Warbirds Online » Blog Archive » This Week In Military/Aviation History 26 January

Ah Folks, it’s absolutely amazing how time flies. Here I am again, as usual, another week older, but not any smarter, unfortunately it seems I’ve always had this problem, I guess, as my boss always used to always tell me “Work smarter, not harder.” I couldn’t figure out why I was so tired when I left work. I finally figured I must not have been working any smarter, just harder. Of course, this is the same boss that impressed the bejeebers out of me when he told me what assume does…makes an ass out of u and me. That was until I saw the episode of the “Odd Couple” where this was used. Burst my bubble that did. Oh well, let’s get down to some serious history, shall we?

Have an AB FAN week,

Be Safe,

Tom K.

February 1910
Hugo Junkers patents an aeroplane with a cantilevered wing.

26 January 1911
Glenn Curtiss makes the first premeditated aeroplane landing on water, water taxiing and water take-off from USS Pennsylvania in San Diego Bay.

1 February 1911
Burgess and Curtiss becomes the first fully licensed aircraft manufacturer in the USA.

February 1912
Jules Vedrine makes the first 100mph flight in his Monocoque Deperdussin.

February 1913
The Spanish air arm is renamed as the Servico de Aeronautica Militar Espanola.

February 1914
The first aerial torpedo is released from a Farman biplane by General A. Guidoni of the Italian Army.

February 1915
The Russian Ilya Mourometz IMV series 4-engined bombers are equipped with machine-guns for use against ground targets.

31 January 1917
Germany declares the beginning of unrestricted submarine warfare.

1 February 1917
The German Friedrichshafen GIII bomber, capable of carrying 4,900 kilos (3,300 pounds) of bombs, becomes operational.

February 1918
The Airco DH4, the first American mass produced combat aircraft, begins production.

The first operational squadrons of the American Expeditionary Force are formed in France. American Air Force squadrons go on to destroy 781 enemy aircraft.

Lieutenant Stephen W. Thompson becomes the first American pilot to gain an aerial victory while serving with an American squadron.

February 1923
The first Japanese fighter aircraft, the Mitsubishi IMF1, lands and takes off from a Japanese aircraft carrier IJN Hosho. The pilot is a Briton, Captain Jordan.

26 January 1939
Barcelona, the Republican capital, is captured by Spanish Nationalist forces.

1 February 1940
The Southern Rhodesian government forms Southern Rhodesian Air Services.

29 January 1941
The Luftwaffe aircraft drop mines into the Suez Canal.

1 February 1942
The first United States carrier offensive is made by the USS Enterprise and USS Yorktown. Their aircraft attack Japanese targets on several of the Marshall and Gilbert Islands.

27 January 1943
The first United States Army Air Force (USAAF) heavy bomber attack on Germany. Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses of the 1st Bombardment Wing, 8th USAAF, attack Emden and Wilhelmhaven.

26 January 1946
Colonel William H. Council, piloting a Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star, makes a record breaking flight from Long Beach in Los Angeles to La Guardia in New York. It is the fastest crossing of the United States to date – 2,470 miles in 4 hours 13 minutes 26 seconds at an average speed of 584mph. Also the longest non-stop flight by a jet aircraft.

30 January 1948
Orville Wright dies at Dayton in Ohio, aged 76.

28 January 1950
President Truman announces that the Atomic Energy Commission has been directed to continue its work on all forms of atomic energy weapons including the hydrogen or super-bomb. Restricted areas for flying around American atomic installations and off the coast will be established.

1 February 1950
Eight Grumman F9F Panthers land on the USS Valley Forge, completing the first aircraft carrier night-landing trials by jets.

31 January 1951
Captain Charles Blair flies a Mustang piston engine fighter non-stop from New York to London covering 3,500 miles in 7 hours 48 minutes.

31 January 1953
Wonsan in North Korea is bombed by American carrier-borne aircraft.

1 February 1956
The Air Planning Group of the West German Ministry of Defense initiates a pilot training scheme, marking the first practical steps in the creation of the post war Luftwaffe.

1 February 1958
Explorer I is launched, and becomes the first United States satellite to enter Earth orbit.

31 January 1961
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launches a Mercury capsule containing a chimpanzee named Ham. Ham is recovered successfully.

26 January 1965
Brazil’s naval air arm is re-established as an independent service. It had been absorbed by the air force in 1941.

31 January 1966
The Soviet Union launches Luna 9, an un-manned spacecraft that becomes the first man-made vehicle to soft land on the Moon’s surface, on 3 February.

27 January 1967
Roger Chaffee, Virgil Grissom and Edward White all burn to death during a ground accident in the Apollo 1 capsule

31 January – 9 February 1971
Apollo 14 makes the third successful United States Moon landing.

1 February 1975
In the previous sixteen days all eight world time-to-height records have been captured by a specially modified McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle. The final record sets a time of 3 minutes 27 seconds from standstill on the runway to a height of 30,000 meters (98,425 feet).

1 February 1981
Donald W. Douglas, founder of the Douglas Aircraft Company, dies aged 88.

27 January 1982
The Cessna Aircraft Company delivers its 1,000th business jet, a Citation II.

27 January 1983
British Aerospace (BAe) hands over the first of their Sea Harrier FRS Mk51 aircraft to the Indian Navy .

28 January 1986
United States space shuttle Challenger explodes 75 seconds after take off. The crew of seven are killed, including Christa McAuliffe, a schoolteacher and first person to fly under the ‘citizen in space’ program.

1 February 1989
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) orders Boeing to inspect the plumbing and wiring on the 1,755 airliners they have built since 1980 following concerns that the 1988 crash of a British Midland airliner.

27 January 1993
Boeing and Airbus Industrie launch a development program for a ‘Super Jumbo’, capable of carrying up to 800 passengers.

26 January 1995
An explosion during the launch of a communications satellite at the Xichang Space Center in China destroys both the Long March 2E Booster and Hughes Apstar 2 satellite.

28 January 1998
A Eurocopter Super Puma helicopter operated by Bristow Helicopters lifts a record payload of 2 crew and 41 passengers, more than twice the normal number of passengers, during flood relief operations in Northern Australia.

30 January 2001
Contact with the deep space probe Pioneer 10 is lost. The last signal received from the probe is about 11 billion kilometers (7 billion miles) from Earth. Launched in 1972, it is the first man made object to leave the solar system.

1 February 2003
The United States Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates on re-entry, killing all seven astronauts. The wreckage falls over California, Arizona and Texas.

29 January 2005
Nonstop flights between mainland China and Taiwan take off for the first time since 1949.

————————————————————————————— That’s all for this week Folks. See ya in seven.

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