Warbirds Online » Blog Archive » This Week In Military/Aviation History 11-17 January

Well Folks, 2010 is here and already last week my computer was in the shop. It seems my personal gremlinette stole my e-mail and at the same time messed up my bookmarks. Which was why I didn’t post. (Miss me?) When she gets revved up, I suffer. Hopefully, the boys at the shop put her in her place and I won’t hear from her for a while. I have my fingers crossed. I sincerely hope your NewYear’s went well and so far the year is following suit. Well, let’s move on to some serious history shall we? Yes, I think we shall.

Tom K.

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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.

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.

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.

11-12 January 1935
Amelia Earhart flies solo in a Lockheed Vega from Hawaii to California in 18 hours 15 minutes and becomes the first person to fly this route.

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.

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.

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.

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) AV8B Harrier II.

11 January 1990
The three-engined MD11 airliner is rolled out at the McDonnell Douglas Long Beach factory.

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.

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That’s it for this week Folks. See Ya in seven (Gremlinette permitting, of course).

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