aircraft to Accra. They were then flown in stages, to the 10th USAAF in India.

11 May 1943
The Trident Conference between the U.S. and Britain began. Roosevelt and Churchill decided to delay the Allied invasion of France and in its place planned the Allied invasion of Italy.

In Alaska, U.S. troops landed on Attu in the Aleutian Islands to retake it from the Japanese. 

10 May 1944
A major engineering task to construct bomber and fighter airfields in China, the Chengtu Project was completed. The project used over 4,000 Chinese coolies, often using the most primitive of equipment, to finish the task.

7 May 1945
Documents for the unconditional surrender of all German forces  were signed  at General Eisenhower\’s Headquarters. Ratified in Berlin, the war in Western Europe officially ended at midnight.

7 May 1949
Gen. Henry H. Arnold was given the permanent rank of General of the Air Force. 

12 May 1949
The Soviet Union ended the blockade of Berlin, but the Allied aircraft continued until 30 September 1949 to build up stocks in the city. 

7 May 1954
Britain, France and the United States rejected a Russian application to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

7 May 1958
Major H.C. Johnson, flying a Lockheed F-104A Starfighter, set the third new world altitude record in less than three weeks, attaining a height of 27,811 meters (91,243 feet).

12 May 1958
The joint United States-Canada, North American Air Defense Command (NORAD), was formally established.

7 May 1960
A Lockheed U2 high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft over-flying the Soviet Union at an altitude of 144,000 feet, piloted by Gary Powers, was shot down by a Soviet surface-to-air missile near Sverdlovsk.

11 May 1960
A United States Army Signal Corps balloon ascended to an altitude of 144,000 feet before bursting. This was a record breaking night time altitude ascent.

11 May 1964
The XB-70 Valkyrie, built by North American Aviation, was rolled out at Palmdale, Calif. Designed to fly three times the speed of sound and at altitudes above 70,000 feet. The 275 ton aircraft measured 185 feet in length and 105 feet in wing span.

10 May 1972
Lieutenant Randy Cunningham and Lieutenant (Junior Grade) William Driscoll of the United States Navy shot down Colonel Toon, the top North Vietnamese ace and two other MiG 17 aircraft and became the first United States aces of the Vietnam war. Later in the same mission, their aircraft, a McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, was hit by a surface-to-air missile (SAM), but they successfully returned to their aircraft carrier.

Operation Linebacker began during the Vietnam war.
————————————————————————————
That\’s it for this week, Folks, see ya in seven.

Posted by Tom Kwiatkowski Sr. - Moderator of the 1941 Historic Aircraft Group Message Board

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