This Date in Aviation History: December 12 - December 15

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 12/15/2015 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 December 12 through December 15.

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December 14-23, 1986 – The first non-stop flight around the world without refueling. Aviation history is filled with stories of pilots and aircraft designers who pushed the boundaries of flight. Some of the greatest discoveries have been made in the quest to fly higher, faster, or farther. Before the historic flight of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the longest non-stop, unrefueled flight took place in 1962, when the crew of a US Air Force !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! flew from Okinawa to Spain, a distance of 12,532 miles, or about half way around the world. Clearly, the next feat would be to pilot a plane all the way around the world without refueling, but for many years, there was no aircraft that could make such a flight. It would take a truly visionary aircraft designer to create a round-the-world aircraft, and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , well known for his unorthodox and brilliant aircraft designs, would be just the person to build it. The idea for a world-circling flight began in 1981 during a lunch meeting with Burt Rutan, his brother !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! pilot, and pilot !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The plane was sketched out on a napkin. Typical of many Burt Rutan designs, the Voyager featured a forward canard that stretched between twin booms, with the fuselage in between, and a very long, straight wing. Room for the pilots would be at a minimum, as all available space in the plane was taken up with fuel. Built of fiberglass, carbon fiber and Kevlar, the Voyager weighed only 939 pounds empty, but fully loaded with fuel, its weight increased tenfold to 9,695 pounds. The historic flight took off from the longest runway at Edwards Air Force Base in California, needing 14,200 feet to leave the ground. During takeoff, the wingtips scraped the ground, damaging the wings and breaking off the winglets. However, the decision was made to continue the flight. Maneuvering around bad weather, and having to fly around Libya since they did not have permission to overfly the African nation, pilots Rutan and Yeager took nine days to complete the flight, touching down at Edwards on December 23. When the Voyager landed, it had just 106 pounds of fuel left in the tanks, or a mere 1.5% of the fuel they departed with. Rutan’s and Yeager’s average speed was 115 mph, and the flight covered 26,366 statute miles at an average altitude of 11,000 feet. The Voyager is now on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. As amazing as Rutan’s and Yeager’s feat was, theirs would be the first, but not the fastest, circumnavigation. Their record was broken by adventurer !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in another Burt Rutan design, the jet-powered !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Fosset would complete the circumnavigation in a mere 2 days and 19 hours, covering a distance of 25,767 miles. (NASA photo)

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December 15, 2009 – The first flight of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. In the modern age of air travel, the battle among airline designers, particularly Boeing and Airbus, has been fought over passenger load and efficiency, with designers always searching for ways to fly more passengers farther while using less fuel. Modern airliner engines have become marvels of efficiency, so the next logical step has been to investigate new materials that could be strong yet light, as weight is one of the enemies of fuel efficiency. The 787 traces its development back to the late 1990s, when, as the airliner sales market started cooling, Boeing began to look for a replacement aircraft to spur sales bolster sagging sales of their !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . They considered the 747X, a lengthened version of the 747-400, and the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , a radical delta wing aircraft which offering higher speeds than were currently obtainable. And while that project was eventually abandoned in 2002 in favor of a more traditional design, which would become the 787, much of what Boeing learned in the development of the Sonic Cruiser, particularly the use of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , would be put to use on the Dreamliner. The new design was given the internal Boeing designation 7E7, and it would be the first production airliner to be built from one-piece, composite sections rather than riveted aluminum, with the final breakdown of materials being 50% composite, 20% aluminum, 15% titanium, 10% steel, and 5% other materials. According to Boeing, the savings in weight for this type of construction, coupled with two new engines, the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! high-bypass turbofan jet engines would make the 787 20-percent more fuel efficient than the 767. The development of the 787 was plagued with delays. Boeing struggled to get the Dreamliner down to its intended weight, as some parts had to be redesigned with titanium, and other delays in obtaining fasteners and difficulty with the software kept pushing back delivery dates. Still, Boeing had 677 orders for the 787 by 2007, more than any other previous widebody. Following yet more delays, extensive testing, and certification, the first Dreamliner was officially delivered to All Nippon Airways, the 787’s launch customer, on September 25, 2o11 at the Boeing factory in Everett, Washington, and it entered service the following month. As of November 2015, Boeing has received orders for 1,142 Dreamliners, and they have delivered 354. Production delays have pushed back some deliveries, but Boeing has worked hard to streamline the production process, and as of April 2015 they were delivering 10 aircraft per month, though they will need to sell 1,100 before they begin to turn a profit. ( Photo by Spaceaero2 via !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! )

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December 15, 2006 – The first flight of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II. Back in the early 1960s, both the US Navy and US Air Force were looking to replace aging aircraft, and newly appointed Defense Secretary !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , well known for his micromanagement of America’s efforts in Vietnam, ordered that both branches should pursue a common aircraft in effort to save money. Even though the two branches had very different requirements, McNamara dictated that the new aircraft, the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , would be designed for the Air Force and a Naval variant would be developed that. Finding that there was no chance that the F-111 would become a successful naval fighter bomber, the Navy pulled out of the program and went their own way. But the lessons from that procurement debacle seem not to have been learned when the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps embarked together on the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! competition to develop a single basic aircraft that would serve all three branches. Two aircraft, the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , competed for the contract, and the X-35, which first flew on October 24, 2000, was declared the winner in 2001. Lockheed’s design, which drew on elements of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , would be developed into the F-35 Lightning II, and featured stealth technology, integrated avionics to improve the pilot’s situational awareness, data networking, a computerized maintenance management system, and partial composite construction. The new fighter would come in three main variants: The F-35A, a traditional fighter for the Air Force; the F-35B, a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! version for the Marine Corps; and the F-35C, a fully navalized variant for the US Navy. The Lightning II is powered by the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! afterburning turbofan engine, and while it is not capable of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , it can maintain a speed of Mach 1.2 for a distance of 150 miles. The Marine STOVL version has a pivoting engine nozzle for thrust vectoring, and the same engine, though a drive shaft, powers a forward lift fan. Takeoffs will be performed either vertically or by using a ski ramp. The program has been plagued with delays, software development problems and massive cost overruns, and by 2014 it was $163 billion over budget and seven years behind. These problems have led some international customers to reduce their commitment to buying the new fighter, but plans are still in the works for 3,100 F-35s to be built and delivered by 2035. In spite of continuing problems and systems that were not ready for battle, the Marines declared initial operating capability of the F-35B in July 2015. The Air Force expects to introduce the F-35A in 2016, while the Navy’s F-35C is not expected to reach the fleet until 2018. Only time will tell if the most expensive weapon procurement program in world history will pay dividends. (US Navy photo)

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Short Take Off

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December 12, 1985 – The crash of Arrow Air Flight 1285, a chartered !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (N950JW) that was carrying eight crew members and 248 soldiers of the US Army !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! returning to Fort Campbell, Kentucky after serving in a peacekeeping mission in the Sinai Peninsula. On the final leg of the flight, the DC-8 crashed shortly after takeoff from Gander, Newfoundland, killing all on board. The investigation concluded that ice forming on the wings, as well as incorrect weight calculations, had caused the crash. However, some investigators dissented, saying that a fire or explosive device likely caused the crash. The accident remains the deadliest single peacetime loss of life in the history of the US Army and the worst crash on Canadian soil. (Photo by Pedro Aragão via !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! )

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December 12, 1979 – The first flight of the Sikorsky SH-60B Seahawk (or Sea Hawk), a navalized variant of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! utility helicopter originally developed for the US Army. Developed to replace the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the SH-60 shares 83% commonality with its Army predecessor, with the most significant structural difference being a hinged tail for on-deck storage. The Seahawk also differs by the addition of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! main gear struts, the shifting forward of the tail wheel, and a more powerful engine. Capable of serving from any air-capable ship, the Seahawk is designed for anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, naval special warfare, search and rescue, vertical replenishment and medical evacuation. Further variants have replaced the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . (US Navy photo)

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December 12, 1951 – The first flight of the de Havilland Canada DHC-3 Otter. De Havilland Canada had built a reputation for rugged aircraft that were capable of taking off from short or unimproved airstrips with their !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and the DHC-3 Otter was designed to be a larger and more powerful aircraft that could perform the same mission. Originally called the King Beaver, the DHC-3 is longer and heavier than the DHC-2, and can seat 10-11 passengers. Originally fitted with a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! geared radial engines, some Otters have been upgraded with a turboprop engine and are known as the Turbo Otter. Capable of operating from land, sea with floats, or snow with skis, 466 Otters were built from 1951-1967. (Photo by CanadianBushPilot via !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! )

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December 14, 1984 – The first flight of the Grumman X-29. Developed from two existing Northrop F-5A Freedom Fighter airframes, the X-29 was designed to explore the characteristics of a forward-swept wing, canards, and other novel design technologies. Though the Germans pioneered the forward-swept wing late in WWII, the X-29 would use fly-by-wire technology and flight control computers to take advantage of the inherently unstable design. The X-29 also explored the use of carbon fiber construction in the wings to reduce weight. The X-29 became the first forward-swept wing aircraft to pass Mach 1 in level flight, and numerous experiments were carried out over seven years using two aircraft. (NASA photo)

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December 14, 1979 – The first flight of the Edgley Optica, a light observation aircraft designed to be a low-cost alternative to helicopters. The unique design features a glazed, bubble canopy set well forward for excellent visibility, a twin boom tail and tricycle landing gear. The original Optica was powered by a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! engine driving a ducted, fixed-pitch propeller, an arrangement that results in very quiet operation. A total of 21 aircraft were built, and following numerous changes in ownership and financial difficulties, it is hoped that the Optica will soon return to production. (Photo by Anthony Noble via !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! )

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December 14, 1977 – The first flight of the Mil Mi-26, a heavy lift helicopter designed for civilian and military use, and the largest and most powerful helicopter ever to enter production. Powered by two !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! engines and fitted with an eight-bladed main rotor, the Mi-26 is capable of lifting 44,000 pounds and was designed to replace the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! heavy-lift helicopters. The Mi-12’s main purpose is to move extremely heavy equipment to Russian military bases, such as armored personnel carriers and mobile ballistic missiles, some weighing as much as 29,000 pounds. 316 Mi-26s have been built, and it remains in production. (Photo by Alex Beltyukov via !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! )

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December 15, 1944 – The disappearance of Glenn Miller, one of the best-known and prolific composers and performers of the Big Band Era. Wanting to take part in the war effort in WWII, Miller convinced the US Army to allow him to enlist at age 38 and form a “modernized Army band,” and he was given the rank of captain and soon promoted to major. While on a flight from England to France for a performance, Miller’s !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! disappeared over the English Channel and was never found. It is not known what caused the disappearance, but a likely cause was engine failure from an iced carburetor. Among other theories is that his plane strayed into an area where Allied bombers jettisoned bombs into the English Channel while returning to base, but plane spotters said that his plane was not headed into that area at the time.

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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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phenotyp > ttyymmnn 12/15/2015 at 12:54

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Two of my favorite planes: the X-29 and the Optica. Freakin cool.

Jcarr > ttyymmnn 12/15/2015 at 12:56

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I listened to the Rutan brothers talk about the non-stop flight at Oshkosh this summer. Dick said that it was so back-heavy with fuel that during takeoff he had to hold the stick forward to keep it from dragging.

Also, RIP Steve Fosset. I had the pleasure of seeing him speak (at Oshkosh, of course) just about a month before he died.

RallyWrench > ttyymmnn 12/15/2015 at 13:24

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My grandpa drove down to Edwards to watch the Voyager take off and land, I remember he had a huge poster of it framed on his wall. He didn’t get excited about much, so it was pretty cool at the time.

ttyymmnn > Jcarr 12/15/2015 at 13:29

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It’s ironic that such a great adventurer as Fosset would die in such a mundane way. You’d think he’d have been killed trying to climb Mt. Everest in his underwear or something.

Margin Of Error > ttyymmnn 12/15/2015 at 13:39

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zzz...zzzz...zzz...

BaconSandwich is tasty. > ttyymmnn 12/15/2015 at 13:46

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$163 billion over budget and seven years behind.

That’s... insane. And I thought software development was bad...

ttyymmnn > BaconSandwich is tasty. 12/15/2015 at 13:48

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And there’s still no guarantee that they can ever make this plane do all the things it’s supposed to do.

You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much > ttyymmnn 12/15/2015 at 15:55

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This is the motherlode of cool airplane history today. Between the crazy amazing Rutan Voyager and GlobalFlyer, the X-29 which may be my favorite X plane and the Mi-26 I didn’t know what to comment on. Then I remembered this picture:

ttyymmnn > You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much 12/15/2015 at 16:06

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Holy crap. It looks like a mother whale and her calf.

user314 > ttyymmnn 12/16/2015 at 13:50

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Even great pilots can’t avoid Murphy’s Law. Scott Crossfield, first man to fly at Mach 2 and X-15 test pilot, flew into a thunderstorm and died when his Cessna 210 broke up.