This Date in Aviation History: October 12 - October 15

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 10/15/2019 at 12:35 • Filed to: wingspan, Planelopnik, TDIAH

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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 October 12 through October 15.

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October 13, 1930 – The first flight of the Junkers Ju 52. Throughout the history of aviation, just a small handful of aircraft have exceeded fifty years of service. Such a milestone can only be reached by truly breakthrough designs that can stand the test of time and remain relevant long after they were first conceived, or be so rugged and effective that their usefulness continues long after their original technology has been eclipsed by more modern designs. One member of the fifty-year club is the Junkers Ju 52, which began its long career as a workhorse for the Luftwaffe during the Second World War. But the tri-motor aircraft that began ferrying troops in the years before and then throughout the war, and continues to ply the airways today, was not the aircraft’s original form.

Junkers Ju 52/1m, with a single engine in the nose. This arrangement did not provide enough power, so two more engines were added to the wings. (Author unknown)

The 52 had its roots in the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , a single-engine transport and cargo plane that was developed from the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the world’s first all-metal transport plane. Junkers began with the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! design, made sturdy with its breakthrough corrugated duralumin fuselage, and enlarged it to increase the passenger and cargo capacity. With power originally coming from a single Junkers or BMW liquid-cooled V-12 engine, the Ju 52/1m (1 motor), with its greater size and weight, proved to be significantly underpowered.

After the first seven aircraft were built, the Ju 52/1m became the Ju 52/3m with the addition of two more engines. Rather than V-12 engines, 52/3m sported three !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! air-cooled radial engines, one in the nose and one each on the wings. (This configuration was later copied by Ford for their !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and Junkers successfully sued to block the sale of Trimotors in Europe.) The 3m proved to be an exceptionally rugged and reliable aircraft, and entered service with Lufthansa as a civilian airliner before the outbreak of WWII. But by 1935, with the nationalization of the German aviation industry, the Ju 52 became an instrument of war. The size and strength of the 52 was ideal for transport, cargo, and paratroop operations, and earned it the nicknames Iron Annie and Tante Ju ( Aunt Ju ). It had its baptism of fire with the Colombian Air Force in the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! of 1932-1933, and with Bolivia in the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! of 1932-1935. The Ju 52 made its Luftwaffe combat debut during the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! of 1936-1939, which served as a dress rehearsal for the German invasion of Poland which started WWII.

German paratroopers jump from a Ju 52 during the Battle of Crete (Author unknown)

However, by the start of the war, the Ju 52's lack of speed (it was only half as fast as the British !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ) meant that combat operations required fighter escort. In one disastrous mission in Holland in 1940, 278 Ju 52s were lost either to anti-aircraft fire or crashes in boggy fields, a record for the most losses of a single type in a single day. But despite the shortcomings of what was by all accounts an obsolete aircraft at the start of the war, the Ju 52 served throughout the conflict because the Germans had no other aircraft that could perform its job in great numbers. German production of the Ju 52 ended with the fall of Germany in 1945, but continued for two more years in factories they had built in France. In Spain, where it is known as the CASA 352, production continued until 1952. In all, over 4,800 Iron Annies were built, and the Ju 52 served no less than 38 nations. The last country to operate the Ju 52 militarily was Switzerland, who retired their last aircraft in 1982. Surviving Ju 52s continue flying tourists and carrying parachutists to this day.

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A US Marine Corps CH-53D with Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 362 lands at Forward Operating Base Edinburgh in Afghanistan in 2012. (US Department of Defense)

October 14, 1964 – The first flight of the Sikorsky CH-53 Sea Stallion. When the operational jet engined debuted during the Second World War, it not only revolutionized fixed wing aviation, but also had a profound effect on the development of helicopters after the war, as the turbine engine offered greater power and speed over its piston-powered predecessors. In 1960, both the US Army and US Marine Corps began searching for a heavy lift helicopter to replace the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and the Army eventually settled on the tandem-rotor, turbine-powered !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . In 1962, the US Navy issued a request for a Heavy Helicopter Experimental (HHX), calling for a helicopter that could lift up to 8,000 pounds, have an operational radius of 100 nautical miles, and a speed of 170 mph. In order to save money, Defense Secretary !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , who had built a reputation for trying to save money by getting different branches of the military to adopt the same aircraft, pressured the Marine Corps to adopt the Chinook. But the Marines argued that their requirements were significantly different from those of the Army. In particular, they expressed the need for a watertight hull, and they preferred to accept the offering from Sikorsky, which was basically an enlarged version of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

The prototype YCH-53A in 1964 (US Navy)

After an intense competition, the Marines selected the YCH-53 over the Chinook, announcing in 1962 that it would procure two prototypes for further testing. (The US Air Force later adopted the CH-53 as the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! for combat search and rescue). The CH-53 had a six-bladed main rotor that was borrowed from the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (CH-54 Tarhe), a watertight hull that, while not intended for amphibious operations, allowed emergency landings on water, and was powered by a pair of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! turboshaft engines mounted on pods outside the aircraft. Successively more powerful engines were added as development of the helicopter continued. The Sea Stallion had a crew of four and, depending on the mission, could carry 38 troops, or 24 stretchers with attendants, or an internal cargo payload of 8,000 pounds. An external load of 13,000 pounds could be slung underneath the aircraft.

A CH-53 of the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing delivers a generator at An Hoa, Vietnam in 1968. (US Marine Corps)

The CH-53 saw immediate action in the Vietnam War, where it played a vital role in troop and materiel transport, as well as search and rescue. At the end of America’s involvement in the war, the size of the Sea Stallion aided tremendously in the evacuation of troops and civilians from Saigon as part of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The Sea Stallion continued to prove its mettle in every conflict since Vietnam, but was finally retired in 2012 after service in Afghanistan in favor of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , a significantly upgraded and modernized version of the heavy lifter that benefits from the addition of a third turboshaft engine.

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(NASA)

October 14, 1947 – Chuck Yeager breaks the sound barrier in the Bell X-1. On December 17, 1903, the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! made their historic First Flight. Taking off from the dunes of Kitty Hawk, NC, the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! covered a distance 120 feet at a speed of 6.8 mph, and since that momentous date, aircraft development has been driven largely by a quest for ever greater speed. But when the world entered the age of jet- and rocket-powered flight during WWII, the last great achievement of speed, Mach 1, about 765 mph depending on altitude and conditions, had yet to be reached.

An artist’s conception of the Miles M.52. Though never built, data from the project shared with Bell helped the Americans construct the X-1, and the two aircraft bear more than a passing resemblance. (UK Government)

Flying beyond the speed of sound is commonplace today, but supersonic flight in the mid-1940s was entirely uncharted territory. During the war, rocket planes and airplanes in a steep dive had come close, entering the realm of transonic flight, where they discovered that shockwaves along the wings severely inhibited the ability of the control surfaces to move, or could even cause control inputs to reverse. Some German pilots laid claim to breaking the sound barrier in the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! rocket plane, but it was the British who made the first dedicated attempts at supersonic flight with the turbojet-powered !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . An extremely advanced aircraft for its time, the M.52 attempted to solve the controllability problems by pioneering the use of a powered !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , or flying tail, in which the entire horizontal tailplane moved, rather than just the elevators on the trailing edge of the tail of the horizontal stabilizer. Though the project was ultimately canceled before any aircraft were built, much of the Miles’ groundbreaking work in supersonic aerodynamics found its way to Bell as part of an agreement to share technical data on high-speed flight.

Bell had already begun work on a supersonic rocket plane, but the conventional tail they used suffered from the problems of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! at transonic speeds. With the data from the M.52 in their hands, Bell adopted the all-moving powered stabilator and the thorny control problem was solved. Where the M.52 was powered by a turbojet, the X-1 was powered by a four-chamber !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! liquid fuel rocket, with each chamber providing 1,500 lbf of thrust, with the chambers lit in succession to accelerate the aircraft. The X-1's maiden flight, a gliding test in Florida, took place on January 25, 1946. After more successful glide tests, the X-1 was taken to Muroc Army Air Field in California, modern day !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , for powered tests. Bell chief test pilot !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , who flew all the glide tests, had died on August 30, 1946 while practicing for the National Air Races in Cleveland, and another Bell test pilot, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , demanded $150,000, the equivalent of about $1.6 million today, to make the flight. So the pilot seat passed to Chuck Yeager.

The X-1 loaded into the modified B-29 Superfortress mothership. (US Air Force)

Yeager had begun his military career as an enlisted aircraft mechanic before training as a pilot, and he became an ace while flying the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in WWII. Two days before the historic flight, Yeager broke two ribs in a horse riding accident, but he hid the injury from the Air Force so he wouldn’t be barred from flying. The pain from the injury made it impossible for him to close the hatch on the X-1, so fellow pilot !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! rigged a broom handle to the door to allow Yeager to close it. Yeager nicknamed the bright orange X-1 Glamorous Glennis after his wife, the same name he had given his Mustang. On October 14, 1947, Yeager and the X-1 were taken aloft by a modified !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and dropped over the dry lake bed. Yeager fired the rocket engine after falling clear of the B-29 and accelerated the X-1 to a speed of Mach 1.07 at 45,000 feet, thus becoming the first plane and pilot to break the speed of sound in level flight. After the rocket fuel was expended, the X-1 glided to a soft landing on Muroc’s the lake bed. For his historic flight, Yeager was awarded both the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! Trophies in 1948, and he received the Harmon International Trophy in 1954. The Glamorous Glennis now resides at the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in Washington DC. After his historic flight, Yeager continued to set more speed records, and held various Air Force commands before retiring at the rank of brigadier general.

The Bell X-1A, in which Yeager reached Mach 2.44 (1620 mph) in level flight at a record 74,700 feet on December 12, 1953. Yeager then lost control of the rocket plane and it spun violently and plummeted 50,000 feet, causing him to break the canopy with his helmet. Yeager was able to regain control and land safely. (US Air Force)

Not only was the data gleaned from the X-1 flights used in future X planes and supersonic aircraft, the entire test and evaluation program served as a model for all future !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! projects. The pioneering work done by Bell and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (the precursor to NASA) has led to aircraft such as the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! which routinely flew at three times the speed of sound, and the experimental !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! hypersonic aircraft, which has reached speeds approaching Mach 10. It is also worth noting that Orville Wright was still alive when Yeager broke the sound barrier, though he died two months two months after Yeager’s historic flight. In a testament to the rapid technological advances of the airplane in the quest for speed, the world had gone from the first flight to Mach 1 in the span of one man’s life.

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A vintage P-40 warbird in American Volunteer Group (Flying Tigers) livery. The roundels on the wing represent Nationalist China. (Military Aviation Museum)

October 14, 1938 – The first flight of the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk. The Curtiss P-40 Warhawk has become one of the iconic aircraft of WWII, perhaps best known for its service with the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! fighting in China. Fighting to defend the Chinese Nationalist government from Japanese invasion, the Flying Tigers, in their classic shark-mouthed P-4os, fought doggedly against more maneuverable Japanese aircraft. While the P-40 was neither the fastest nor the most nimble fighter of the war, it was one of the most numerous, and was available to America and her allies in large numbers before more powerful fighters could be brought to bear.

Curtiss XP-40 prototype in flight (US Air Force)

The Warhawk traces its roots back to the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , a fighter that was designed at the same time as the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . It proved popular with pilots, and though it saw limited action at the outbreak of WWII, the P-36 fought well for the French in the early years of the war. But while the P-36 was liked for its good handling, it suffered from a serious lack of power. To address this deficiency, the P-40 was developed from the tenth P-36A Hawk airframe. Rather than using the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! radial of the P-36, the Warhawk was fitted with an !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! V-12 engine, the same engine found in the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and the only operational American-designed V-12 liquid-cooled engine developed by the US during the war. Interestingly, the original P-40 design called for the radiator to be placed behind the pilot, but the Curtiss-Wright sales department asked that it be moved to the front, perhaps in an attempt to make the P-40 look more like its P-36 predecessor in hopes of making it more appealing to the Army. The radiator placement gave the P-40 its iconic shark mouth silhouette, and the rear-mounted radiator later became the trademark of another famous fighter, the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

A major drawback for the new fighter, however, was its single-stage, single-speed supercharger. But what the Warhawk gave up in performance it made up for in ruggedness and firepower. The lack of engine power limited the Warhawk’s performance against more powerful German aircraft at high altitudes, but it more than held its own under 16,000 feet. And while more nimble aircraft, such as the Japanese !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , could outmaneuver the Warhawk, the development of effective combat tactics gave it an edge against the more fragile Japanese designs.

A formation of P-40N Warhawks from the 24th Fighter Squadron operating from Madden Field, Panama in 1944. Note the extension of the cockpit glass behind the pilot to improve rearward visibility. (US Air Force)

The P-40 was developed into a myriad of variants, including the P-40F and P-40L, both of which mounted a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! V-12 in place of the Allison. But with the majority of the Merlin engines going to the P-51, Curtiss reverted to the Allison engine, and it was the P-40N that became the definitive model and was produced in the greatest numbers, with 5,220 of the nearly 14,000 fighters built as the P-40N. The N retained the stretched fuselage that was introduced with the F, and attempts were made to further lighten the aircraft by removing two of the six wing-mounted .50 caliber machine guns. But in practice, the added firepower was preferable to the increase in speed and the guns were replaced. The fuselage behind the pilot was opened up and covered with plexiglass to improve rearward visibility, and the rugged, powerful fighter was used primarily for ground attack from 1944 onward. The P-40 was the third most-produced American WWII fighter behind !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (15,660) and the P-51 Mustang (15,586). It was also exported to almost every Allied combatant in WWII, and found great success with the Royal Air Force and Royal Australian Air Force, where it was known as the Tomahawk and the Kittyhawk. Though built in large numbers, only about 28 Warhawks remain flying today, while many others are displayed in aviation museums around the world.

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October 15, 1933 – The Rolls-Royce Merlin engine is started for the first time. Hurricane. Spitfire. Lancaster. Mosquito. Mustang. These are the names of some of the greatest aircraft to come out of WWII, and they all share one thing in common: the mighty Rolls-Royce Merlin 12-cylinder engine, one of the most successful aircraft piston engines ever produced. Work began on the the Merlin in the early 1930s when Rolls-Royce determined that they needed an engine that could provide more power than the 21-liter !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! engine then in production. The Kestrel had provided power for a great number of British and even German aircraft, though most of those types were obsolete by the outbreak of WWII.

The new 1,100 hp engine was called the PV-12, as it was a private venture that received no government funding for its development. At first, Rolls-Royce chose an !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! system for their new engine, but that arrangement was abandoned in favor of a more traditional liquid cooling system when the former proved to be unreliable, and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , which helps with the liquid cooling process, became available from the US. While the PV-12 was under development, the Air Ministry issued requirements for two new fighters, and both the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! were built around the new PV-12 rather than the older Kestrel.

The Merlin is perhaps most closely associated with the high-flying Supermarine Spitfire which tangled with German fighters during the Battle of Britain (San Diego Air and Space Museum)

But the more workmanlike Hawker Hurricane also benefitted from the Merlin’s power as it took on the Luftwaffe bombers and targets on the ground (RAF)

In keeping with the tradition of naming their engines after birds of prey, the PV-12 was renamed for the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , a small falcon known for its speed and agility. The Merlin was first mated to a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! biplane for testing, but the first run of production engines was fraught with unreliability, such as cylinder head cracking, coolant leaks, and excessive wear to the camshafts and crankshaft main bearings. These problems were ironed out in the development process, and the Merlin II and Merlin III became the standard production engines. Development of a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! progressed alongside engine development, and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! further improved the engine’s high altitude performance. The Merlin was produced in England as well as under license by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in the US as the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . It would eventually be used to power 43 different aircraft, from single-engine fighters like the Spitfire and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! to large four-engine bombers such as the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Nearly 150,000 Merlins were built by the time production ended in 1950.

A pair of Merlins powered the remarkable wooden de Havilland Mosquito to a top speed of 415 mph (Canadian Forces)

And the Americans mounted a version of the Merlin built by Packard in the North American P-51 Mustang, one of the greatest fighters of WWII (US Air Force)

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Short Takeoff

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October 12, 1997 – The death of John Denver. Born on December 31, 1943, Denver is best known as a successful singer, songwriter, and political activist. But he was also an avid pilot, with over 2,700 hours of experience and pilot ratings in both single- and multi-engine aircraft. He also held glider and instrument ratings. On the day of his death, Denver was practicing touch-and-go landings at Monterey Peninsula Airport in California in his !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (N555JD). The builder of the aircraft (not Denver) had placed the fuel gauge and switch for the two fuel tanks behind the pilot’s seat, making it difficult to monitor the fuel level and operate the switch. NTSB crash investigators !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! that Denver attempted to twist his body to operate the switch, then lost control of the aircraft and crashed into Monterey Bay. Investigators also cited unfamiliarity with the aircraft and an insufficient fuel load at takeoff as factors in the crash.

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(NASA)

October 12, 1976 – The first flight of the Sikorsky S-72, a hybrid helicopter/fixed wing aircraft that was developed by NASA and the US Army. Assembled from different parts of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! helicopters, the goal of the research program was to allow in-flight measurements of helicopter rotor characteristics prior to fitting them on prototype helicopters, though the S-72 was also capable of flight without a main rotor. The S-72, also called the Rotor Systems Research Aircraft (RSRA), took its first full compound flight in 1978, and the program ended in 1988.

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(Author unknown)

October 12, 1964 – The launch of Voskhod 1, the seventh manned space flight of the Soviet space program. Based on the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! spacecraft, Voskhod 1 had an added solid-fuel retro-rocket fitted to slow its descent. The flight is notable as being the first to carry three crewmen into orbit—a cosmonaut, an engineer and a physician—and the first in which the cosmonauts did not wear spacesuits. The bulky spacesuits were removed so that all three cosmonauts could fit into a capsule designed for only two. The standard ejection seats were also removed and replaced with three simple couches. The flight set an altitude record of 209 miles above the Earth, and the crew primarily carried out biomedical research. Voskhod 1 returned to earth after 24 hours in space.

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(Pedro Escobal)

October 13, 1972 – An airliner carrying a rugby team and other passengers crashes in the Andes. The chartered Uruguayan Air Force !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! carrying 45 passengers and crew was en route to a rugby match in Chile when the flight crew initiated their descent prematurely through a fog-shrouded mountain pass and crashed in the Andes. Twelve passengers died as a direct result of the crash, and five more died the following day from their injuries. A further eight died in an avalanche, and the remaining victims resorted to cannibalism to survive. With no sign of rescue on the way, two survivors walked for nine days to find help, and the remaining 16 survivors were finally rescued on December 23, two months after the crash. Their ordeal was dramatized in the 1993 feature film !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

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October 13, 1950 – The first flight of the Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellation, the first major variant of the original L-1049 Constellation to enter production. Faced with competition from the rival !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , which could carry more passengers and thus generate more revenue, Lockheed added 18 feet to the fuselage of the L-049 Constellation accommodate up to 105 passengers, increased the fuel capacity, fitted larger windows, and improved the cabin heating and pressurization. The result was an aircraft that equaled the DC-6 in performance and could carry a greater payload, though at a shorter range. The Super Connie also served with the USAF as a transport and part of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (AWACS) as the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

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October 14, 2012 – Felix Baumgartner sets a new altitude record for a parachute jump. The jump was part of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! project which set out to break the existing parachute altitude record of 102,8oo ft set by US Air Force !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! during the US Air Force !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! project in 1960. Stepping out of a capsule suspended from a balloon, Baumgartner dove from an altitude of 128,097 feet and reached a speed of 1,357.64 mph in free fall, becoming the first person to break the speed of sound without a vehicle. Baumgartner’s record stood for just two years before it was broken by Google executive !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , who jumped from 135,890 feet.

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(US Department of Defense)

October 14, 1962 – A US Air Force !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! reconnaissance flight over Cuba discovers Russian-built ballistic missile launching facilities, triggering the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Following the failed !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 1961 and the installation of American missiles in Italy and Turkey, the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! government requested that the Soviets place missiles in Cuba to deter any more American action against the Communist island nation. The US demanded that the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! medium-range nuclear missiles be removed and, after a tense 13-day stand off highlighted by low-level US reconnaissance flights over Cuba and an American naval blockade of the island that put the world on the brink of nuclear war, the Russians backed down and agreed to dismantle the sites and remove the missiles.

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(US Air Force)

October 14, 1953 – The first flight of the North American X-10, an unmanned aircraft powered by two !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! turbojets and designed to investigate the feasibility of long-range cruise missiles. Though essentially a flying missile, the X-10 was fitted with landing gear which made the aircraft reusable. It had a delta wing and forward !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and was controlled in flight by an onboard computer. When the X-10 entered service for testing, it was the fastest turbojet-powered aircraft of its day. With a maximum speed of Mach 2, the X-10 could reach an altitude of 49,000 feet and had a range of 627 miles. Thirteen research aircraft were built, though only one survives, and it is housed at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Ohio.

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(US Air Force)

October 14, 1949 – The first flight of the Fairchild C-123 Provider, a transport and cargo aircraft designed by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and built by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The C-123 was originally designed by Chase as an airborne assault glider before the addition of two !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! radial engines which were later augmented by two !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The C-123 primarily served the US Air Force before being transferred to the US Coast Guard, Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard, and saw extensive use in the Vietnam War, most famously—or notoriously—as the platform used to spray !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! defoliant. Just over 300 were built, and the type was retired in 1980.

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(US Air Force)

October 14, 1943 – Bombers of the US Eighth Air Force attack the ball bearing factories at Schweinfurt for a second time, suffering heavy losses.   !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in WWII was seen as a way to destroy both enemy war production and morale, and the ball bearing factories at Schweinfurt were seen as a “panacea target” whose destruction might cripple the German war machine. Following an unsuccessful raid on the factories in August 1943, 291 !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! tried again, but more than 1,000 Luftwaffe fighters rose to meet them. The ensuing carnage came to be known as Black Thursday. !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! escort planes ran short of fuel, leaving the bombers to continue to the target unescorted. By the end of the mission, 198 of the 291 bombers were either damaged or destroyed, and 650 airmen had been killed, wounded or listed as missing in action. The raid was ultimately a failure, as ball bearing production was not halted, and it would be four months before the Allies tried again, but with more effective long-range escort provided by the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

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(Fairchild Aircraft)

October 15, 1985 – The first flight of the Fairchild T-46 Eaglet, a proposed primary jet trainer developed in response to the US Air Force’s Next Generation Trainer program in 1981 to find a replacement for the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . After construction by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! of a 62% scale aircraft, the Air Force accepted the Eaglet and placed an order for 650 aircraft. However, despite the successful flight of the T-46, the cost of production had almost doubled, and budget cuts mandated by the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! of 1985 led to the cancellation of the program after only three aircraft were built. The cancellation also meant the end of the storied !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! company.

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(NASA)

October 15, 1952 – The first flight of the Douglas X-3 Stiletto, an experimental aircraft that was designed to investigate sustained flight at supersonic speeds. It was hoped that the Stiletto would maintain speeds of Mach 2, but its !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! afterburning turbojets were so underpowered that it was unable to achieve Mach 1 in level flight, though it did go supersonic in a dive. Despite not reaching its goals, the program was still considered a success, as it provided significant data on fuselage strength necessary for high-speed flight over the course of 51 test flights, and data gleaned from the short, trapezoidal wings was used by Lockheed in their design of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

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Hermann Göring, right, with Adolf Hitler in 1938. (Author unknown)

October 15, 1946 – The death of Hermann Göring. Born on January 12, 1893, Göring began his military career as a fighter pilot in WWI, where he became a fighter ace and was awarded the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , also known as the Blue Max, one of the highest honors of the Kingdom of Prussia. Göring assisted !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in his rise to to power in 1933, formed the feared !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (Gestapo) secret police, and became the second most powerful man in Germany. In 1935, Göring became commander-in-chief of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , though his lack of success in caused him to lose favor with Hitler. Göring eventually withdrew from positions of leadership to focus on looting artwork, and was tried after the war as a war criminal. Convicted and facing death by hanging, Göring committed suicide the night before the prosecution of his sentence by ingesting a cyanide capsule that had been smuggled to him by an American guard whom Göring had bribed.

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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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CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever > ttyymmnn 10/15/2019 at 12:41

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I was wondering the other day. Have you ever played KSP (Kerbal Space Program)

I’d love to see what kind of planes you could build in it.

HammerheadFistpunch > ttyymmnn 10/15/2019 at 12:44

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I just watched “the Odyssey of flight 33" last night. Man I love watching old TV about the future or science stuff. The long and skinny is that they break a kind of sound barrier (at 3000 kts) in a 707 and go through time twice. Because thats how little the sound barrier and hypersonics was understood by the mainstream in 1961. what a completely different time to be alive.

Thats just an aside about the X-1

ttyymmnn > CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever 10/15/2019 at 12:49

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I have not. I generally don’t do much in the way of games of any sort. But I have certainly heard of KSP. Looks like it might be fun.

ttyymmnn > HammerheadFistpunch 10/15/2019 at 12:49

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Sometimes I wish I was doing what I am doing about 50 years ago. 

TheRealBicycleBuck > ttyymmnn 10/15/2019 at 19:29

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Another excellent post! This one especially so because of so many aircraft I wasn’t familiar with!

ttyymmnn > TheRealBicycleBuck 10/15/2019 at 19:39

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I wish I had more time to write posts about obscure aircraft. I’m back to teaching trumpet lessons after many years and it’s really eating up my time. I’ve got tons of article ideas and no time to write them. 

TheRealBicycleBuck > ttyymmnn 10/15/2019 at 22:37

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I have time, but I’m a bit burnt out from posting and studying and way too much work.