Warbirds Online » Blog Archive » This Week In Military/Aviation History 19

Hello Folks, another week older and deeper in debt. St. Peter don’t you take me, ’cause I can’t go, I owe my soul to the gasoline pump/grocery store/ pharmacy store. Not to mention the credit card I put my laptop on. By the way, it does work at Geneseo. I have to learn power management, however. I wound up wearing the battery down until the laptop could no longer keep itself on. I learned how to recharge it after thinking I did something to break it. I felt bad when it didn’t work and stupid when I figured out how to fix it. I’m a “Real men don’t read instructions” kinda guy and it once again bit me in the butt. And how was your week? Let’s get down to some serious history, shall we?
Take Care and Be Safe,
Tom K.

20 May 1909
A Frenchman, Paul Tissandier, makes the first officially recognized world speed record for an aeroplane in a Wright biplane, achieving 54kph (34mph).

21 May 1910
Frenchman Jacques de Lesseps wins 12,500 francs for a 37 minute flight from Calais and the £100 Daily Mail cup for the second English Channel flight.

21 May 1911
French Minister of War Maurice Berteaux is killed and Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe is injured when a Train monoplane crashes in Paris at the start of the Paris-Madrid air race.

22 May 1912
A United States Marine Corps (USMC) officer is ordered to commence flying training.

21 May 1915
The Spad A2 biplane fighter undergoes it’s first flight tests in France.

19 May 1917
The United States Government agrees to send an Army division to France.

22 May 1917
Italian military air mail service is established between Turin and Rome.

19 May 1918
In the latest of a series of monthly raids on London and the Home Counties by German Gotha bombers and Staaken airships, 49 civilians are killed and 179 injured as bombs fell in residential areas before midnight.

Hauptmann H Kohl receives the Pour le Mérite for flying 800 missions.

20 May 1918
Overman Act creates the Bureau of Aircraft Production and the Division of Military Aeronautics. The United States Army Air Service is formed from these on 24 May.

22 May 1919
French born hotelier Raymond Orteig offers a prize of $25,000 for the first non-stop flight, in either direction, between Paris and New York.

19 May 1924
Wing Commander Goble and Flight Lieutenant McIntyre of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) complete their round-Australia flight. The flight took 90 hours in a Fairey IIID.

20-21 May 1927
Captain Charles Lindbergh makes the first solo, west to east transatlantic crossing in a specially-built Ryan NYP (New York to Paris) Monoplane, ‘Spirit of St Louis’.

It took Lindberg 33 hours 39 minutes to complete the flight from Long Island in New York to Paris in France. The distance covered was 5,778 kilometers (3,590 miles).

23 May 1928
The Italian airship ‘Italia’ attempts a flight to North Pole, but crashes on the return flight.

20 May 1929
The Peruvian Army and Naval Air Services are amalgamated into the Cuerpo de Aeronautica del Perú.

19-24 May 1930
A Dornier DoX flying boat flies back from New York to its base at Friedrichshafen in Germany.

20-21 May 1930
Amelia Earhart, flying a Lockheed Vega, becomes the first woman to make solo flight across the North Atlantic. The flight is from Harbor Grace in Newfoundland to Londonderry in Northern Ireland.

20 May 1939
The first large scale air battle between Soviet and Japanese aircraft occurs in Outer Mongolia near Khalkin Gol.

22 May 1945
United States authorities disclose that Japanese balloon attacks have been, and continue to be made on the United States. One balloon had come down in Montana and another in British Columbia.

20 May 1948
The Israeli air force is in action against Arab forces for the first time.

21 May 1949
A Sikorsky S52 helicopter establishes a new helicopter altitude record of 6,468 meters (21,220 feet) over Stratford in Connecticut.

20 May 1951
Captain James Jabara of the 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing of the United States Air Force (USAF) in Korea, an F86 Sabre pilot, becomes the first jet pilot to score five unconfirmed victories over jet aircraft, by destroying two Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG15s.

20 May 1953
Another Polish pilot lands a Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG15 jet on Bornholm Island.

25 May 1954
United States Navy (USN) ZPG2 airship, flown by Commander M.H. Eppes and crew, lands at Key West Florida after being airborne for just over 200 hours.

20 April 1955
McDonnell XV1 experimental convertiplane makes its first transition from vertical to horizontal flight.

21 May 1956
The first United States hydrogen bomb is released from an aircraft, a Boeing B-52 Stratofortress eight-engined jet bomber, and exploded over Bikini atoll in the Pacific.

24 May 1957
The Canadian airline Nordair begins scheduled operations.

23 May 1958
Frenchwoman Colette Duval sets a new world record by parachuting into the Atlantic without oxygen from an altitude of 40,700 feet.

24 May 1958
The Bell X-14 Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) aircraft makes its first transition from hovering to forward flight.

24 May 1962
Mercury capsule Aurora 7 takes Lieutenant Commander M. Scott Carpenter of the United States Navy (USN) into a three orbit space flight. Problems with re-entry mean the capsule splashes down 420 kilometers (260 miles) from the intended target area.

25 May 1970
The United States Government announces that its nuclear missiles are to be equipped with multiple warheads, called Multiple Individual Re-entry Vehicles (MIRVs).

19 May 1972
An Indian Government spokesman in New Delhi says that Indian security forces have orders to destroy all Pakistani aircraft violating India’s airspace.

23 May 1974
Europe’s first wide-body airliner, an Airbus A300B2 of Air France, makes its inaugural fare paying flight from Paris to London.

24 May 1976
Filipino Troops storm a Philippines Airlines McDonnell Douglas DC-9 that was hijacked the day before by six terrorists and flown to Zamboanga airport. Three hijackers are killed, among ten deaths in the ensuing battle, and the remaining three hijackers are captured.

21 May 1977
Concorde makes a special flight from New York to Paris on the 50th anniversary of Charles Lindbergh’s flight of the same route. Whereas Lindbergh took 33 hours 29 minutes, Concorde took just 3 hours 44 minutes.

21 May 1079
Tokyo’s new Narita International Airport becomes operational 4 years late, largely due to protest action.

25 May 1979
In a serious accident on take-off from Chicago Airport, involving a McDonnell Douglas DC-10 which loses its engine - the aircraft is lost and the type is grounded for safety reasons.

20 May 1981
Hughes Helicopters announces the beginning of construction of a prototype helicopter that will use pressurized air instead of a standard tail rotor.

20 May 1982
Boeing Vertol delivers the first production CH-47D to the United States Army.

23 May 1988
The first Bell/Boeing V22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft is completed.

22 May 1990
The final flight of the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter in Luftwaffe service, before the aircraft is withdrawn from service.

19 May 1998
Fairchild Dornier launch a new regional jet at the Schonefeld Air Show. The 55-seat 528-JET and the stretched 100-seat 928-JET are both wide-body aircraft due to be available by 2003.

20 May 1998
France and Germany order the first 160 Tiger attack helicopters from Eurocopter.

23 May 2004
Frontier Airlines begins service to Philadelphia, Billings, Montana and Spokane, Washington.
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That’s it for this week, Folks. See ya in seven.

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