This Date in Aviation History: November 28 - December 1

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn)
12/01/2015 at 12:35 • Filed to: Planelopnik, planelopnik history

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Welcome to This Date in Aviation History , getting you caught up on milestones and important historical events in aviation from November 28 through December 1.

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November 29, 1999 – The first flight of the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. When the US Navy introduced the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! as its new multi-role fighter in 1984, they knew they had a winner on their hands, and the Hornet quickly became the Navy’s primary fighter and attack aircraft. But as the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! began to be phased out, and the high-tech !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! flying wing attack plane never materialized, the Navy found that it needed a larger aircraft, similar in size to the Tomcat or the Air Force’s !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! to fill the roles of fleet defense fighter and ground attack. McDonnell Douglas pitched the idea of an enlarged Hornet to the Navy, originally designated Hornet 2000, all the way back in the early 1980s. They suggested that a larger aircraft, derived from the F/A-18, could carry more weapons, more fuel, and have more powerful engines than its predecessor, and the program was officially announced in 1988. And while the single-seat F/A-18E and two-seat F/A-18F Super Hornet bears an understandably striking resemblance to its older sibling, it is, in fact an entirely new aircraft, and not just a variant. The Super Hornet is roughly twenty percent larger than the Hornet, and weighs 7,000 pounds more. It carries thirty-three percent more fuel, which increases the range by forty-one percent. The Super Hornet is also equipped with a “buddy store” refueling system that allows it to act as an airborne tanker, taking over the mission of two other retired Navy aircraft, the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . And though the Super Hornet is larger than the Hornet, it actually contains forty-two percent fewer structural parts. The larger fuselage section carries two General Electric F414 engines, which are more powerful derivatives of the Hornet’s F404 engines, and offer a thirty-five percent boost in thrust. And those engines are fed by distinctive, box-shaped intake ramps reminiscent of those seen on the F-15. The Super Hornet, nicknamed Rhino to avoid confusion with the Hornet, reached initial operating capability in September 2001, and quickly became a vital part of the Navy’s strike capabilities when two Super Hornets attacked targets in Iraq during Operation Southern Watch, the first combat for the new fighter. While the Super Hornet has become a stalwart of the US Navy, the US Marine Corps has staunchly opposed adopting the F/A-18E/F, fearing that doing so will compete with their ability to procure the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! variant of the new Joint Strike Fighter they so desperately want. The only other nation currently operating the Super Hornet is Australia, which purchased the F/A-18E to replace its fleet of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . (US Navy photo)

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December 1, 2001 – The final flight by Trans World Airlines. When TWA ceased operations, it closed the book on one of the most well known airlines in the world. TWA’s 76-year history began 1925, when a fledgling company called Western Air Express was awarded a contract to fly mail from Salt Lake City, Utah to Los Angeles, California. About a month later, they began flying passengers in their !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and if passengers like to complain about modern flying conditions, those first two passengers sat on US Mail sacks for the 8-hour flight. In 1930, Western Air Express with Transcontinental & Western Air joined at the urging of the US Postmaster, who wanted to expand air mail routes. The merger brought together two powerful aviation personalities: !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , who had signed on with Transcontinental & Western in 1929, and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , another early pioneer of aviation who would lead T&WA through its meteoric rise from 1934-1947. But that future almost ended at birth when T&WA suffered the crash of a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! that took the life eight passengers, including famed Notre Dame football coach !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . T&WA needed new, modern aircraft, but they could not purchase Boeing’s Model 247 because Boeing had an exclusive contract with United Airlines. So Frye turned to Douglas, who delivered the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and eventually !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! airliners, and by 1934, TW&A was offering transcontinental flights—with three stops along the way for fuel—for $160, which is approximately $2,839 in today’s dollars. In 1941, eccentric billionaire !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! purchased a controlling stake in the company, overseeing the purchase of the larger and more modern Lockheed Constellation, which cut transcontinental flight times to about nine hours. During WWII, TW&A prospered under the leadership of Frye, and following the war, it became a truly global airline, with new routes to Cairo, Bombay, Ceylon and Manila. But Hughes accused Frye of overextending the airline, and stock prices fell. Frye was ousted, and thus began a revolving door of corporate leadership that would continue until TWA’s demise. In 1950, the company officially became known as TWA, and Hughes finally brought the company into the jet age with the purchase of Convair jets, but the delay in adopting the new airliners meant that TWA had lost its competitive edge, and Hughes was removed from the helm of the company. TWA did achieve a few significant firsts, becoming the first airline to hire an African-American flight attendant, and the first to show in-flight movies, and by 1972, TWA was the third largest airline in the world. In 1969 they carried more transatlantic passengers than any other carrier. By the 1980s, TWA had become more of a business interest for investors than a pilot-centered aviation service, though TWA did make perhaps its greatest achievement by carrying more than 50 percent of all transatlantic passengers in 1988. By 1995, though, TWA had entered bankruptcy, and despite an attempt to reinvent itself as a smaller domestic airline, TWA was finally purchased by American Airlines in 2001. TWA’s final, ceremonial final Flight 220 from Kansas City to St. Louis was flown by a McDonnell Douglas MD-80 (N948TW) with TWA CEO William Compton at the controls. One of the greatest global airlines had come to a close with a flight of 240 miles.

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Short Take Off

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November 28, 2008 – The first flight of the Comac ARJ21, a narrow-body, twin-engine regional airliner built by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (Comac) as part of an effort to reduce reliance on foreign aircraft manufacturers. The ARJ21 bears a significant resemblance to the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , but Comac says that they did not copy the American airliner, though they did reuse tooling provided by McDonnell Douglas for the construction of license-built MD-80s in China. The ARJ21 features a new !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! wing that was designed with the help of Russian engineers among other differences. The ARJ21 is currently in production, and six aircraft have been completed so far, with introduction planned in 2016. (Photo by Shimin Gu via !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! )

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November 28, 1979 – The crash of Air New Zealand Flight 901, a sightseeing flight that operated regularly from Auckland, New Zealand and flew over the Antarctic before returning. On just the fourteenth flight on the route, the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (ZK-NZP) crashed into !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! on !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , killing all 257 passengers and crew. Initially, Air New Zealand blamed the crash on pilot error, but a Royal Commission of Inquiry found that the course the pilots usually flew on the return leg had been altered in the flight computer before the plane took off, and the pilots hadn’t been informed. Instead of flying down McMurdo Sound as planned, the plane flew into the mountain. The crash remains New Zealand’s deadliest peacetime disaster. (Photo by Eduard Marmet via !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! )

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November 28, 1964 – The launch of Mariner 4, the fourth in a series of spacecraft designed for flyby planetary exploration. On July 14-15, 1965, Mariner 4 became the first spacecraft to perform a flyby of Mars, and it sent the first pictures of the surface of Mars back to Earth. With nothing visible but rocks and craters, the photographs changed many scientific opinions on the possibility of life on Mars. After two years without contact from the probe, NASA re-established communications in 1967, and recorded numerous micrometeoroid strikes on the spacecraft, with NASA suspecting that Mariner 4 had flown through the remnants of a destroyed comet. In December 1967, NASA terminated communications with Mariner 4, and the derelict probe remains in a heliocentric orbit. (Illustration via NASA)

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November 30, 1986 – The first flight of the Fokker F100, a medium-size twin-engine airliner, and the largest jet airliner built by Fokker before the company went bankrupt in 1997. Developed to replace the smaller !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the 100-seat F100 appeared at a time when there were very few competitors for airliners of that size. Initial sales were strong, but as competitors caught up, sales fell. In spite of the slump, it was ultimately financial mismanagement that doomed the storied aircraft builder, and its parent company, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , shut down the company in 1996. Fokker built 283 F100s before the company folded, and 171 remain operational, mostly with smaller regional airlines. (Photo by Biggerben via !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! )

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December 1, 1977 – The first flight of the Lockheed Have Blue , the code name for Lockheed’s proof of concept aircraft that demonstrated the capabilities of stealth aircraft design and developed manufacturing techniques and design elements that would be used on the production !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Unlike all previous aircraft that had been designed by aeronautical engineers, primary design of the Have Blue was performed by electrical engineers who helped created the faceted shape that would deflect radar signals and reduce the aircraft’s radar cross section. Two aircraft were built, but both were lost to crashes, though both pilots survived. Despite the mishaps, the Have Blue was deemed a success, and would lead to the follow on program code named Senior Trend that developed the F-117. (US Air Force photo)

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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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DISCUSSION (19)

HammerheadFistpunch > ttyymmnn
12/01/2015 at 12:49

I really look forward to these posts. Do you know if the inlet ramps on the super hornet are variable like they are on the F15? or the simpler fixed geometry type?

ttyymmnn > HammerheadFistpunch
12/01/2015 at 12:54

Thanks for reading!

I’m not certain, but I think they are fixed. But there could be movable parts inside. Accoring to FlightGlobal:

The inlets, which are enlarged to handle the airflow for the more powerful engines, are angled to align with the wing leading edges. Planform alignment reduces radar returns and can be seen on various access panels and doors, which have “sawtooth” edges. Inside the inlet, just forward of the engine, is a device that blocks radar returns from the fan face.

HammerheadFistpunch > ttyymmnn
12/01/2015 at 12:57

hmm, it doesn’t seem to indicate one way or the other except to say that is has some time of diverter or diverterless inlet plate or system to hide the fan surface.

Smallbear wants a modern Syclone, local Maple Leafs spammer > ttyymmnn
12/01/2015 at 12:58

- Postmaster Brown was an asshole, but modern aviation would not be what it is without him. He turned commercial aviation from a mess into a tightly regulated system.

- Was Boeing really in an exclusive contract with United? I read somewhere that what was behind it was the fact that Boeing’s entire planned output was going to United, and they didn’t want to take on any more orders until that one way complete.

- The evolution of the DC3 is pretty cool. Airline can’t wait for one manufacturer. Airline goes to another manufacturer that has never built an airliner. Manufacturer builds prototype (DC1) because the airlines requirements were so tight. Prototype shows so much potential that it is made bigger (DC2). Second airline is looking for new sleeper aircraft. Suggests modifying DC2 to make it big enough to carry 14 beds instead of 14 passengers (DST). Resulting aerodynamic tweaks make it a dream to fly. Some bright spark notices that if the DST was refitted as a day plane it could carry 7 more passengers (DC3). Changes are made, and we end up with an incredibly durable, easy to fly, efficient transport.

- Fun fact: the DC2 may not have laid waste the 247 so quickly if Boeing hadn't listened to everything their pilots said when designing it. It was originally designed to carry more people and have more powerful engines, but the pilots said that would make it too big, heavy and fast to land safely.

ttyymmnn > Smallbear wants a modern Syclone, local Maple Leafs spammer
12/01/2015 at 12:59

I suppose that could be construed as an exclusive contract. I have not heard it put that way, but I suppose either case could be true.

ttyymmnn > HammerheadFistpunch
12/01/2015 at 13:00

I’m pretty sure they don’t move (like the F-15).

HammerheadFistpunch > ttyymmnn
12/01/2015 at 13:01

Makes sense that they wouldn’t, though it does give the F15 a real advantage at making power at high AoA, I suspect the cost in weight wasn’t worth it for an attack aircraft.

facw > ttyymmnn
12/01/2015 at 13:10

The Air New Zealand 901 recovery operations sounded absolutely hellish.

Kinja'd!!!

Also, the idea of using a wide-body airline for sightseeing flights seems sort of amazing in itself.

whatisthatsound > HammerheadFistpunch
12/01/2015 at 13:21

They are fixed geometry inlets.

HammerheadFistpunch > whatisthatsound
12/01/2015 at 13:23

Cool, thanks. Not many variable geometry inlets in the US arsenal anymore...I guess its just not worth the downsides.

whatisthatsound > HammerheadFistpunch
12/01/2015 at 13:28

Exactly, when operating on the boat the goal is to have a dependability and less parts. This is why the F-14 was a nightmare at the end.

HammerheadFistpunch > whatisthatsound
12/01/2015 at 13:31

Makes perfect sense for a Navy plane, but even in the Air Force the trend seems to be done, the F22 doesn’t have em, same with the F35, the B1 lost them when it went to the B1b...im not sure of any in service jet with them aside from the F15

pauljones > ttyymmnn
12/01/2015 at 13:43

Oh, Super Hornet. There are few fighter acquisition programs that I have such conflict over.

ttyymmnn > pauljones
12/01/2015 at 13:47

Why? Would you have preferred something entirely new like the A-12? Or was the SH just not different enough?

You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much > ttyymmnn
12/01/2015 at 14:05

Kinja'd!!!

I didn’t realize how small the Hopeless Diamond was. If you haven’t read it, Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed by Ben Rich is an amazing read. When they were doing flyby testing of the radar return the radar operators had to stay in the radar trailer since they weren’t cleared to see the Hopeless Diamond as it flew by.

pauljones > ttyymmnn
12/01/2015 at 14:08

A lot of reasons, really. Before I begin, I will say up front that I think the Super Hornet is a great aircraft. It’s reliable, versatile, and capable. Performance-wise, with the exception of top speed, I’d put it on par, and perhaps slightly above, a standard F-15. Not too shabby.

The problem isn’t that it isn’t a good jet, it’s that it isn’t as good as it should be given the money put into developing it. The Super Hornet is what the short-legged Hornet should have been from day one, but wasn’t. So, yes, it’s damn good. But it’s not as good as something that was put into service to replace the F-14 should have been. It simply lacks the range, payload, and loiter ability to be as effective at fleet air defense as its predecessor.

To make it that much worse, most of the promises that McDonnell Douglas/Boeing made were never fulfilled. It brought range and payload up to par with what the original Hornet’s mission parameters were, but it shares little in common with the original Hornet, apart from avionics. That lack of promised commonality, in turn, deflates the arguments of fleet-wide cost savings that Boeing/McDonnell Douglas so heavily touted. As you point out, the Super Hornet is an entirely different aircraft - and Boeing/McDonnell Douglas got away with the cost of developing an entirely new aircraft by pretending it wasn’t a new aircraft, and stringing the government along with a bunch of smoke and mirrors. The only promise that ever really came to fruition was with regards to operational costs - it is significantly less expensive to keep flying than the F-14 was.

But that comes at the cost of capability. The Super Hornet will never, ever truly be able to fulfill the role of its immediate predecessor, and when that role is a little thing like, oh, say, Fleet Air Defense, that’s problematic. At the end of the day, we could have put that money towards developing a new airframe that was an actual improvement in capability, rather than an airframe that did little more than provide the capabilities that the Hornet should have had 20 years prior.

I like the Super Hornet a lot, and I like that it provides the capabilities that it does as efficiently as it does. But I don’t like the politics that went behind it, I don’t think it has the capabilities it really needs for the role it’s been placed in, and I don’t think it was the “best-buy” that it was made out to be.

ttyymmnn > You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much
12/01/2015 at 14:16

I have not read Skunk Works , but as soon as f86sabre found out I hadn’t he promised to send me a copy. So I’ll be reading it soon, hopefully.

Spoon II > ttyymmnn
12/01/2015 at 14:18

Oh man, I was just reading about the A-12 Avenger II, and it’s a genuine shame that it didn’t take off. Talk about a compact package for storing on aircraft carriers. Also, great post as always!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell…

ttyymmnn > Spoon II
12/01/2015 at 14:20

Thank you sir! And thanks for reading.