Portal:Aviation

Neil Armstrong (born August 5, 1930) is a former American astronaut, test pilot, university professor, and United States Naval Aviator. He was the first person to set foot on the Moon. His first spaceflight was aboard Gemini 8 in 1966, for which he was the command pilot. On this mission, he performed the first manned docking of two spacecraft together with pilot David Scott. Armstrong's second and last spaceflight was as mission commander of the Apollo 11 moon landing mission on July 20, 1969. On this mission, Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended to the lunar surface and spent 2.5 hours exploring while Michael Collins orbited. Armstrong is a recipient of the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.

Before becoming an astronaut, Armstrong was in the United States Navy and saw action in the Korean War. After the war, he served as a test pilot at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) High-Speed Flight Station, now known as the Dryden Flight Research Center, where he flew over 900 flights in a variety of aircraft. As a research pilot, Armstrong served as project pilot on the F-100 Super Sabre A and C aircraft, F-101 Voodoo, and the Lockheed F-104A Starfighter. He also flew the Bell X-1B, Bell X-5, North American X-15, F-105 Thunderchief, F-106 Delta Dart, B-47 Stratojet, KC-135 Stratotanker and Paresev. He graduated from Purdue University.

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The Avro Lancaster was a British four-engine Second World War bomber aircraft made initially by Avro for the British Royal Air Force (RAF). It first saw active service in 1942, and together with the Handley-Page Halifax it was one of the main heavy bombers of the RAF, the RCAF and squadrons from other Commonwealth and European countries serving within RAF Bomber Command. The "Lanc" or "Lankie," as it became affectionately known, became the most famous and most successful of the Second World War night bombers, "delivering 608,612 tons of bombs in 156,000 sorties." Although the Lancaster was primarily a night bomber, it excelled in many other roles including daylight precision bombing, and gained worldwide renown as the "Dam Buster" used in the 1943 Operation Chastise raids on Germany's Ruhr Valley dams.

• Span: 102 ft (31.09 m)
• Length: 69 ft 5 in (21.18 m)
• Height: 19 ft 7 in (5.97 m)
• Engines: 4× Rolls-Royce Merlin XX V12 engines, 1,280 hp (954 kW) each
• Maximum Speed: 240 knots (280 mph, 450 km/h) at 15,000 ft (5,600 m)
• First Flight: 8 January 1941
• Number built: 7,377

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October 1

• 2012 – The first six of a planned 12 United States Marine Corps MV-22 Osprey aircraft transfer from Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan, to their new base at Marine Corps Air Station Futenma on Okinawa. Hundreds of people gather outside MCAS Futenma to protest their arrival, believing that the crashes of Ospreys in Morocco and Florida earlier in the year and a precautionary landing by an Osprey in North Carolina in September demonstrate that Osprey operations will endanger the residential neighborhoods that surround the base.^[1]

• 2000 – Entered Service: Mitsubishi MH2000 with Excel Air Service, Japan

• 1994 – United Airlines creates a new airline named United Shuttle.

• 1990 – Curtis LeMay, American Air Force general, dies (b. 1906).

• 1986 – The B-1 B achieved Initial Operational Capability.

• 1986 – Entered Service: AH-64 Apache with the US 6th Cavalry Brigade

• 1984 – Aeroflot Flight 3352, a Tupolev Tu-154B-1, crashes on landing at Tsentralny Airport, Omsk Russia. One hundred and seventy-four passengers and four people on the ground perish in the crash.

• 1975 – First flight of the Bell YAH-63

• 1971 – Aurigny Air Services commences operations

• 1969 – The Concorde supersonic transport plane exceeds the speed of sound - more than MACH 1 for the first time.

• 1966 – West Coast Airlines Flight 956 crashes with 18 fatalities 5.5 miles (8.9 km) south of Wemme, Oregon, marking the first loss of a Douglas DC-9.

• 1964 – Derby Airways changes its name to British Midland Airways

• 1964 – Introduction: Dassault Mirage IV

• 1959 – English Electric test pilot Johnny W.C. Squier, flying prototype two-seat English Electric Lightning T.4, XL628, suffers structural failure, ejects at Mach 1.7, becoming first UK pilot to eject above the speed of sound. Radar tracks the descending fighter, but not the pilot as he landed in the Irish Sea, and despite an extensive search, Squier has to make his way ashore by himself after 28 hours in a dinghy. Squier passes away 30 January 2006, aged 85.

• 1958 – NASA was created to replace NACA.

• 1957 – Aborted takeoff at Homestead AFB, Florida, causes write-off of Boeing B-47B-50-BW Stratojet, 51-2317, of the 379th Bomb Wing. Gear collapses, aircraft burns, but base fire department is able to quench flames such that crew escapes - pilots blow canopy to get out, navigator egresses through his escape hatch.

• 1956 – Chapter Two of the Experimental Aircraft Association is chartered in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

• 1956 – The RAF's first Avro Vulcan B.1, XA897, which completed a fly-the-flag mission to New Zealand in September, approaches Heathrow in bad weather on GCA approach, crashing short of the runway. Two pilots eject, but four crew do not have ejection seats and are killed. Aircraft Captain Squadron Leader "Podge" Howard and co-pilot Air Marshal Sir Harry Broadhurst survive. Signal delays in the primitive Ground-Controlled Approach system of the time may have let the aircraft descend too low without being warned. Undercarriage damaged in contact short of runway with control lost during attempted go-around.

• 1954 – Nos. 425 and 432 Squadrons were formed at St. Hubert and Bagotville, Quebec, and equipped with Avro Canada CF-100 fighters.

• 1953 – No. 440 Squadron was reformed at Bagotville, Quebec, and equipped with Avro Canada CF-100 fighters.

• 1953 – A USAF North American B-25 Mitchell attached to Andrews AFB, Maryland, crashes in fog and heavy overcast into the forested pinnacle of historic Pine Mountain, striking Dowdell's Knob at ~2130 hrs., near Warm Springs in western Georgia, killing five of six on board, said spokesmen at Lawson AFB. The bomber had departed from Eglin AFB. Florida, at 1930 hrs. for Andrews AFB. Two Eglin airmen were among those KWF. The sole survivor, Richard K. Schmidt, 19, of Rumson, New Jersey, a Navy airman assigned at NAS Whiting Field, Florida, who had hitch-hiked a ride on the aircraft, was found by two farmers who heard the crash and hiked to the spot from their mountainside homes "and found the sailor shouting for help as he lay in the midst of scattered wreckage and mutilated bodies. They said [that] they found a second man alive but base officials said [that] he died before he could be given medical attention." Tom Baxley, one of the farmers, said that the bodies of the dead, most of them torn by the collision, were flung about among the pine trees, and bits of the plane were hurled over a wide area. Schmidt was hospitalized with a possible hip fracture and cuts. Among the fatalities were two airmen assigned to Eglin AFB who had also hitch-hiked a ride and were on their way home on leave. The impact location is on the site of the proposed $40,000,000 Hall of History to mark a scenic point frequented by the late President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

• 1952 – The RCAF No. 1 Air Division formed as part of 4th Allied Tactical Air Force.

• 1952 – The United States Navy reclassifies all of its “aircraft carriers” (CV) and “large aircraft carriers” (CVB) as “attack aircraft carriers” (CVA).

• 1952 – U.S. Navy Grumman TBM-3S2 Avenger, BuNo 53439, of Air Anti Submarine Squadron-23, NAS San Diego, California, on night radar bombing training flight strikes Pacific Ocean surface at 110 knots (200 km/h) ~2 1/2 miles W of Point Loma. Both crew survive the accidental ditching, with pilot Lt. Ross C. Genz, USNR, rescued after four hours in a life raft by a civilian ship, but radarman AN Harold B. Tenney, USN, apparently drowns after evacuating the bomber and is never seen again. Wreckage discovered in 1992 during underwater survey.

• 1950 – No. 411 Squadron (Auxiliary) was formed at Toronto, Ontario.

• 1950 – First flight of the Ilyushin Il-14

• 1950 – The Royal Danish Air Force is re-established

• 1947 – Los Angeles Airways begins the first scheduled carriage of airmail using the Sikorsky S-51 helicopter. ^[2]

• 1947 – First flight of the North American XP-86 (F-86 Sabre)

• 1947 – First flight of the Beechcraft Model 34

• 1946 – RAF Bristol Brigand TF.1, RH744, failed to develop sufficient power on takeoff from RAE Farnborough, overran into soft ground and flipped over, without injuries to crew. This was the first Brigand written off.

• 1946 – RCAF returned to a peacetime footing and many Regular Force personnel were reduced in rank.

• 1945 – The first annual general meeting of the International Air Transport Association begins in Montreal, Canada.

• 1942 – First flight of the Bell XP-59 “Aircomet”.

• 1942 – No. 149 (TB) Squadron was formed at Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

• 1941 – Inter-Island Airways is renamed Hawaiian Airlines.

• 1940 – A British bomber is shot down over the Netherlands by German antiaircraft artillery after being illuminated by a searchlight coupled to a Freya radar. It is the first time an aircraft is destroyed after being detected and illuminated by a radar-guided searchlight.

• 1938 – The newly-formed Trans-Canada Air Lines began regular air mail service between Winnipeg and Vancouver.

• 1936 – C. W. A. Scott and Giles Guthrie win the Schlesinger Race from England to Johannesburg, South Africa, flying Vega Gull G-AEKE landing at Rand Airport on 1 October 1936. The aircraft had left Portsmouth 52 hours 56 min 48 seconds earlier. Out of the original 14 entries to the race Scott and Guthrie were the only ones to finish, winning the 10,000 pounds prize money.

• 1935 – The first company to bear the name British Airways is formed, by the merger of Hillman Airways, Spartan Air Lines and United Airways.

• 1931 – KLM begins a regular service between Amsterdam and Batavia by Fokker F.XII. At 13,744 km (8,540 miles) this is the longest regular air route in the world at the time.

• 1926 in aviation|1926 – An oil field accident cost aviator Wiley Post his left eye, but he used the settlement money to buy his first aircraft.

• 1924 – Pilot E. A. Alton set out on the first recorded aerial mail flight from Estevan, Saskatchewan to Winnipeg, but unfortunately was aborted by a crash.

• 1920 – Refresher training began at Camp Borden, Ontario.

• 1917 – The Royal Navy tests an aircraft catapult for the first time, using a compressed-air catapult aboard the catapult trials ship Slinger to launch an unmanned Short 184 with its fuselage fabric removed and engine replaced by ballast. On the same day, the Royal Navy conducts the first launch of an aircraft from a battleship or battlecruiser, when Royal Naval Air Service Flight Commander F. J. Rutland takes off in a Sopwith Pup from a platform mounted on a 15-inch (381-mm) gun turret of the battlecruiser HMS Repulse.

• 1912 – The Military Aviation Service is founded in Germany. ^[3]

• 1906 – United States Army Lieutenant Frank Lahm wins the first Gordon Bennett international balloon race. ^[4]

• 1881 – William E. Boeing is born in Detroit, Mich. (d. 1956).

• 1861 – The United States Army Balloon Corps, consisting of five balloons and fifty men, is formed. ^[5]