Warbirds Online » Blog Archive » This Week In Military/Aviation History 12-18 January

Well Folks, believe it or not, another week has just passed and here I am back again. Over at the 1941 Historical Aircraft Group Museum we’re in the process of acquiring a B-23 Dragon from the Commemorative Air Force Force Folks in Midland, Texas. More information about this project is both on the 1941 HAG Website and the Message Board which I moderate. There is also an interesting thread going on at the WIX Hangar Forum. It’s going to be an interesting time, to say the least. This year there are a great many projects going on at the 1941 HAG Museum and we have a great need for volunteers to work on them. If you’ve got the time, we’ve got the job for you. Well, let’s get down to some serious history, shall we?

Have an AB FAN week,

Be Safe,

Tom K.

18 January 1905
The Wright brothers open discussions with the United States government for the sale of an aeroplane.

18 January 1906
The Zeppelin LZ2 is destroyed in a gale the day after its first flight.

13 January 1908
Henry Farman wins the Deutch-Archdeacon Prize of 50,000 francs for the first officially observed circular flight of one kilometer in Europe.

18 January 1911
Eugène Ely, an exhibition pilot, makes the first landing on a ship. He touched down on a 120 feet long platform which had been erected on the stern of the cruiser USS Pennsylvania . The ship was moored in San Francisco Bay. The Curtiss biplane was fitted with three pairs of spring loaded hooks on the undercarriage and cables were stretched across the temporary flight deck at intervals of 3 feet. The aircraft came to a halt after 30 feet.

13 January 1913
The first regular aerial cargo service is established in the USA by Harry M. Jones as he flies baked beans from Boston to New York in a Wright B.

12 January 1916

German fighter aces Max Immelman and Oswald Boelcke become the first two pilots to receive Germany’s highest award for bravery, the Pour le Mérite. By the summer of the same year, Immelmann had been killed and Boelcke is Germany’s leading ace.

16 January 1917
Rittmeister Manfred von Richtofen, the most famous and most successful air ace of the First World War, is awarded the Pour le Mérite. Scoring 80 confirmed kills, Richthofen is finally shot down as he flies deep into British lines in pursuit of Wilfrid May in April 1918. His brother, Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen, also receives the decoration in 1917.

18 January 1919
A peace conference assembles in Paris.

15 January 1927
Boeing wins the United States Post Office’s San Francisco to Chicago mail contract and establishes Boeing Air Transport to do the flying.

13 January 1942
The first emergency aircraft ejection is made by the German Major Schenk when ejects from a Heinkel He 280 Jet fighter prototype when it crashes at Rechlin following problems with heavy icing. He ejects at 7,875 feet and makes a safe landing.

14-23 January 1943
The Casablanca Conference in Morocco. Churchill, Roosevelt and their Chiefs of Staff reach an important decision to step up round-the-clock bombing of targets in Germany and also to begin an invasion of Sicily, the ‘soft underbelly’ of Europe. A cross-Channel invasion is deferred until 1944.

18 January 1944
United States Navy (USN) Consolidated Catalinas, equipped with Magnetic Anomaly Detection (MAD) equipment, begin to patrol the Straits of Gibraltar. This action is intended to prevent German submarines from entering the Mediterranean.

16 January 1945
Allied air and ground operations force the German bulge forces in the Ardennes to retreat.

16 January 1951
Six Consolidated Vultee B-36D bombers of the United States Air Force (USAF) land at Lakenheath, Suffolk on a training flight from their base at Carswell Fort Worth Texas.

12 January 1953
The United States Navy (USN) begins operational flight tests from the first angled-deck aircraft carrier, the USS Antietam.

14 January 1953
Eight Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 jets are shot down during air fighting over North Korea.

14 January 1955
Woomera rocket range, research establishments and laboratories are amalgamated under the title ‘Weapon Research Establishment’.

17 January 1956
The United States Department of Defense reveals the existence of the SAGE defense system to the public.

18 January 1957
Three Boeing B-52 Stratofortresses make the world’s first round the world, non-stop flight by turbojet-powered aircraft. The flight is completed in 45 hours 19 minutes, with an average speed of 859kph (534mph).

14-20 January 1958
A round the world airline service is inaugurated by Qantas, using a Lockheed Super Constellation ‘Southern Aurora’, eastbound from Sydney to London via the United States and another, the ‘Southern Zephyr’ westbound from Sydney to London via India and the Middle East.

16 January 1960
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announces the launch and inflation of a 30 meters (100 feet) plastic balloon at high altitude.

17 January 1963
Joe Walker flies the North American X-15A to a height of 82,600 meters (271,000 feet) and, having flown higher than 50 miles, he qualifies for astronaut wings.

14 & 15 January 1969
Launch dates for the Soviet Soyuz 4 and 5 spacecraft, which complete the first docking of two manned spacecraft in Earth orbit and the first crew exchange to be carried out in space.

15 January 1973
United States President Nixon orders a halt to air strikes and all other offensive military action against North Vietnam.

14 January 1975
The United States Government announces that the United States Air Force (USAF) has selected the General Dynamics YF-16 as the winner of it’s Light Weight Fighter (LWF) Program.

18 January 1981
A Bell Model 222, delivered to Omniflight Helicopters, is the company’s 25,000th production helicopter

15 January 1982
The first of an initial batch of forty General Dynamics F-16s is handed over to the Egyptian Air Force.

12 January 1984
The United States Marine Corps (USMC) receives its first McDonnell Douglas/British Aerospace (BAe) AV-8B Harrier II.

13 January 1991
The first Boeing 727-100 to come off the production line in 1964 joins the aircraft on display in the Museum of Flight in Seattle after 25 years service with United Air Lines.

17 January 1991
The first air-to-air victory of Operation Desert Storm is achieved by a United States Air Force (USAF) McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle, which destroys an Iraqi Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-29 Fulcrum.

12 January 1997
A non-stop, round-the-world balloon flight by Bertrand Piccard and Vim Verstraeten ends in failure when a fuel leak forces the balloonists to ditch in the Mediterranean shortly after take-off.

16 January 1998
In the interests of improving safety, the Russian Aviation Service shuts down over 200 small Russian airlines set up since 1992. Only 53 Russian airlines now remain from a total of 315.

13 January 2004
An Uzbekistan Airways plane crashes in Uzbekistan’s capital of Tashkent, killing all 37 aboard.

==================================================================== That’s all for this week Folks. See ya in a short seven.

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