This Date in Aviation History: April 14 - April 17

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 04/17/2018 at 12:35 • Filed to: wingspan, planelopnik history, Planelopnik

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Welcome to This Date in Aviation History , getting of you caught up on milestones, important historical events and people in aviation from April 14 through April 17.

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Boeing B-52H Stratofortress based at Barksdale AFB in Louisiana (US Air Force)

April 15, 1952 – The first flight of the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress. By the end of WWII, Boeing had earned a solid reputation for making large bombers with the rugged !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and the state-of-the-art !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . But with the coming of both the jet age and the nuclear age, the Air Force needed a new bomber with extreme range that could fly deep into enemy territory to deliver nuclear weapons. Initially, Boeing proposed the Model 462 in 1946, a straight-wing bomber that would be powered by 6 turboprop engines. It would be essentially a scaled-up version of a WWII bomber, with at least five defensive turrets and accommodations for two crews that could rotate during long-range missions. But over the next year of development, the Air Force kept changing the requirements, and Boeing kept changing the design and, by the end of 1947, the program was on the verge of cancelation.

An early concept drawing for a six-engine postwar long range bomber. This program eventually led to the B-52. (Ben Holt)

Though the turbojet engine was clearly the powerplant of the future, the Air Force wasn’t so sure, and wanted to hedge its bets by sticking with turboprops. After all, range was a primary concern, and early jet engines were notoriously thirsty. Boeing proposed yet another turboprop design in October 1948 and, when the Air Force wasn’t impressed with its capabilities, a team of Boeing engineers working in a hotel room in Dayton, Ohio came up with the preliminary design of an eight-engine turbojet bomber based on the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and its 35-degree swept wing. Similar to the B-47, the engines on the Stratofortress would be housed in pods under the wings, and the landing gear would be centered on the fuselage with outriggers on the wings. To handle crosswind landings, Boeing came up with the innovative solution of having the main landing wheels pivot up to 20-degrees to stay aligned with the runway centerline. Like the B-47, the two pilots would be seated in a tandem configuration under a greenhouse canopy, but Air Force General !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , a veteran of WWII bombing campaigns, insisted that the pilots be seated side by side.

Boeing XB-52, the prototype for the B-52 Stratofortress. Note the tandem cockpit, which would later be replaced by more traditional side-by-side seating. (US Air Force)

Only three of the initial B-52A model were built, and the first production model, the B-52B, entered service with the Air Force on June 29, 1955. This aircraft featured improved avionics and engines that could achieve an extra 12,000 pounds of thrust by using water injection. As a product of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the B-52's primary mission was to deliver nuclear weapons, and though it was never called on to carry out that mission, it still served as a powerful deterrent to Soviet aims around the world. When the advent of the surface to air missile jeopardized the B-52's high altitude mission, the bomber showed its tremendous flexibility by adapting to low level penetration missions. And, in a further testament to its flexibility, the bomber that was originally designed solely to drop nuclear munitions became one of the most powerful weapons of conventional warfare when it went into battle in Vietnam. Beginning with !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 1965, and following modifications to carry still more bombs, B-52 crews flew a total of 124,532 sorties throughout the war. A typical bomb load for the B-52 in Vietnam was 54,000 pounds of conventional bombs, or about the same load as ten B-17s.

The size and power of the B-52 made an excellent mothership for testing experimental aircraft and missiles. Here, “Balls 8,” NASA’s workhorse B-52B mothership, carries the NASA X-38 emergency crew return vehicle during a drop test in 1999 (NASA)

Following Vietnam, many of the older B-52s were retired due to their age, though newer G and H models were kept active for nuclear standby missions. Many were relegated to the Arizona desert, then destroyed as part of arms limitation treaties with the Soviet Union. When America went to war in the Persian Gulf, B-52s took part in !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , flying from bases in England, Spain, Saudi Arabia and as far away as Louisiana to attack targets in Iraq. Despite efforts to replace the B-52, first with the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the Buff soldiers on, providing capabilities in firepower and mission flexibility that simply can’t be matched by newer designs. When the Lancer is replaced by the proposed !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the B-52 will still be flying. In fact, the Air Force currently plans to keep the B-52 in service until 2045, an astonishing 90 years after it first entered service, and plans are currently underway to replace the eight Pratt & Whitney TF33 low-bypass turbofans with eight similarly sized regional jet engines.

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(US Navy)

April 15, 1935 – The first flight of the Douglas TBD Devastator. The 1930s was an extraordinary decade for aircraft development. The fabric-covered metal and wooden frames of the biplane era were left behind in favor of the all-metal !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! monoplane, and seemingly each new aircraft brought further innovations in construction, capability, speed, or range. But with the outbreak of WWII in 1939, aircraft development revved into high gear, and aircraft that were innovative and groundbreaking when they rolled out were quickly rendered obsolete. Such was the fate of the Douglas TBD Devastator.

The Douglas XTBD-1, the prototype for the TBD Devastator. Note the original flat canopy, which was changed for production aircraft. (US Navy)

In 1934, the US Navy was seeking a new dive bomber to operate from its carriers, and the Devastator entered into competition for a Navy contract against the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (which would later evolve into the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ). The Devastator, which eventually won the competition, provided many firsts for the Navy. It was the first monoplane to enter carrier service, it was the Navy’s first all-metal aircraft, and the first with a fully enclosed cockpit. It was also the first to have hydraulically powered folding wings. The semi-retractable landing gear allowed the wheels to protrude from under the wings and protect the airframe in the event of a wheels-up landing. The Devastator could carry up to 1,200 pounds of bombs or a single torpedo, had a single forward-firing .30 or .50 caliber machine gun, and a rear-firing .30 caliber machine gun for defense against fighters. Power came from a single !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! radial that gave the Devastator a maximum speed of 206 mph, which was relatively fast for its day. However, despite all of these innovations, by the time of the Japanese !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 1941, just six years after the Devastator’s first flight, it was already almost completely obsolete.

Nevertheless, Devastator pilots fought well in the opening stages of the war in the Pacific, effectively attacking ground and shipping targets while flying from the carriers !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!   (CV-6), !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (CV-5) and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!   (CV-2). But in the pivotal !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! on June 3-7, 1942, the Devastator showed that its time had completely passed. In the opening stages of the battle, 41 Devastators, nearly all the TBDs in operation at the time, were dispatched against the Japanese fleet from !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (CV-8), Enterprise and Yorktown . Due in large part to its lack of maneuverability and slow speeds, the Devastator proved to be a sitting duck for Japanese guns. On torpedo runs, the TBDs had to maintain a mere 115 mph in order to drop their torpedoes, which made them easy prey for Japanese !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! fighters and antiaircraft gunners. Only six Devastators returned from the mission, and they had scored no hits on the Japanese carriers. Part of this was due to malfunctioning !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , but clearly, the Devastator’s days as an effective torpedo bomber were over. However, the loss of the Devastators and their crews was not entirely in vain, as the attacks left the Japanese carriers vulnerable for the follow-up attacks by Dauntless dive bombers, ultimately resulting in a lopsided victory for the US Navy which heralded a titanic shift in the balance of power in the Pacific.

Devastators off the coast of Hawaii in 1941 (US Navy)

After Midway, the Navy immediately removed the TBD from frontline service, and the remaining aircraft were relegated to flight training duties or served as training pieces for mechanics and firefighters. The final Devastator was scrapped in 1944, and none of the 130 production aircraft remain today. Though the Devastator’s replacement, the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , fared little better at first, shifting tactics and the gradual achievement of air superiority in the Pacific finally allowed the torpedo bomber to become an effective weapon later in the war. (US Navy photos)

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Short Takeoff

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April 14, 1962 – The first flight of the Bristol 188. Nicknamed the “Flaming Pencil,” the Bristol 188 was a research aircraft developed to explore supersonic flight. In response to Operational Requirement 330, which called for a Mach 3 reconnaissance aircraft, Bristol produced three 188s. The project was plagued with problems, most notably fuel consumption issues which did not allow the aircraft to fly supersonically long enough to test the effects on the airframe. The 188 could not reach Mach 2, and the nearly 300 mph take off speed hampered the test program. However, much of what was learned with the 188 was used later in the development of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

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April 14, 1959 – The first flight of the Grumman OV-1 Mohawk. The Mohawk began as joint US Army/Marine Corps project to replace the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! for battlefield reconnaissance, while also adding expanded attack capabilities. Among the missions for the two-man crew were forward air control, artillery spotting, emergency resupply, and naval target spotting. It was also designed to operate from short, unimproved runways as well as US Navy escort carriers. The Mohawk’s two !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! turboprop engines gave the aircraft a top speed of 305 mph. The Mohawk entered service with the US Army in 1959, and saw action during the Vietnam War, where 65 were lost to accidents but only one to enemy fire, and OV-1s continued flying as late as the Gulf War before retirement in 1996. A total of 380 were built.

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(NASA)

April 14, 1947 – The first flight of the Douglas D-558-1 Skystreak, a turbojet-powered research aircraft built as a joint project between the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (NACA) and the US Navy. The Skystreak was the first in a planned series of three aircraft that would explore the regime of supersonic flight, though the second phase was canceled in favor of the swept wing !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Douglas built three examples of the Skystreak and, in just four months, it had broken the previous speed record set by the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! rocket plane. Though overshadowed by the supersonic !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the Skystreak nevertheless provided important data in the realm of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! flight which was used in the design of future supersonic aircraft.

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(Royal Air Force/Sgt. Jack Pritchard)

April 15, 1965 – The first flight of the Aérospatiale SA 330 Puma, a medium transport/utility helicopter originally developed by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! to meet a requirement by the French Army for a helicopter that could carry 20 troops or cargo in all weather conditions. After the purchase of the Puma by the Royal Air Force, France and England entered into a production partnership that eventually included Romania and South Africa. The Puma has seen action in numerous conflicts, including the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and is also a popular civilian transport helicopter, particularly for offshore oil corporations.

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(Tim Shaffer)

April 16, 1988 – The first flight of the McDonnell Douglas T-45 Goshawk, a fully carrier-capable trainer developed from the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The Goshawk entered service in 1991 and eventually replaced the older !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! for the US Navy and US Marine Corps. The T-45 provides a platform for intermediate and advanced strike pilot training, with aircraft currently based at NAS Meridian in Mississippi and NAS Kingsville in Texas. Though the US Air Force is currently looking to replace its advanced trainer, the Navy plans to keep the Goshawk until at least 2035.

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(NASA)

April 16, 1972 – The launch of Apollo 16, the 10th manned mission of the Apollo program and the 5th mission to land astronauts on the Moon. Commander !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and Lunar Module Pilot !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! spent 71 hours on the lunar surface, where they conducted three moonwalks and collected over 200 pounds of lunar samples, some of which served to disprove the theories about volcanic origins for some of the Moon’s features. Young and Duke also drove the second !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (LRV) a total of 16.6 miles. Command Module Pilot !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! completed 64 orbits of the Moon in the Command Module, and performed a spacewalk on the return flight to retrieve film capsules from the exterior of the Service Module. There would be just one more launch in the Apollo program, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , eight months later. Apollo 16 returned to Earth on April 27, 1972.

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(US Air Force)

April 16, 1949 – The first flight of the Lockheed F-94 Starfire. Following the failure of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the Starfire was hastily developed from the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The all-weather day/night interceptor entered service in 1950 to replace both the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The Starfire was the first operational US Air Force fighter to employ an afterburning engine and the first all-weather fighter to see service in the Korean War. Though produced in large numbers, the Starfire served for just eight years in frontline service before being replaced in the interceptor role by the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

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(US Library of Congress)

April 16, 1912 – Harriet Quimby becomes the first woman to fly across the English Channel. In 1911, Quimby became the first woman to earn a pilot’s license in the United States, and her exploits were an inspiration to many women of her day who railed against male-dominated society. Quimby’s cross-Channel flight was unfortunately overshadowed by news of the sinking of the RMS !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! just one day after her historic flight. Quimby died on July 1, 1912 when, for unknown reasons, her !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! monoplane suddenly pitched forward, ejecting both her and her passenger at an altitude of 1,500 feet. Ironically, the plane came to earth relatively undamaged.  

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(Tim Shaffer)

April 17, 1973 – Federal Express delivers its first overnight package. Starting with 14 Dassault Falcon business jets aircraft and 389 employees, Federal Express began operations from Memphis, TN by delivering 186 packages to cities on the East Coast of the United States. Adopting the name FedEx in 2000, the company now employs more than 400,000 employees and operates a fleet of 664 aircraft serving more than 375 airports worldwide. Each day, FedEx delivers more than 14 million packages. FedEx’s first airplane, a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! nicknamed Wendy , is on display at the Smithsonian’s !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! near Washington, DC.

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(US Air Force)

April 17, 1969 – The first powered flight of the Martin Marietta X-24A, the fourth in a series of experimental aircraft developed to explore the concept of the lifting body design following the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Built without traditional wings, lifting bodies rely on the aerodynamic shape of the fuselage to generate lift and allow for controlled flight. The X-24A was carried aloft by a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! mothership, then released to fly under rocket power before gliding back to Earth. Data gleaned over the course of twenty-eight X-24A flights, along with the other lifting body aircraft, would be used in the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! to develop landing characteristics for the unpowered Shuttle landings.

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April 17, 1934 – The first flight of the de Havilland Dragon Rapide, a short-range biplane airliner constructed primarily of plywood that had accommodations for six to eight passengers. Designed as a successor to the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the Dragon Rapide was a scaled down derivative of the larger four-engine !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and entered service in 1934, providing flights around England, Northern Ireland and Scotland. During WWII, the Rapide was pressed into service with the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy for passenger and communications duties, where it was known as the Dominie. A total of 731 Rapides were produced, and it became one of the most successful small airliners of the 1930s.

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April 17, 1934 – The first flight of the Fairey Swordfish. Designed in the 1930s, the Swordfish torpedo bomber was obsolete by the start of WWII. However, the “Stringbag” continued in front line service throughout the war. It’s most significant victory came in the hunt for the German battleship !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , when Swordfish pilots crippled the ship by disabling her rudder with a torpedo strike, rendering the ship unable to maneuver. Bismarck was then sunk by surface ships of the Royal Navy. Nearly 2,400 Swordfish were produced, and it was retired at the end of the war.

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(San Diego Air and Space Museum)

April 17, 1886 – The birth of Glenn L. Martin. Born in Macksburg, Iowa, Martin was an early American aviation pioneer who founded his own aircraft company in 1912. His first successful aircraft was the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the first purpose-built bomber to serve the United States Army Air Service. Martin went on to create many successful aircraft during WWII, notably the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! bombers, as well as large flying boats such as the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Following the war, Martin’s company found success in the aerospace industry, building the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! rocket, the first American rocket built specifically for orbital launch. Martin followed the Vanguard with the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! series of larger rockets. Following Martin’s death in 1955, his company merged to form !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and that company eventually merged with Lockheed to form !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 1995.

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(Author unknown)

April 17, 1847 – The birth of Nikolay Yegorovich Zhukovsky, a Russian scientist who is considered the founding father of modern !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Zhukovsky was the first to undertake the study of airflow in the hopes of one day creating a flying machine, and he created the world’s first Aerodynamic Institute near Moscow in 1904, where he is often called the Father of Russian Aviation. He was the first to explain mathematically the origin of lift, and the first to determine that the amount of lift of a body is proportional to its velocity and the circulation of the air around it. Zhukovsky also built Russia’s first wind tunnel.  

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Connecting Flights

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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!!! . You can also find more stories about aviation, aviators and airplane oddities at !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

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Derpwagon > ttyymmnn 04/17/2018 at 14:02

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The Mohawk is one of my favorite planes!

ttyymmnn > Derpwagon 04/17/2018 at 14:13

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Mine too. I was reminded of it while watching a rerun of the old 1980s TV series Blue Thunder , based on the movie of the same name starring Roy Scheider. In the episode I watched, the BT was chasing the bad guy in a Mohawk through the skies of California. Surprisingly, the computer geek in the back seat of Blue Thunder was played by Dana Carvey, two years before he joined the cast of SNL.

Yes, that’s Bubba Smith and Dick Butkus. When all else fails, throw a couple of former NFL stars into the show.

user314 > Derpwagon 04/17/2018 at 14:24

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There’s one over at the Air Heritage Museum in Beaver Falls, PA that shows up at the local airshows. I got a picture of it at the first Wings over Pittsburgh back in ‘99:

It’s so odd seeing them with the off-center SLAR pod.

You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much > ttyymmnn 04/17/2018 at 16:10

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The method of destruction for START makes for an interesting bit of footage. They had to cut the airframes at specified spots and then leave them out for a certain amount of time so that the Soviets could verify how many planes had been destroyed. Nothing like a multi-ton guillotine to make quick work of an old airplane.

pip bip - choose Corrour > ttyymmnn 04/18/2018 at 07:02

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those B52's will have to be retired at some point.