Warbirds Online » Blog Archive » Today In Military/Aviation History 11

Yep, already It’s Sunday evening and here I am again. Well, we reached a major milestone on the 1941 Historical Aircraft Group Museum Website Message Board (AKA MB) which I moderate. On Tuesday we hosted our 100,000th visitor since the Visitor Count began in January 2007. I think this is outstanding and am really pleased with the support I’m receiving. I also had a setback on Wednesday. Somehow the LCD screen on my digital camera got hit and I had a nice black blob to look at. Well, today I went and got a new camera, because I was told that it would be more cost-effective to replace rather than repair, and to be honest, I really want to play with it, so let’s get down to some serious history, shall we?

Have an AB FAN week,

Take Care and Be Safe,

Tom K.

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14 May 1908
Charles W. Furnas of Dayton in Ohio, becomes the first aircraft passenger. One of the Wright brothers’ mechanics, Wilbur Wright took him on a flight of 1,968 feet which lasted 29 seconds at Kill Devil Hills in Kittyhawk, North Carolina.

11 May 1911
Edouard Nieport sets a new speed record of 74mph in his Nieuport monoplane with a 28 horse-power engine.

16 May 1911
Delag passenger carrying Zeppelin LZ8 ‘Ersatz Deutschland’ is destroyed in a docking accident, but there are no casualties.

13 May 1913
The Russky Vitiaz is the first aeroplane fitted with a lavatory. The aircraft was a passenger transport, designed by Igor Sikorski and test flown on this date. It has not been possible to confirm if the lavatory was a water closet although some references identify it as such. This 4-engined precursor to the heavy bomber was piloted by Igor Sikorsky at St Petersburg and had a wingspan of 28 meters (92 feet).

17 May 1913
Domingo Rosillo flies from Key West in Florida to Havana in Cuba, in a Morane-Saulnier monoplane.

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

14 May 1915
The United States Navy (USN) orders it’s first airship from the Connecticut Aircraft Company.

14 May 1917
Zeppelin LZ64 (L22) is shot down by a British flying boat with the loss of all hands.

15 May 1917
German Leutnant Heinrich Gontermann is awarded the Pour le Mérite. Gontermann achieved eighteen victories against Allied balloons, once shooting down four in three minutes. He is killed in a crash while testing a new Fokker DRI.

11 May 1918
The American Expeditionary Force receives the first United States built de havilland DH4.

Italian Corpo Aeronautico Militare aircraft are used to fly an air service across the Tyrrhenian Sea, which lasts for a month.

15 May 1918
The United States Army Signal Corp establishes the first American airmail service between New York and Washington, using Curtiss JN and Standard J aircraft.

Captain Rudolph W. Schroeder attains a height of 10,093 meters. (33,113 feet) flying from Dayton, Ohio, in a Packard-Le Père LUSAC-11 fighter, powered by a liberty12 engine, fitted with a Turbocharger.

15 May 1919
The United States Post office inaugurates the first section of a transcontinental airmail service between Chicago and Cleveland.

11-14 May 1926
In the first airship flight over the North Pole, Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian expedition leader, uses the airship ‘Norge’ to fly from Spitzbergen to Teller in Alaska.

15 May 1928
The first Australian flying doctor service commences, with Dr K.H. Vincent Welsh using a de Havilland DH50

15 May 1930
Miss Ellen Church, a registered nurse from Iowa, becomes the first air hostess as she welcomes 11 passengers on board a United Airlines Boeing 80A tri-motor at Oakland in California.

For $125 a month the United Airlines female hostesses were involved in ground handling duties and in the air they dispensed unvarying meals consisting of fruit cocktail, fried chicken and rolls, and tea or coffee.

13 May 1934
United States airmail pilot Jack Frye sets a new United States coast-to-coast record, carrying mail from Los Angeles to Newark. The journey is completed in 11 hours 31 minutes.

16 May 1935
Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union conclude an alliance.

13 May 1936
Italy annexes Abyssinia.

15 May 1938
H.L. Ickes, United States Secretary of State for the Interior, confirms his refusal to supply helium gas to Germany.

13 May 1940
The Sikorsky VS300 single rotor helicopter, which uses a small rotor at the tail to overcome main rotor torque, makes its first free flight.

14 May 1940
The Rotterdam business center is bombed during surrender discussions. The raid is an error, as all bomber groups were recalled as soon as the negotiations began, but unfortunately one group failed to receive the recall instructions. The world is shocked by this bombing.

13-14 May 1941
The first major deployment of Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress aircraft in the Pacific. The United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) flies 21 aircraft from Hamilton Field in California to Hickham Field in Hawaii.

13 May 1943
Axis troops in North Africa surrender.

12 May 1949
The Soviet Union ends the blockade of Berlin, but the Allied airlift continues until 30 September 1949 to build up stocks in the city.

17 May 1950
Transcontinental & Western Air changes its name to Trans World Airlines (TWA), to reflect its world-wide operations.

14 May 1953
India’s air transport companies are nationalized, with the formation of Air India International Ltd for long distance flights and Indian Air Lines for internal routes and services to nearby countries.

15 May 1953
Central British Columbia Airways adopts the name Pacific Western airlines.

15 May 1954
Qantas Empire Airways takes over the Australia to United States and Canada service, previously operated by British Commonwealth Pacific Airlines, which then cease to exist as a separate company.

16 May 1955
Lufthansa begins its European international operations.

17 May 1956
Douglas Aircraft Company announces that the DC-7C, the first airliner with sufficient range for non-stop crossings of the North Atlantic or North Pacific, has been granted an airworthiness certificate.

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

16 May 1958
The first world speed record over 2,000kph is set by Captain W.W. Irvin of the United States Air Force (USAF), in a Lockheed F-104A Starfighter attaining a speed of 2,259kph (1,403mph).

11 May 1960
A United States Army Signals Corps balloon ascends to an altitude of 43,890 meters (144,000 feet) before bursting. This is a record breaking night time altitude ascent.

17 May 1960
Khrushchev angrily denounces American spying activities over the Soviet Union, resulting from the Gary Powers incident, causing the break-up of a Summit conference in Paris.

11 May 1964
Jacqueline Cochran sets a new world speed record for women over a 15/25 kilometer course of 2,300kph (1,499mph). Her aircraft is a Lockheed F-104G Starfighter.

12 May 1964
American Joan Merriam becomes the second woman to fly solo round the world. She takes 56 days to complete the journey in a route originally planned by Amelia Earhart. She makes the flight in a Piper Apache.

15 May 1980
Lufthansa-Unternehmen inaugurates Lockheed L101 1-500 TriStar services on its Dusseldorf to Los Angeles route.

12 May 1982
The airline Braniff International collapses due to the recession in the United States.

13 May 1982
Soyuz T5 is launched from Baikonur with two cosmonauts and successfully links up with the Salyut 7 orbiting laboratory.

15 May 1982
A SOCATA TB10 Tobago makes its first flight after having its Avco Lycoming engine converted to run on liquid petroleum gas (LPG).

17 May 1982
The crew of Salyut 7 place an amateur radio satellite into earth orbit. This is believed to be the first launch of a satellite from a space station.

17 May 1987
An Iraqi Exocet missile hits the USS Stark, killing 37 people.

15 May 1989
American Airlines becomes the 19th operator to be connected to the ‘Amadeus’ computerized reservation system.

14 May 1999
The United States Marine Corps (USMC) takes delivery of its first Bell Boeing MV-22B Osprey tilt-rotor.

16 May 2000
Singapore Airlines announces it is ‘in talks’ with Airbus with a view to purchasing up to sixteen A3XX aircraft.

15 May 2001
The Joint Strike Fighter Program Office begins talks with Brazil and Germany on possible participation in the engineering and manufacturing development phases of the program.

12 May 2004
The last F-4 Phantom fighters are withdrawn from service with the Israeli Air Force.

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That’s it for this week Folks, see ya in seven.

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