Warbirds Online » Blog Archive » This Week In Military/Aviation History 24-30 May

Hello Folks. Another quick seven has blown by me and here I am again. I hope you had a good week. The weather for this week looks great, mostly in the 80s. Wow! A short month ago I was glad it was in the 60s. I don’t think I’ll complain too much about the heat. The older I’ve gotten the more I detest being cold. I’d rather be sweating my butt off than shivering. Don’t get me started about snow shoveling either. Oh well, what say we start our weekly stroll down History Lane, shall we? Yes, I think we shall.

Tom K.

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26 May 1904
The Wright brothers begin a series of over 100 flights in Flyer No.II.

24 May 1910
Prince Charles of Romania becomes the first royal aeroplane passenger, in a Farman piloted by M. Osmontat at Bucharest.

25 May 1910
The Wright brothers fly together for the first time at Dayton in Ohio.

27 May 1910
Italian Ugo Tabachi pilots the first trial flight of the Caproni Ca1 monoplane, built by Gianni Caproni.

24 May 1912
Anthony Fokker crashes his Goedecker-built B1912 monoplane at Berlin, just 10 days after demonstrating it to the German Army.

30 May 1912
Pioneer aviator Wilbur Wright dies from typhoid fever.

28 May 1913
The full-size ‘Aerodrome’, designed by Samuel Pierpont Langley, is flown after modifications during reconstruction.

26 May 1915
Seventeen French Voisin biplanes of Groupe de Bombardment I conduct an attack on a strategic military target at Ludwigshafen in Germany.

Oberleutnant Kastner and Leutnant Georg Langhoff (observer) attack and shoot down a French Voisin in their Halberstadt C-type at Dournai in France. This is the first intentional attack by a German aeroplane on another armed aeroplane.

27 May 1915
Four days after Italy declares war, an Austrian Lohner L1 flying-boat is captured by the Italians off the Italian coast.

24 May 1917
French Premier Alexandre Ribot requests American aid in the shape of 5,000 pilots, 4,500 aircraft and 50,000 mechanics.

25 May 1917
Twenty-one aircraft attack Folkestone and Shorncliffe in Kent, in the first large daylight raid by German Gotha bombers. The attack leaves 95 dead and 260 injured and one Gotha is destroyed and another damaged by fighters based in France.

30 May 1917
After flying overnight from Chicago, the United States Navy’s B1 dirigible (steerable airship) arrives at Akron, Ohio.

24 May 1918
US Army Air Service is formed.

The Chief Directorate of the Workers and Peasants Military Air Fleet (GU-RKKVF: Glavoce Upravlenie-Raboche-Krestyanskogo Vozdushhnogo Flota) replaces the All-Russian Air Board.

29 May 1918
Brigadier General Mason Patrick is made Chief of the US Air Service in France.

27 May 1927
The first French aircraft carrier, ‘Béarn’, is finally completed after 7 years of construction.

27 May 1933
Japan withdraws from the League of Nations.

29 May 1937
German battleship ‘Deutchland’ is attacked by Spanish Republican air units near Ivaza in the Balearic Islands. 28 people are killed and 71 injured.

29 May 1945
An advance party of the 509th Composite Group of the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) arrives in the Mariana Islands.

29 May 1951
The first solo trans-Polar flight is made by American C. Blair, flying a North American P-51 Mustang from Bardufoss in Norway to Fairbanks in Alaska. He covers 3,375 miles in 10 hours 29 minutes.

26 May 1953
Twelve Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 jet fighters are shot down over North Korea.

25 May 1954
United States Navy (USN) ZPG2 airship, flown by Commander M.H. Eppes and crew, lands at Key West Florida after being airborne for just over 200 hours.

27 May 1956
Performance figures for Russian Tu-104 twin jet airliner are published at the Zurich airshow.

29 May 1956
The formation of Air League of New Zealand is announced.

24 May 1957
The Canadian airline Nordair begins scheduled operations.

30 May 1957
The United States Air Force (USAF) discloses the development of the Hughes Falcon air-to-air guided missile armed with a nuclear warhead.

24 May 1958
The Bell X-14 Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) aircraft makes its first transition from hovering to forward flight.

28 May 1959
Two monkeys, Able and Baker are recovered unharmed after a 483 kilometer (300 mile) flight in a compartment in the nose cone of a Jupiter rocket.

24 May 1962
Mercury capsule Aurora 7 takes Lieutenant Commander M. Scott Carpenter of the United States Navy (USN) into a three orbit space flight. Problems with re-entry mean the capsule splashes down 420 kilometers (260 miles) from the intended target area.

29 May 1969
Following the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Airbus program, France and Germany sign an agreement to initiate joint development of the A300B.

25 May 1970
The United States Government announces that its nuclear missiles are to be equipped with multiple warheads, called Multiple Individual Re-entry Vehicles (MIRVs).

26 May 1972
The Cessna aircraft company announces the completion of the company’s 100,000th aircraft, the first company in the world to achieve this figure.

30 May 1972
Three Japanese terrorists kill 25 people and injure 72 at Tel Aviv Airport in Israel when they remove guns and grenades from their luggage and begin shooting. The terrorists had just stepped off a flight from Rome.

30 May 1975
The European Space Agency (ESA) is founded.

24 May 1976
Filipino Troops storm a Philippines Airlines McDonnell Douglas DC9 that was hijacked the day before by six terrorists and flown to Zamboanga airport. Three hijackers are killed, among ten deaths in the ensuing battle, and the remaining three hijackers are captured.

25 May 1979
In a serious accident on take-off from Chicago Airport, involving a McDonnell Douglas DC10 which loses its engine – the aircraft is lost and the type is grounded for safety reasons.

29 May 1985
The world’s largest aircraft, the Antonov An-124 arrives at Le Bourget airport for the Paris Air Show, and makes its first public appearance.

29 May 1987
19 year old West German Mathias Rust lands a light plane in Moscow’s Red Square.

27 May 1988
The McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom celebrates 30 years of flying and is still operational with twelve air forces.

25 May 2003
Boeing 727 mysteriously disappears in Angola, along with pilot Ben Charles Padilla.

27 May 2004
Delta Air Lines begins service between Cincinnati and New Haven.

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

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