This Date in Aviation History: October 10 - October 13

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn)
10/13/2015 at 12:35 • Filed to: planelopnik, planelopnik history

Welcome to This Date in Aviation History , getting you caught up on milestones and important historical events in aviation from October 10 through October 13.

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October 11, 1990 – The first flight of the Rockwell-MBB X-31. The aerial dogfight finds its roots in WWI, when opposing pilots began shooting at each other in the air with rifles and pistols. Very quickly, though, the engagements got much more serious. Pilots armed their aircraft with machine guns, air forces produced dedicated fighter aircraft, and aerial warfare became as much a science as an art. Even in the modern era of supersonic jets and guided missiles, it’s still of tremendous importance to get “on the six” of your opponent, maneuvering into position to shoot them down. But pushing beyond its abilities can lead to a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , putting the pilot in grave danger of losing the fight—and his life. Beginning in 1990, a team of engineers from Rockwell and Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm began to investigate the benefits of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , a system that directs the airflow from the engine and uses it to augment the traditional control surfaces of the aircraft. The team designed a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! wing aircraft with forward !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and a thrust vectoring system that used three computer-controlled paddles around the jet exhaust. Specifically, they wanted to investigate high !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! —the angle of the wing relative to the wind passing over it—in which traditional aircraft can stall and lose lift. Without thrust vectoring, the X-31 was capable of flight in a 30 degrees nose up attitude. Any more and the aircraft would stall. With thrust vectoring enabled, the X-31 was capable of a remarkable 70 degrees of AOA while maintaining control, giving the pilots previously unattainable maneuverability. As part of the test program, the X-31 was pitted against comparable fighter aircraft that did not possess thrust vectoring. The results were quite impressive, with the X-31 racking up a potential kill ratio of 30 to 1. A total of 580 missions were flown between the two test aircraft before the initial testing program ended in 1995 (the first aircraft was lost in a crash that same year). The second aircraft was transferred to the US Navy Test Pilot School at Patuxent River NAS in Maryland for additional research, and at the end of that program in 2003, the aircraft was sent to Germany where it is on display at the Deutsches Meseum Flugwerft Schleissheim.

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October 13, 1950 – The first flight of the Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellation. Lockheed began working on a large, four-engine transport airplane in 1937 with a project they called the L-044 Excalibur. Then, in 1939, billionaire Howard Hughes, a major stockholder in Trans World Airlines (TWA) and always one for thinking on a grand scale, pushed the company to pursue an even larger and faster aircraft, one that could carry forty passengers on flights of 3,500 miles, a truly transcontinental airliner. The result was arguably one of the most beautiful aircraft to come out of the piston-powered era, the Lockheed Constellation. The first fully pressurized airliner to operate in large numbers, the “Connie” was a very advanced design for its day, with a wing whose shape was influenced by the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (it’s worth noting that famed Lockheed designer !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! was part of the Constellation design team), hydraulically boosted controls and a de-icing system on the wings and tail. Its characteristic triple trail allowed the designers to limit the height of the aircraft to use existing hangars. And with a top speed of over 375 mph, the Connie was one of the fastest aircraft of her day. Faced with competition from rival Douglas and their !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , which could carry more passengers (and generate more revenue), Lockheed developed the L-1049 Super Constellation, the first major variant to enter production. They added eighteen feet to the fuselage which increased seating to as many as 106 passengers, increased the fuel capacity, added larger windows and improved the cabin heating and pressurization. For the L-1049C, Lockheed added superchargers to the engines. The result was an aircraft that equaled the DC-6 in performance, and though it had a shorter range it could carry a greater payload. The Connie would continue to be upgraded throughout its service life, and would perform civilian transport and cargo duties as well as serve with the USAF as transport and part of the airborne warning and control system (AWACS). Like all piston-powered airliners, the Connie was eventually superseded by jet aircraft, and made its last scheduled passenger flight in 1967. (Photo by Ralf Manteufel via !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! )

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October 13, 1930 – The first flight of the Junkers Ju 52. When looking at the history of aviation, there are only a handful of aircraft that have exceeded fifty years of service. Such a milestone can only be reached by truly breakthrough designs that can stand the test of time and remain relevant long after they were conceived. One member of the fifty-year club is the Junkers Ju 52. But the tri-motor aircraft we know today was not the aircraft’s original form. The 52 began as a single engine aircraft designated the Ju 52/1m (1 motor) and was powered by either a BMW or Junkers liquid-cooled engine. But for it’s large size and all metal, corrugated !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! structure, one engine was simply not powerful enough. After the first seven aircraft were built, the Ju 52/1m became the Ju 52/3m with the addition of two more engines on the wings, a configuration that would later be copied by Ford for their !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (Junkers successfully sued to block the sale of Trimotors in Europe). The 3m proved to be a very rugged and reliable aircraft, entering service with Lufthansa as a civilian airliner, but by 1935, with the nationalization of the German aviation industry, the Ju 52 would become an instrument of war. The size and strength of the 52 was ideal for transport and paratroop operations, though its lack of speed (it was only half as fast as the British Hurricane) meant that combat operations would require fighter escort. In one disastrous mission in Holland early in the war, 278 Ju 52s were lost either to anti-aircraft or crashes in boggy fields, a record for the most losses of a single type in a single day. But despite the shortcomings of what was by all accounts an obsolete aircraft, the Ju 52 served throughout the war because the Germans really had no other aircraft that could perform the job in great numbers. German production of the Ju 52 ended with the fall of Germany in 1945, but continued for two more years in factories they had built in France. In Spain, where it is known as the CASA 352, production continued until 1952. In all, over 4,800 aircraft were produced, serving 38 nations. The last country to operate the 52 militarily was Switzerland, who retired their last aircraft in 1982. (Photo by Markus Kress)

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Short Take Off

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October 10, 1933 – The bombing of a United Airlines Boeing 247. On a routine transconitental flight, the passenger plane carrying three crew and four passengers exploded and crashed over rural Indiana, killing all on board. Investigators determined that the cause of the explosion was most likely a nitroglycerin bomb, marking the first proven case of air sabotage. The perpetrator was never found, nor did anyone ever claim responsibility. (Photo author unknown)

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October 11, 2007 – The death of David Lee “Tex” Hill. Born July 13, 1915 in Terrell Hills, Texas, Hill began his flying career as a Naval Aviator flying the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! before joining the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , flying for the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , better known as the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , on behalf of Nationalist China in WWII. After the deactivation of the AVG in 1942, Hill was one of only a handful of AVG pilots to reintegrate into the USAAC, flying the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , bringing his total to 18.25 confirmed kills. Hill served in the Korean War, and later served in the Air National Guard, eventually obtaining the rank of brigadier general. (US Army photo)

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October 11, 1984 – Astronaut Kathryn Sullivan becomes the first American woman to perform a spacewalk. During mission !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! of the Space Shuttle !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , Sullivan, along with astronaut David Leestma, spent 3.5 hours in space working on a system to refuel satellites in orbit. Sullivan is the third American woman to fly in space, and took part in a total of three Shuttle missions before leaving NASA in 1993. (NASA photo)

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October 11, 1968 – The launch of Apollo 7, the first successful manned Apollo mission. After a nineteen-month hiatus in manned flights following the deadly fire on !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , Apollo 7 carried out the mission originally scheduled for the ill-fated crew after improvements were made to the command module and other safety procedures were put in place. Apollo 7 was manned by Donn Eisele, Walter Schirra and Walter Cunningham, and their mission included eleven days orbiting the Earth. It was also the first manned launch of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! launch vehicle, and the first live American television broadcast from space. (NASA photo)

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October 12, 1976 – The first flight of the Sikorsky S-72, a hybrid helicopter/fixed wing aircraft that was produced in conjunction with NASA and the US Army. Assembled from different parts of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! helicopters, the goal of the research program was to allow in-flight measurements of helicopter rotor characteristics prior to fitting them on prototype helicopters, though the S-72 was also capable of flight without a main rotor. The S-72, also called the Rotor Systems Research Aircraft (RSRA), took its first full compound flight in 1978, but the program was canceled in 1988. (For more information on the RSRA and its follow-on programs, see the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .) (NASA photo)

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October 13, 1972. The Andes flight disaster, when a chartered !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! carrying a rugby team and other passengers, 45 in all, crashed in the Andes on their way to a match in Chile. Twelve passengers died as a direct result of the crash, and five more died the following day from their injuries. A further eight died from an avalanche, and the remaining victims resorted to cannibalism to survive. After two survivors walked for nine days to find help, the remaining sixteen survivors were finally rescued on December 23, two months after the crash. Their ordeal was dramatized in the 1993 feature film !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

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If you enjoy these Aviation History posts, please let me know in the comments. And if you missed any of the past articles, you can find them all at !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

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