This Date in Aviation History: June 23 - June 26

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 06/26/2018 at 12:35 • Filed to: wingspan, Planelopnik, TDIAH

10

4

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

Welcome to This Date in Aviation History , getting of you caught up on milestones, important historical events and people in aviation from June 23 through June 26.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

(US Navy)

June 23, 1942 – The first flight of the Martin JRM Mars. Today, huge, modern airliners operate from airports the world over, but in the earlier days of aviation, particularly the Golden Age of the 1930s, the world’s largest operational aircraft were flying boats that flew from just about any patch of water large enough to accommodate them. With 71-percent of the Earth’s surface covered by water, flying boats became the preferred way to transport passengers and cargo across the oceans or along the continental seacoasts, with the added safety factor of being able to land just about anywhere along their routes in case of emergency or to take on fuel. By WWII, the large flying boat was being supplanted by larger land-based planes, and the age of the flying boat reached its zenith with the huge Martin JRM Mars, the largest flying boat produced for the Allies during the war.

Based on their !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , a large two-engined flying boat patrol bomber that first flew in 1939, the Mars was originally conceived as a long-range ocean patrol bomber. Martin scaled up the Mariner by stretching the fuselage 38 feet and adding 82 to its wingspan to measure a full 200 feet across. Where the Mariner had two engines, the Mars boasted four more powerful !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! 18-cylinder radial engines that provided a cruising speed of 221 mph and an unrefueled range of nearly 5,000 miles. Though Martin conceived the Mars as a maritime patrol bomber, that mission had become obsolete by the time the aircraft entered service, so the US Navy ordered 20 aircraft to be converted as a strategic transport and cargo aircraft. In that role, the cavernous fuselage could accommodate 133 troops, 84 patients along with 25 medical attendants, or up to 32,000 pounds of cargo.

The first of these giant flying boats was delivered in June 1945 and, with the end of the war in sight, the Navy cut their original order of 20 aircraft to just those five aircraft that were under construction at the time. The first pre-production aircraft, named Hawaii Mars , was lost in a crash in the Chesapeake Bay, leaving only the original pre-production aircraft and four others. In a nod to their intended role in the Pacific Theater, each was named after Pacific Ocean locales from the war: the Marianas Mars , Philippine Mars , Marshall Mars , Caroline Mars , and a second Hawaii Mars . The Navy used the aircraft to fly cargo from the US to Hawaii and other islands in the Pacific, and the Caroline Mars , which had been upgraded with more powerful !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! 28-cylinder engines, set a world record for passenger load in 1950 when it carried 269 passengers from San Diego to Alameda. Engines fires dogged the development of the Mars, and the Marshall Mars was lost in 1950 following an engine fire that destroyed the plane, leaving only four aircraft.

The Marshall Mars on fire near Honolulu on April 5, 1950 (US Navy)

By 1959, the Navy was done with the giant flying boats, and they planned to sell the remaining aircraft for scrap. However, the giant planes got a new lease on life when they were purchased by a consortium of Canadian foresters to be converted to firefighting water bombers. Water tanks and pick up scoops were added which allowed 30 tons of water to be taken onboard on just 22 seconds. But fate kept chipping away at the Mars, and the Marianas Mars was lost in a fatal crash in 1961, and the Caroline Mars fell victim to !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 1962.

That left just two aircraft. In 2012, the owners of the aircraft, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , restored the Philippine Mars to US Navy livery with the intent of flying it to the National Naval Aviation Museum in Florida where it would be put on display. However, the Canadian government stepped in to keep the aircraft in Canada, and the political fight over its final disposal continues. The Hawaii Mars remains flying, though it is no longer under contract for firefighting duties, and was damaged during an air show appearance in 2016.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

(US Air Force)

June 25, 1946 – The first flight of the Northrop YB-35. Heavy, strategic bombing reached its heyday during WWII, and some of the greatest technological advances of the era were made in the design of long-range bombers that could carry increasingly heavier payloads at ever greater distances. While work was underway on the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , arguably the greatest of the piston-powered heavy bombers to come out of the war, the US Army Air Corps issued a request to the aviation industry for a new bomber that would be capable of reaching occupied Europe in the event that Britain fell to the Nazis. The bomber would need to be capable of carrying 10,000 pounds of bombs on a round-trip mission of 10,000 miles, with a maximum speed of 450 mph and a service ceiling of 45,000 feet.

The Northrop YB-35 in flight. Note the contra-rotating pusher propellers. (US Air Force)

Both Boeing and Consolidated responded, with Consolidated offering the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , though it wouldn’t be ready for service until after the war. Northrop was eventually included in the competition, but Jack Northrop took a more radical approach, hoping to extend the range and payload of their bomber by making it as aerodynamically efficient as possible. Since any part of an aircraft that moves through the air produces drag, Northrop believed that the best way to reduce drag was to eliminate the fuselage, tail, and any other parts of the plane that didn’t generate lift. The result of this design concept was a plane that was no more than a flying wing. The center section of the wing contained the cockpit and crew quarters, including bunks for off-duty pilots on long missions. A large, protruding tail cone housed the targeting equipment along with defensive machine guns. In all, Northrop planned for 20 machine guns or cannons housed in six turrets.

A cutaway of the YB-35 bomber. (Northrop?)

Since the flying wing was such a radical departure from traditional design, Northrop first developed the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , a twin-engine, one-third scale flying wing which was used to gather data on flight characteristics of the design and also to act as a trainer for the YB-35 pilots. The full-sized YB-35 was powered by four !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! radial engines each turning a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The engines and propellers were supplied, untested, by the US Army, and they soon displayed significant vibration issues which proved to be so severe that Jack Northrop grounded the bomber until the problems could be fixed. Even though the YB-35 had greater range than the B-36, the Air Force deemed propeller engines obsolete by the late 1940s, and ordered that Northrop modify the YB-35 to be fitted instead with eight turbojet engines, leading to the flying wing’s reclassification as the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The jet engines gave the bomber the flight performance the Air Force desired, but the range was cut nearly in half, and the flying wing no longer had the capability to reach overseas targets from the US. It also proved very difficult to fly. Though the Air Force had originally contracted for 200 YB-35 bombers, only 13 were built, and only one ever flew. After testing proved its airworthiness, the innovative bomber was parked for more than a year before being scrapped in 1949. Two of the airframes were converted to the YB-49, one of which crashed. All the remaining airframes were scrapped.

Uncompleted B-35s lined up at Northrop’s California factory awaiting conversion to YB-49. All of these airframes were eventually scrapped. (US Air Force)

While Jack Northrop was convinced that it was a political conspiracy that ended the flying wings, it was was also likely a case of an idea that was simply too far ahead of its time. In 1981, when Northrop was frail and near death, the Northrop Grumman team working on the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! flying wing bomber brought him to the factory and showed him the plans and a scale model of the B-2 at a time when the project was still top secret. Northrop’s poor health had left him unable to speak, but he reportedly wrote on a piece of paper, “Now I know why God has kept me alive for 25 years.” He died 10 months later, likely feeling vindicated for his unyielding belief that his flying wing would one day become a reality.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

Residents of West Berlin watch as a US Air Force Douglas C-54 Skymaster lands at Tempelhof Airport. (US Air Force)

June 26, 1948 – The Berlin Airlift begins. Following the D-Day landings in France on June 6, 1944, Germany found itself squeezed on two fronts. The Allies were pushing eastward on a broad front throughout Europe, while the Russians were moving westward at a breakneck pace to reach the German capital ahead of the European Allies. Berlin fell to the Russians on May 2, 1945 and, as had been decided at the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! held in February of that year, the German capital was divided into four occupation zones. The Russians controlled the eastern quarter of the city, while the remainder was divided between the French, British and Americans. The city itself was deep inside eastern Germany, which was fully controlled by the Russians.

Germany, divided after the war. Berlin, the German capital, lies deep in the Soviet-controlled eastern part of the country. (Author unknown)

Though the shooting war was over, the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! between the Western Bloc (the US and its European allies) and Russia had begun. The fragile wartime alliance between the West and the Soviet Union ended, and both sides sought to influence the political makeup of Europe and the rest of the world through economic and political policies and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . On June 24, 1948, in an effort to make the city of Berlin entirely its own, Russia cut off the western sectors from the outside world, severing water connections and halting all vehicular and river traffic into or out of the Allied sectors. West Berlin was effectively cut off from the rest of Western Europe, and it became an island inside Communist East Germany.

Using the three corridors for one-way traffic, American cargo aircraft departed from Wiesbaden and Rein-Main in the south, while British cargo aircraft departed from Fassberg and flew to RAF Gatow in southwest Berlin. (Author unknown)

But while the Russians could block all road, rail and water access to West Berlin, they could not put a roof over it, and the Western allies began the greatest airlift of supplies in history. Prior to the blockade, the Russians agreed to let the Western allies use three air corridors from western Germany into Berlin, and these corridors formed the supply routes. Starting haphazardly at first, the operation was taken over first by US Brigadier General Joseph Smith, who had commanded !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! under General !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! during the war. But Smith had no airlift experience, and he was soon replaced by Major Gerneral !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , a veteran of airlift operations over the Himalayas during the fight against Japan. Tunner cobbled together an aerial armada of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and British C-47 Dakotas, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! airliners, and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and started round-the-clock flights. Directed by radio beacons, the Americans flew loops into Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport, while the British flew a circuit through the RAF airfield at !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . He instituted strict rules to streamline the operation, such as requiring !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! landings regardless of weather and the elimination of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! while planes awaited landing. If an aircraft missed an approach, the crew was required to return to their starting point, fully laden, and try again. Tunner required air crews to stay with their planes at all times, and meals were brought out to the crews on the tarmac so they could take off immediately after unloading. Citizens of West Berlin pitched in to help unload the planes.

Fight crews celebrate the end of the Berlin Blockade (US Air Force)

By the end of August 1948, 1,500 flights per day—one landing every minute—delivered more than 5,000 tons of cargo, enough to keep the city fed and powered in spite of the Soviet blockade. And on Easter Sunday, 1949, the airlift managed to deliver 13,000 tons of cargo, including the equivalent of 600 railroad cars of coal. The airlift continued for 11 months, making more than 189,000 flights totaling nearly 600,000 hours of flying and amassing more than 92 million miles. In the face of this herculean effort, the Soviets finally relented and lifted the blockade one minute after midnight on May 12, 1949. West Berlin remained a free city, and it stood as an important symbol of the West’s resolve to fight the spread of Communism in Europe until the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 1990.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

(US Navy)

June 26, 1942 – The first flight of the Grumman F6F Hellcat. When the US Navy entered WWII, their primary carrier-based fighter was the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , a fighter that, while an all-metal monoplane, was still very much a product of an earlier era of fighters. It was only one generation removed from the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the last biplane fighter to serve the Navy, and the Wildcat even shared the F3F’s hand-cranked landing gear. While the Wildcat served well enough in the early days of the war, it was outclassed by the remarkable !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! that ruled the skies in the Pacific. Fortunately for the Navy, a successor was waiting in the wings, a fighter that had been undergoing development since 1938, and one that would prove every bit the match for the nimble Zero.

Grumman XF6F prototype (US Navy)

Soon after the Wildcat made its first flight on September 2, 1937, and even before it entered Navy service, Grumman started working on its successor. By June 1941, six months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, a prototype was ready for testing. And while the Hellcat bore a significant resemblance to the Wildcat, it was in fact an entirely new aircraft. Gone was the hand-cranked landing gear, replaced by hydraulically actuated struts that folded fully into the wing. The wings were mounted closer to the bottom of the fuselage and could be hydraulically folded back for carrier storage. It was also five feet longer, had a greater wingspan, and outweighed the Wildcat by 3,000 pounds.

As development of the Hellcat continued, Grumman got valuable input from pilots who had faced the Zero in combat and, as a direct result of those meetings, the Hellcat’s original !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! radial, which produced 1,700 hp, was replaced with a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! 18-cylinder radial capable of 2,000 hp, the same engine being used in the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The new power plant gave the Hellcat a top speed of 391 mph compared to the Zero’s 332 mph. While the Zero was designed to be light and agile, it offered no protection to the pilot. Grumman, on the other hand, nicknamed “The Iron Works” for their reputation for building rugged aircraft, gave the Hellcat a bullet-resistant windscreen, 212 pounds of cockpit armor to protect the pilot, and self-sealing fuel tanks, weight increases that were offset by the more powerful engine. The Hellcat’s claws were six .50 caliber !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! machine guns mounted in the wings, and it could carry up to 4,000 pounds of bombs, rockets or torpedoes.

The Iron Works brings home another pilot: a Hellcat piloted by Ens. Byron Johnson crash lands on USS Enterprise, while catapult officer Lieutenant Walter Chewing steps on the plane’s belly tank to rescue the pilot. (US Navy)

The F6F entered service in 1943 and, despite the fact that it was slower than the Corsair, it was better suited to carrier operations, and the Hellcat became the standard US Navy fighter until the end of the war. When tested against a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! A6M5 Zero, the Hellcat proved to be faster, could outturn the Japanese fighter at higher altitudes, and had a faster roll rate. The Zero was still a better dogfighter at lower altitudes, but American pilots learned to use the Hellcat’s weight and firepower to their advantage in diving attacks on Japanese fighters. The Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy also flew the Hellcat, first called the Gannet, before switching back to Hellcat for simplicity. The 1,200 aircraft flown by the FAA served in Norway, the Mediterranean, and the Far East, but had far fewer opportunities to shoot down enemy fighters than their American counterparts in the Pacific. By the end of the war, Navy and Marine pilots calmed 5,163 victories over Japanese aircraft at a loss of 270 Hellcats, a ratio of 19:1 when taking into account both claimed and confirmed victories. There were no less than 305 pilots who became aces in the F6F.

Royal Navy Hellcats of No. 1840 Naval Air Squadron in 1944, likely flown by Dutch pilots. (Royal Navy)

After the war, Hellcats were used as second-line fighters behind the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and also served as trainers and even as pilotless radio-controlled bombs during the Korean War. A night fighter variant flew for the US Navy until 1954, and the Hellcat also served as the original aircraft for the US Navy’s !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! flight demonstration team when the team was formed in 1946. Grumman turned out more than 12,000 Hellcats in three years of production, and the final Hellcats were retired from service with the Uruguayan Navy in 1960.

Remotely piloted F6Fs on the flight line at Bikini in 1946. These aircraft were flown through the radioactive cloud of atomic bomb tests. The different colored tails denote the radio frequency used to control them. (US Navy)

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

Short Takeoff

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

June 23, 2006 – The RAF retires the English Electric Canberra. Originally conceived as a jet-powered successor to the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the Canberra was one of the most successful of the early jet-powered bombers of the 1950s. It was capable of flying higher than most fighters when it was introduced, and was an important part of England’s early nuclear strike force. The Canberra proved to be remarkably adaptable to different missions, and its retirement marked the end of more than 50 years of RAF service. The Canberra was also built under license in the US as the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and it became the first American jet-powered bomber to drop bombs in battle during the Korean War. Three of the Martin-built aircraft remain in service with NASA, where they are used to carry out high-altitude research.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

(Deutsches Bundesarchiv)

June 23, 1931 – Wiley Post and Harold Gatty take off on a flight around the world. While others had flown fixed wing aircraft around the world before, the record for the shortest circumnavigation was held by the airship !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , which completed the journey in 21 days in 1929. Post, with Gatty acting as navigator, departed from Roosevelt Field on Long Island flying a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! named Winnie Mae and headed eastward. They completed the flight on July 1 after traveling 15,474 miles in a record time of 8-and-a-half days. They were hailed as heroes in the US, and received a ticker tape parade in New York City. Post wrote a chronicle of their journey titled Around the World in Eight Days .

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

June 24, 1960 – The first flight of the Hawker Siddeley HS 748, a turboprop-powered airliner originally developed by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! to replace the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Designed for short takeoff and landing (STOL) and the ability to operate from rough, unpaved airfields, the HS 748 was envisioned as a smaller competitor to the four-engine !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and was capable of accommodating up to 40 passengers. The two !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! engines gave the HS 748 a cruising speed of 281 mph, and subsequent variants allowed for up to 58 passengers. A total of 380 were produced between 1961-1988, and roughly 20 remain in service today.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

June 25, 1997 – The first flight of the Kamov Ka-52 Alligator, a two-seat variant of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! attack helicopter. Following tests that compared the single-seat Ka-50 and the existing !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! gunship, Kamov determined that it would be cheaper to develop their existing helicopter into a more capable ground attack and reconnaissance helicopter than create a new one. The second crew member, seated beside the pilot, operates the the radar and targeting equipment, leaving the pilot free to fly the aircraft. Production began in 1996, and 80 have been built to date. The Alligator has seen action as recently as 2015 during Russia’s support of the Syrian government in the ongoing !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

(US Air Force)

June 25, 1947 – The first flight of the Boeing B-50 Superfortress, an upgraded variant of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! that was fitted with more powerful engines, a lengthened fuselage, an enlarged stabilizer, and was constructed from a lighter aluminum alloy to save weight. The B-50 was never used as a bomber, but the RB-50 reconnaissance variant was flown extensively to probe the northern reaches of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and the KB-50 tanker variant served as an early aerial refueling platform, eventually receiving a pair of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! turbojet engines to help it keep pace with faster jet fighters. Following the introduction of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the B-50 was retired in 1965.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

(US Navy)

June 25, 1944 – The first flight of the Ryan FR Fireball, a mixed-propulsion fighter that was powered by a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! radial engine in the front and a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! turbojet in the rear. The fuselage ultimately proved too weak for carrier operations despite modifications to strengthen it, and production of the unfortunately-named Fireball was canceled with the end of WWII after only 66 aircraft were built. The Fireball is notable as the first jet-powered aircraft to land on a carrier, but that was only because its radial engine had failed in flight. By August 1947, all Fireballs were removed from service and most were scrapped. Only one remains, and is on display at the Planes of Fame Air Museum in California.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

(US Air Force)

June 25, 1928 – The first flight of the Boeing P-12, the last biplane fighter developed by Boeing. The P-12 was intended as a replacement for the Boeing F2B and F3B fighters built for the US Navy, and its use of corrugated aluminum control surfaces and fabric-covered aluminum tube fuselage meant that it was faster and more nimble than its predecessors, even though it used the same !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! radial engine. Known as the F4B in US Navy service, the P-12 entered service in 1930 and was flown by frontline fighter pursuit groups until 1935, when it was replaced by the all-metal !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! monoplane. The US Army flew a total of 366 P-12s, while 187 F4Bs served the Navy. Four were built for civilian customers, one of which was purchased by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

(Author unknown)

June 25, 1919 – The first flight of the Junkers F.13, the world’s first all-metal transport aircraft. German aircraft designer !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! pioneered the use of corrugated !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! airplane skins, and his unbraced monoplane design was well ahead of other fabric-covered biplanes of the era. The F.13 carried four passengers in an enclosed, heated cabin and also had an enclosed cockpit. Junkers sold his aircraft abroad, and some were built under license in the US and flown by the US Post Office Department. Others were converted to float planes. To sell more aircraft, Junkers started his own airline, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 1921. A total of 332 F.13s were built between 1919-1932, and four remain today in museums, with a fifth currently undergoing restoration.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

(Tim Shaffer)

June 26, 1974 – The first flight of the Eurocopter AS350 Écureuil ( Squirrel ), a single-engine light utility and transport helicopter developed by Aérospatiale as a replacement of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The Alouette’s initial successor, the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , was a success in the military market, so the Écureuil was directed at the civilian market, and steps were taken to keep the cost of the helicopter as low as possible. The production helicopter is powered by a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! turboshaft engine which gives the Écureuil a cruising speed of 152 mph, and the helicopter has capacity for five passengers. Nearly 4,000 have been produced, and the Écureuil is operated all over the world and is particularly popular with civil authorities.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

(Author unknown)

June 26, 1936 – The first flight of the Focke-Wulf Fw 61, a tandem-rotor helicopter that is considered the fist practical and functional helicopter. While !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! is known for his groundbreaking work with single-rotor helicopters, the Fw 61 used two counter-rotating, three-bladed rotors to provide lift, while lateral control was achieved by the use of cyclic pitch and asymmetric rotor lift. Torque was controlled through the counter-rotation of the rotors, and a small propeller at the front worked only to cool the engine. Only two were built, and one was !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! famously by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! inside the Deutschlandhalle in 1938. The Fw 61 also set an unofficial altitude record of 11,234 feet in 1938.  

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

Connecting Flights

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

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!!! .

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

facw > ttyymmnn 06/26/2018 at 14:23

0

I like that map of the Berlin Airlift. Interesting to see how things work. Presumably it is too early for Tegel, which was built (with the longest runway in Europe), specifically  for the airlift, opening in November 1948.

Also, as might be apparent from that date, the airlift began June 26th 1948, not 1949 as you have it.

ttyymmnn > facw 06/26/2018 at 14:30

0

Also, as might be apparent from that date, the airlift began June 26th 1948, not 1949 as you have it.

Oh, geez. Well, with more than 4, 700 words in this post , it’s easy to miss something. That, however, was a doozie. Thanks.

facw > ttyymmnn 06/26/2018 at 14:33

0

No worries, I love these posts, and definitely nothing I wrote would be error/typo free.

ttyymmnn > facw 06/26/2018 at 14:52

1

Thanks. I'm struggling a bit to keep up, or at least keep as far ahead as I'd like.