Warbirds Online » Blog Archive » This Week In Military/Aviation History 10

Hello Folks, another seven gone and the election is over, finally. Hope has broken out and is running roughshod all over the country. Unfortunately, when you have a change of party and new leadership, hope is always there at the start. The sad news is that it seems to run out fairly fast. Many candidates have run on the idea of hope. All I can say is that my hope is that it works out well for all of us. We’ll see. Let’s get down to some serious history, shall we?
Have an AB FAN week,
Take Care and Be Safe,
Tom K.;)

12 November 1903
The Lebaudy brothers fly their airship between Moison and Champ-de-Mars, a distance of 60 kilometers (37 miles).

12 November 1906
Alberto Santos-Dumont makes the first officially recognized, sustained flight by a powered aeroplane in Europe. His aeroplane travelled a distance of 220 meters (722 feet) at a height of 6 meters. This is the first internationally ratified world distance aeroplane record.

10 November 1907
Louis Blériot makes his first flight in a Type VII monoplane. This is the ancestor of modern tractor monoplanes.

13 November 1907
The first brief vertical take-off and free flight of a ‘heavier-than-air’ machine is recorded by Frenchman Paul Cornu’s helicopter.

14 November 1910
Exhibition pilot Eugène Ely makes the first take-off from a ship, using a temporary flight deck on the cruiser USS Birmingham. The ship was at anchor in Chesapeake Bay. The pilot flew his Curtiss Hudson Flier biplane 2½ miles to Willoughby Spit near Norfolk in Virginia to land.

12 November 1912
A Curtiss A-1 Triad hydroplane, piloted by Lieutenant T. Gordon Ellyson, is the first aeroplane to be catapult-launched from an anchored ship. The aircraft takes-off using a compressed air catapult on a barge anchored in the Anacostia river, USA.

13 November 1914
1ère Groupe de Bombardement, Aviation Militaire in France is the first bomber squadron to be formed.

10 November 1917
Bolsheviks set up the Bureau of Commissars of Aviation and Aeronautics (BKAV).

11 November 1917
An Armistice is signed at Compiègne in France, ending the First World War. Britain finishes the war with largest air force, while France has the best equipped.

11 November 1919
An airline service between Berlin and Königsberg (Now Kaliningrad) is started by Albatros Werke.

12 November – 10 December 1919
Australian brothers Captain Ross and Lieutenant Keith Smith set off from Hounslow, near London, in a Vickers Vimy bomber in an attempt to be the first men to fly from England to Australia. They successfully land in Darwin on 10 December, having flown a distance of 18,170 kilometers (11,290 miles).

16 November – 12 December 1919
Captain H.N. Wrigley and Lieutenant A.W. Murphy become the first men to fly across Australia when they fly a Royal Aircraft Factory BE2e from Melbourne to join Ross and Keith Smith. They land at Darwin on 12 December after a flying time of 46 hours.

12 November 1921
Wesley May carries a can of fuel from one aircraft to another by climbing from one wing the other.

16 November 1927
The United States Navy’s second carrier, USS Saratoga, is commissioned.

11 November 1935
Captains A.W. Stevens and O.A. Anderson, with the help of the National Geographic Society, establish a new balloon world altitude record. Following an ascent from Rapid City in South Dakota their balloon Explorer II reaches 22,066 meters (72,395 feet).

11 November 1940
Regia Aeronautica, Italy’s air force, makes its one and only major raid on the United Kingdom.

12 November 1942
The 9th United States Army Air Force (USAAF) is formed in the Middle East.

11 November 1943
Further attacks by United States aircraft operating from the USS Bunker Hill, Essex and Independence cause severe damage to Japanese naval vessels off Rabaul.

Aircraft of the 5th and 13th United States Army Air Force (USAAF) co-ordinate their attacks with the United States carrier forces.

13 November 1946
V.J. Schaefer of the General Electric Company created the first artificial snow. A cloud is seeded with dry-ice pellets from an aircraft flying over Greylock Mountain in Massachusetts.

15 November 1954
A Scandinavian Airlines System service from Copenhagen to Los Angeles is opened by two Douglas DC-6B airliners.

16 November 1955
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines becomes the first European airline to buy American jet transport planes with its order of eight Douglas DC-8s.

12 November 1956
A Sikorsky S-56 helicopter, in service with the United States Marine Corps (USMC), records a speed of 261 kph (162 mph).

16 November 1959
Captain Joseph W. Kittinger Jr. makes a balloon ascent, gaining an altitude of 23,285 meters (76,400 feet) in an open gondola. He parachutes to the ground, recording a free-fall of 19,505 meters (64,000 feet).

15 November 1965
The first circumnavigation of the world, over-flying both poles, is made by a Flying Tiger Line Boeing 707.

14-24 November 1969
A second Moon landing is made by Apollo 12, which is crewed by Charles Conrad, Richard F. Gordon and Alan L. Bean, who are all United States Navy (USN) personnel.

11 November 1971
The USSR and West Germany sign an agreement for the establishment of direct air services between their two countries.

11 November 1980
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Voyager 1 space probe passes Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, at a distance of 4,400 kilometers, (2,796 miles), before continuing on out of the solar system.

12 November 1980
Boeing receives the largest ever single type airliner order, from Delta Air Lines of Georgia, which orders sixty of the company’s Model 757s.

14 November 1980
Raoul Hafner, a rotary wing aircraft pioneer and developer, dies aged 75.

13 November 1981
Ben Abruzzo, Larry Newman, Ron Clarke and Rocky Aoki crew the helium-filled balloon Double Eagle V in the first manned balloon crossing of the Pacific Ocean. However, severe weather forces a crash-landing on completion of the journey – a distance 5,209 miles from Nagashima in Japan to Covello in California.

15 November 1988
The Soviet Union launch their space shuttle Buran from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at the third attempt. The unmanned flight lasts for 3 hours 25 minutes.

12 November 1989
The world’s first human-powered helicopter, constructed from carbon-fiber and balsa wood, flies for the first time at California Polytechnic State university. The flight, powered by Greg McNeil, lasts for a total of 2 seconds.

16 November 1993
Italy decides to lease 24 Panavia Tornado F3s from the Royal Air Force (RAF). They will be replaced by Eurofighters after 10 years.

16 November 1996
Contracts are awarded for Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) prototypes to Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Both companies will produce two aircraft, one with conventional take-off and landing characteristics and another capable of vertical take-off and landing.

13 November 2001
The United States military open up bases in the former Soviet republics of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to boost air operations over Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom.

16 November 2004
NASA’s X-43 reaches a record speed of Mach 10 (7,000 mph, 11,200 km/h).

14 November 2005
Boeing launches the 747-8.
=======================================================================
That’s it for this week Folks. See ya in seven.

Share this post...

Close Bookmark and Share This Page

Save to Browser Favorites / Bookmarks