Warbirds Online » Blog Archive » This Week In Military/Aviation History 25-31 January

Hello Folks, doesn’t it seem like we just did this? Well, we did…seven days ago. What a heck of a quick week eh? Of course, I’m retired so to me one day runs into the next instead of dragging along until Friday comes…finally. And then the weekend zips by in the wink of an eye and that long, long workweek starts all over again. Bah! Sorry, but I don’t miss that a bit. So, what say we lose ourselves in some history for at least a little while, shall we? Yes, I think we shall.

Tom K.

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

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

27 January 1928
The first rigid airship to aircraft carrier mooring is achieved when United States Navy (USN) dirigible (steerable airship) ‘Los Angeles’ moors to USS Sagatoga while the latter vessel is at sea.

30 January 1934
Soviet balloon ‘Osoaviakhim’ ascends 20 kilometers (13 miles) into the stratosphere.

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

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

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.

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.

25 January 1952
North American F-86 Sabre jet fighters shoot down ten Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG15s over North Korea.

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

25 January 1955
The state of war between the Soviet Union and Germany is terminated.

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.

28 January 1981
Pan American World Airways (Pan-Am) begins a twice weekly New York to Beijing service.

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.

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.

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

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

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