This Date in Aviation History: April 23 - April 26

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 04/26/2016 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, important historical events and people in aviation from April 23 through April 26.

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April 24, 1980 – Operation Eagle Claw attempts to rescue the hostages held at the US Embassy in Iran. Friendly relations between Iran and the United States date all the way back to 1856, when the two nations signed a treaty governing commerce and navigation. During WWII, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the first member of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , was deposed by British and Russian and replaced by his young son, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , known to modern history simply as the Shah of Iran. Throughout the Shah’s reign, Iran remained a staunch US ally, but the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! of 1979 changed all that, when the Shah was dethroned and replaced with an Islamic Republic lead by the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Following the Shah’s ouster, the US allowed the exiled ruler to come to America for cancer treatments, but the Ayatollah and his followers wanted the Shah returned to Iran for trial and execution. On November 4, 1979, a group of Iranian students invaded the US Embassy in Tehran, taking fifty-two members of the embassy staff hostage. As the hostage drama dragged into April 1980 with no resolution in sight, US President Jimmy Carter broke off negotiations with the Iranian government and decided to mount a mission to rescue the hostages. What followed was a tremendously complex mission that involved all four branches of the US military along with the CIA and ended in a complete debacle for the US military and a humiliating embarrassment for the US government. Such a mission faced many challenges, but perhaps the greatest was distance. Tehran is located far to the north in Iran, and American helicopters from !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (CVN-68) had to fly from ships far to the south in the Gulf of Oman. The two-night operation called for the helicopters to land at a remote spot in the desert called Desert One, where they would meet !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! transports that had flown from Masirah Island off the coast of Oman. The transports would be carrying bladders of fuel, as well as elite troops of the US Army’s !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! on their first-ever rescue mission. After refueling, the eight !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! would fly the Delta Force commandos to a second staging area known as Desert Two, where they would hide until the following night. The plan then called for the troops to be driven to Tehran in trucks while !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! would arrive at the nearby Manzariyeh Air Base and capture it. The Sea Stallions would then fly to a soccer stadium near the embassy to await the arrival of the hostages, who would then be flown to the awaiting C-141 transports. The complex plan went awry almost from the beginning. While the EC-130s arrived at Desert One without incident, the eight helicopters were slowed by sandstorms and mechanical problems, and by the time they arrived there were only five serviceable helicopters, less than was required to complete the mission. After much debate, commanders on the ground and in Washington decided to abort the rescue attempt. In preparation for leaving, the helicopters had to be refueled, and this required a hover taxi, moving the helicopters while hovering slightly above the ground. While one of the RH-53s was trying to maneuver behind one of the EC-130s, its rotor struck the aircraft’s vertical stabilizer and the helicopter crashed into the wing root of the Hercules. The crash and fire killed eight US servicemen and one Iranian civilian. Following the crash, the rest of the personnel boarded the remaining helicopters and transport craft and left, leaving behind two Sea Stallions that now serve with the Islamic Republic of Iran Navy. Analysis of the debacle caused much soul searching in the US military. The lack of effective coordination between the branches of the armed forces resulted in the creation of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (SOCOM) in 1987 to coordinate future missions. To address the difficulties of flying helicopters in nighttime and low visibility, the Army created the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (SOAR), better known as the Night Stalkers . But the mission also showed the need for a new sort of aircraft, one that could fly great distances at high speed, yet be able to land vertically while still carrying a useful payload of troops or cargo. That necessity led directly to the development of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! tiltrotor. Following the failed rescue attempt, the hostages were dispersed across the country to prevent a second rescue attempt, and though the US prepared and practiced for another go, it was never carried out. The hostages were finally released on January 20, 1981, the first day of the administration of President Ronald Reagan.

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April 26, 1962 – The first flight of the Lockheed A-12. As the Cold War began to heat up, it was imperative for the United States to have eyes in the sky over the Soviet Union. Following WWII, the US had been flying reconnaissance missions around the periphery of the Soviet Union, but these aircraft often became the targets of Russian fighters, and some were shot down. The answer to the problem was a new reconnaissance aircraft, one that could fly high enough to be out of reach of any contemporary fighter. At first, that aircraft was the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , which entered service in 1955. But it didn’t take long for the U-2 to become vulnerable to radar-guided missiles, and the CIA found themselves in need of a new plane that could fly still higher and faster. After the unsuccessful attempt of make the U-2 less observable to radar with !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , Lockheed, and their super-secret !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! led by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , began an internal project to develop a successor to the U-2 in a program that the CIA was calling !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The designs were nicknamed Archangel (the U-2 had been called Angel ) and as subsequent designs were developed and discarded, their designations went from A-1 to A-2 and so on. Competing against the Lockheed design, by this stage the A-11, was one by Convair called !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . When the Kingfish displayed a slightly lower !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (RCS), Lockheed altered its A-11 by canting the vertical stabilizers inward to further reduce its RCS. This aircraft became the A-12 and, based on Lockheed’s record of producing the U-2 on time and under budget, the CIA awarded a contract for twelve A-12s on January 26, 1960. The A-12 would be unlike any aircraft that had ever flown. It was constructed mainly of titanium, and Lockheed had to develop entirely new ways of working with the exotic metal. In fact, there was so little domestic titanium available that the CIA used dummy corporations to purchase titanium from Russia, who were wholly unaware that their metal was being used to build an airplane that would one day spy on them. The titanium, combined with iron ferrite and silicon laminate composite materials along with asbestos, helped to further reduce the A-12’s RCS. Following the adoption of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! turbojets, the A-12 was now capable of speeds in excess of Mach 3. Ironically, though the A-12 was developed to spy on Russia, it never undertook that mission. At the time, the US government deemed flights over the Soviet Union too dangerous, and believed that the reconnaissance job could be handled by US satellites. So, the A-12s were instead sent to Kadena Air Base in Japan in 1967, where they flew missions over North Vietnam, and over North Korea during the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Though the A-12's career was relatively short, its legacy is long lasting. Soon after development of the A-12, Lockheed began working on its successor, the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The A-12 program officially ended in 1966, and the final flight took place in 1968. Though the A-12 was faster and could fly higher, the SR-71 was stealthier and more capable, and the Blackbird would serve until 1999, and carry out many of the reconnaissance missions over the Soviet Union originally intended for the A-12. While the majority of A-12s were built for the CIA, the Air Force experimented with the YF-12, an armed interceptor version that could carry three !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! air-to-air missiles housed in an internal bomb bay, but they chose not to adopt it. Lockheed also developed the M-21 variant, which carried the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , a smaller, unmanned reconnaissance drone that rode on the back of the M-21 and could be released to fly autonomously into dangerous airspace. This project was abandoned after one of the drones collided with the M-21 mothership in 1966, resulting in the loss of one of the M-21 pilots. (CIA photo)

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Short Take Off

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April 23, 1988 – The U.S. government’s ban on smoking on flights of two hours or less goes into effect. Originally advocated by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the smoking ban was first put into effect voluntarily by United Airlines in 1971. But with airlines and the tobacco industry fighting any regulation limiting smoking, the US Congress stepped in. The original 1988 ban was extended to flights of six hours or less in 1990, then extended to all domestic and international flights in 2000. Violating the smoking ban can lead to a fine of as much as $5000. In 2016, the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! also banned the use of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! on all domestic and international flights. (Photo author unknown)

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April 23, 1956 – The first flight of the Douglas C-133 Cargomaster, a large cargo aircraft designed to replace the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Unlike its traditional, low-winged predecessors, the high wing of the Cargomaster, along with its external landing gear blisters,removed internal obstructions and allowed for greater cargo capacity in the pressurized fuselage. The C-133 was the Air Force’s only production turboprop-powered strategic airlifter (the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! is considered a tactical airlifter), and it went straight into production without the construction of any prototypes. Fifty were built, and they provided critical airlift duties during the Vietnam War. The Cargomaster was replaced by the turbofan-powered !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in the early 1970s. (US Air Force photo)

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April 24, 2001 – An unmanned Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk flies autonomously from Edwards Air Force Base in the US to Australia non-stop and unrefuelled. This flight marked the longest point-to-point flight ever completed by an unmanned aircraft, and took just over 23 hours to complete the journey. The Global Hawk is also the first autonomous aircraft to cross the Pacific Ocean. The !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! has proven to be a versatile and powerful surveillance platform, flying at altitudes of up to 65,000 feet for as long as 35 hours and capable of imaging an area the size of Illinois on a single mission. (US Air Force photo)

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April 24, 1990– The launch of Space Shuttle Discovery on STS-31 to deploy the Hubble Space Telescope. Named after American astronomer !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the HST has a 7.9 foot diameter mirror and instruments to observe near ultraviolet, visible and near infrared spectra. While the HST is not the first space telescope, it is the first designed to be serviced in space by astronauts, and four Space Shuttle missions have performed repairs or upgrades since 1990. A fifth mission was canceled after the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , but one final servicing mission was undertaken by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ( !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ) in 2009. The HST is still operating and providing !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! of deep space, and will continue to operate until at least 2015, and perhaps 2020. It is scheduled be replaced by the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 2018. (NASA photo)

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April 24, 1971 – Soyuz 10 performs the world’s first docking with the Salyut 1 orbiting space station. Once the United States had put a man on the Moon in 1969, the Russian space program shifted its emphasis to missions to orbital stations. !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! was launched on April 19, 1971 as the world’s first orbiting space station, and three days later, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , with a crew of three cosmonauts, was launched to rendezvous with the station. While the Soyuz 10 achieved a soft docking, a malfunction of the automated alignment system prevented a hard docking and the astronauts were unable to transfer to the station. The following !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! mission was able to dock successfully, but a malfunctioning air valve caused the death of the cosmonauts during re-entry.

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April 24, 1946 – The first flight of the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-9, the first jet fighter developed by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! following WWII. The MiG-9 was powered by a pair of reverse engineered !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! turbojet engines, the engine that powered the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The MiG-9 was a modestly successful first generation fighter, but continuing problems with the engine plagued the project, and the ingestion of gases from the weapons caused frequent engine flameouts at high altitude, a problem that was never fully solved. Nevertheless, Mikoyan-Gurevich produced 610 MiG-9s between 1946-1948, with roughly half of them sent to China. (Photo by Mike1979 Russia via !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! )

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April 24, 1933 – The first flight of the Grumman JF Duck, an amphibious biplane operated by the US Navy that entered service in 1935. The JF was only manufactured for two years before production switched to the improved !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and only 48 were built. The JF featured landing gear that could be retracted into the main centerline float which allowed the aircraft to land on water then taxi up onto land. Though early versions of the aircraft had provisions for a rear-firing machine gun and a single bomb rack under each wing, the JF Duck was used primarily for photographic missions, target towing, scouting and rescue work. (US Navy photo)

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April 25, 2016 – Airbus delivers its first airliner built in the United States, an A321 CEO (Current Engine Option), delivered to JetBlue Airlines (N965JT). Airbus made the decision to add an American assembly facility in 2012, and constructed a $600 million final assembly facility in Mobile, Alabama located at the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Major components, such as the fuselage and vertical stabilizer, are built in Germany, shipped to the US, and delivered to the facility by rail. The front fuselage is shipped from France, and the remaining 40-percent of parts, including engines, are provided by American suppliers. The aircraft, nicknamed BluesMobile , took its maiden flight on March 24, 2016. Airbus plans to deliver four aircraft per month from the Alabama facility by the end of 2017. (Airbus photo)

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April 25, 1983 – NASA’s Pioneer 10 flies past the orbit of Pluto after completing the first mission to Jupiter. However, the probe still had not left the solar system, since Pluto’s irregular orbit meant that it was closer to the Sun than Neptune at that point. But on June 13, 1983, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! passed the orbit of Neptune and officially became the first man-made object to leave our solar system. By September 9, 2012, Pioneer 10 was predicted to be about 10 billion miles from the Sun, traveling at about 26,930 mph, and heading for the constellation !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . At that distance, light from our sun takes almost 15 hours to reach the probe. Its trajectory will take it in the general direction of the star !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , about 68 light years away. If Aldebaran had a zero relative velocity, Pioneer 10 would still take more than 2 million years to reach it. (NASA illustration)

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April 26, 1937 – Luftwaffe bombers of the Condor Legion attack the Spanish city of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War between the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The Nationalists turned to Germany and Italy for aid, and both countries provided troops and war materiel, while the German Luftwaffe saw the conflict as an opportunity to hone the tactics of aerial warfare that they would need for the upcoming invasion of Europe. Acting on the request of the Nationalist government, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! of Germany’s !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! bombed the defenseless civilian population in what historians consider the first instance of terror bombing as an effort to break the will of an enemy. During the German occupation of Paris in WWII, Pablo Picasso reportedly passed out photographs of his famous !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! painting (above) to German soldiers. When they asked him, “Did you do this?” he replied, “No. You did.”

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April 26, 1896 – The birth of Ernst Udet, the second-highest scoring ace of WWI and the highest scoring ace to survive the war. Udet served under !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (the Flying Circus ) and scored 62 confirmed victories. Following the war, Udet flew as a stunt pilot and barnstormer, then joined the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 1933 and was instrumental in the development of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , particularly the dive bombing tactics used by the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Following the German loss of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , Luftwaffe chief !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! led Hitler to believe that the loss was Udet’s fault, and Udet committed suicide on November 17, 1941. (Photo author unknown)

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Recent Aviation History Posts

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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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Jcarr > ttyymmnn 04/26/2016 at 12:44

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I took a college course from Kathryn Koob, one of the embassy hostages. Interestingly enough, her captivity never really came up. Nice lady.

Have you read The Night Stalkers by Michael Durant? Good book.

Also, love me some C-133. Such a beautiful shape. I wish there were still some flying.

ttyymmnn > Jcarr 04/26/2016 at 12:46

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Have not read the book. Sounds interesting, though.

JustAnotherG6 > ttyymmnn 04/26/2016 at 13:04

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Thank you for these.

ttyymmnn > JustAnotherG6 04/26/2016 at 13:05

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My pleasure. Thanks for reading!

Birddog > ttyymmnn 04/26/2016 at 13:14

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That reminds me of this.

Dukie - Jalopnik Emergency Management Asshole > ttyymmnn 04/26/2016 at 13:19

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Short Take Off:

Dukie - Jalopnik Emergency Management Asshole > ttyymmnn 04/26/2016 at 13:21

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Short Take Off:

Cé hé sin > ttyymmnn 04/26/2016 at 14:22

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April 25, 2016 – Airbus delivers its first airliner built in the United States

Must be the most recent date yet!

ttyymmnn > Cé hé sin 04/26/2016 at 14:26

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I think so! I also managed to catch the first flight of the Mitsubishi X-2 Shinshin on 22 April. As long as I stay a post or two ahead, then I can incorporate things that are happening now.