Warbirds Online » Blog Archive » Today In Military/Aviation History 5

Oh the weekdays go ’round and ’round woh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh and I wind up here. Hi there, I’m back. Just in time to get down to some serious history, ya know? OK, let’s go then.

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7 October 1903
Samuel Pierpont Langley’s full-size ‘Aerodrome’, piloted by Charles M. Manly, attempts a flight from the houseboat launcher moored in the Potomac River. The ‘Aerodrome’ fouls the launcher and crashes into the river.

11 October 1910
Ex-President Teddy Roosevelt becomes the first United States president to fly when he is taken up at St Louis.

9 October 1911
Eugene Ely, a Curtiss pilot, is killed in an air show at Macon in Georgia, USA.

10 October 1911
Morane-Saulnier, an aircraft manufacturing company, is founded by Leon Morane and Louis Saulnier.

A new bombsight and dropping device designed by Riley E. Scott at College Park, USA, is tested by Lieutenant T.D. Milling at Maryland.

5 October 1914
Sergeant Joseph Frantz and Corporal Quénault of the French Air Force shoot down a German Aviatik two-seater over Jonchery in Reims. Their Voisin biplane is fitted with a machine gun.

8 October 1917
An explosion destroys Zeppelin LZ102 (L57) in its shed at Juterbog near Berlin.

19 October 1917
Zeppelin LZ 50 (L16) is dismantled after being wrecked in an accident.

5 October 1918
Roland Garros is killed when his SPAD XIII fighter breaks up during aerial combat at Vouziers.

6 October 1918
After a heroic supply dropping mission at Binarville resulted in their deaths, 2nd Lt Erwin R. Bleckley and 1st Lt Harold E Goettler receive posthumous United States Congressional Medals of Honor.

7 October 1919
KLM, or Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij voor Nederland an Kolojien (Royal Dutch Airlines) is formed.

8-31 October 1919
The first Army Air Service Transcontinental Reliability and Endurance Test is held in the USA. Seven airmen die in what amounted to an air race between New York, San Francisco and back. The test is won on 18 October by Lieutenant Belvin W. Maynard.

11 October 1928
German airship LZ127 Graf Zeppelin crosses the North Atlantic from Friedrichshafen in Germany to Lakehurst in New Jersey an a journey that took 71 hours.

7 October 1942
German Air Force night harassment units are formed as a direct copy of the Soviet practice.

10 October 1944
A Messerschmitt Me262 is shot down by the 32nd Fighter Group of the United States Army Air Force (USAAF).

6 October 1946
The first non-stop flight from Hawaii to Egypt over the North Pole is made in a Boeing B29 aircraft of the United States Army Air Force (USAAF), covering a distance of 17,498 kilometers (10,873 miles).

10 October 1950
The Royal Ceylon Air Force is formed, with British aid.

7 October 1952
A Boeing B29 Superfortress bomber is shot down by Russian fighters off Japan.

8 October 1952
A United States ambulance aircraft is attacked by Russian Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG15s over Koennern.

6 October 1955
The United States Department of Defense announces that the Glenn L. Martin Company has been selected to design and build a launch vehicle to place a satellite into Earth orbit.

8 October 1955
The United States Navy’s aircraft carrier USS Saratoga is launched.

5 October 1956
The Saab Aircraft Company announces that its J35 Draken (Dragon) double-delta wing interceptor, capable of sonic speed in level flight, has gone into quantity production for the Royal Swedish Air Force.

11 October 1958
The United States Air Force (USAF) makes a second attempt to put a research probe, Pioneer IB, in orbit around the moon.

6 October 1959
The Spanish airline Spantax Air Taxis is formed.

10 October 1959
Pan American Boeing 707-321 Clipper Windward inaugurates the first round the world passenger service by turbojet-powered airliners.

11-22 October 1968
Apollo 7 is launched with astronauts Walter Schirra, Don Eisele and Walter Cunningham.

6 October 1973
Massive air strikes by the Egyptian Air Force against Israeli artillery and command positions herald the beginning of the Yom Kippur War.

6-8 October 1973
Israeli air counter-attacks against Egyptian air and ground forces are frustrated by large scale and effective use of Soviet surface-to-air missiles (SAM) and anti-aircraft artillery (AAA).

8-13 October 1973
Aircraft operated by Israel’s El Al airline begin to fly-in supplies from America to support the Israeli war effort. The United States Air Force (USAF) supplement this effort with seven Lockheed C5A Galaxy transport aircraft, arriving in Israel on the 14th.

11-15 October 1980
The Goodyear company’s airship ‘Europa’ is used to monitor pollution in the Bay of Genoa as part of the Mediterranean Pollution Monitoring Program.

11 October 1980
Cosmonauts Valeri Ryumin and Leonid Popov return to earth in Soyuz 37 after spending 185 days in space aboard the Salyut 6 laboratory.

9 October 1981
Superchicken III, a helium-filled balloon piloted by Fred Gorrell and John Shoecroft, completes the first non-stop trans-America balloon flight, taking 55 hours 25 minutes.

5 October 1984
Boeing sells its 5,000th airliner.

10 October 1990
France’s Aérospatiale opens its 130 acre ‘Clément Ader’ factory in Toulouse for the manufacture of the Airbus.

7 October 1998
Oslo’s new airport is opened at Gardermoen with a capacity for handling 17 million passengers per annum.

7 October 2001
Four weeks after the attack on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, American forces begin bombarding targets in Afghanistan linked to the Al’Qaida terrorist Group and the ruling Taliban government, as part of ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’.

6 October 2005
A small plane carrying cargo for FedEx, including six vials of research viruses, crashed in downtown Winnipeg. The only woman on board, the pilot, was killed but there were no injuries on the ground.

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

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