This Date in Aviation History: April 10 - April 12

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 04/12/2019 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 April 10 through April 12.

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The Shuttle Columbia lifts off from Pad A, Launch Complex 39, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (NASA)

April 12, 1981 – The Space Shuttle Columbia launches on STS-1, the first flight of the Space Shuttle Program. Before the arrival of the Space Shuttle, satellites and astronauts were sent to space in entirely expendable spacecraft. The rockets that boosted them beyond Earth’s atmosphere were left behind in orbit after their fuel was spent, or burned up re-entering the atmosphere, and the capsules that held the astronauts were so heavily damaged by the friction and heat of re-entry that they could not be used again. Not only was this process wasteful, it was also terribly expensive. So, beginning all the way back in 1969, the same year that !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! first set foot on the Moon with !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , NASA began to develop a spacecraft designed to be used again and again, one that would function as a “space truck” that could haul payloads into space relatively cheaply.

The Shuttle program got its official start in 1972 with an announcement by President Richard M. Nixon that NASA would develop what eventually came to be called a Space Transport System (all Shuttle missions were given the prefix STS). Initially, the hopes for the new system were quite ambitious, and NASA envisioned as many as 50 launches per year. But before the space truck could start hauling payloads to space, NASA had to decide exactly what the Shuttle would look like. Engineers considered a myriad of designs and configurations, and there was much debate over just how much of the system would be reused. There was talk of placing air-breathing engines on both the Shuttle and its booster, so both return to earth like an airplane, or even fly under their own power between landing and launch sites. But ultimately, NASA settled on a design where the orbiter sat atop a huge expendable fuel tank and was boosted into space by a pair of solid rocket boosters which would be retrieved from the ocean, refueled, and used again. The first Shuttle, Enterprise (originally named Constitution , but changed after a huge write-in campaign to honor !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! TV series), was used for flying and landing tests. The second Shuttle, Columbia , would be the first to blast off and reach Earth orbit.

The crew of STS-1, astronauts John Young and Robert Crippen (NASA)

STS-1 was commanded by veteran astronaut !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! who, as the commander of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 1972, became the ninth person to walk on the Moon. Young would eventually become NASA’s longest-serving astronaut. The Shuttle Pilot for STS-1 was !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Crippen was going to space for the first time, but would later command three other Shuttle missions. Unlike all missions prior to the Space Shuttle, which launched unmanned spacecraft to test the vehicle, STS-1 was the first time NASA performed the maiden flight of a spacecraft with astronauts onboard. NASA had originally considered using STS-1 to test the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (RTLS) abort procedure, but Commander Young overruled that idea, citing the danger involved in such a test, So STS-1 was carried out as a planned orbital mission. By the end of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , no Shuttle ever had to use the RTLS procedure.

Columbia touches down on the dry lake bed at Edwards Air Force Base in California, successfully completing the first mission of the Space Shuttle program (NASA)

Columbia launched into space without incident twenty years to the day after the launch of Cosmonaut !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the first man to fly in space. However, the timing of the launch was more coincidence than recognition, since Columbia was originally scheduled to go to space two days earlier but the launch was scrubbed. Columbia’s only payload was a flight instrumentation package, and the mission was designed to test the overall spaceworthiness of the Shuttle, achieve orbit, and return. After attaining an altitude of 166 nautical miles and making 37 orbits of the Earth, Columbia re-entered the atmosphere and glided to a gentle stop on the dry lake bed at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Columbia went on to serve NASA for 22 years, and flew 27 successful missions before it was !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! on its 28th flight in a crash that killed all seven crew members. By the time the Space Shuttle program ended in 2011, the program that was meant to save money ended up costing $209 billion. Shuttles completed 133 successful missions, flew 20,830 orbits of the Earth,   spent 1,323 days in space, and carried 3,513,638 pounds of cargo into space while returning 229,132 pounds of cargo to Earth. Two orbiters, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!   and Columbia , were lost, along with 14 astronauts.

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April 12, 1961 – Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man to fly in space. Man’s efforts to fly in space have seen a number of milestones, the first of which was the launch of a Russian satellite named !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! into Earth orbit on October 4, 1957. With that launch, the journey to space became a race, one which actually traces its roots back to Germany and WWII. The Germans were far ahead of the Russians and the Western allies in rocket technology, having unleashed their !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ballistic rockets against England and Europe in the dying throes of the Third Reich. Following the war, captured scientific data—and captured scientists—formed the nucleus of the space programs for both the Cold War superpowers. The emphasis at first was on creating ballistic missiles, but with the announcement of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! set for 1957, the Americans said that they would place a satellite in Earth orbit, and the Russians replied that they would do the same. The Russians were the first, with Sputnik 1 . The Americans responded to the basketball-sized Russian satellite with a satellite of their own, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and the space race shifted into high gear.

For reasons that were perhaps more propaganda than science, each country wanted to be the first to put a man into space. The American effort was dubbed !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and the program began with a series of 20 unmanned developmental flights beginning in 1959. On the other side of both the world and the ideological divide, the Soviets initiated the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Like their American counterparts, the first Russian cosmonauts, known as the Sochi Six, were all military pilots, though none were as experienced in flying as the original American astronauts, known as the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , since the Russian program relied more on automation. Before sending a cosmonaut to space, the Russians carried out a series of test launches, some carrying dogs and other biological specimens. The dogs !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! were the first living creatures to leave the planet and, lucky for the space dogs, the first to be recovered from orbit.

For the historic flight, Russia tapped fighter pilot !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , with cosmonauts !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! as backups. The Vostok rocket was erected on its launch pad at the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in Kazakhstan and, with a cry of “Poyekhali!” (“Let’s go!”), Gagarin was launched into space at 6:07 am local time. The rocket worked flawlessly, and Gagarin radioed that he could see the Earth, and that everything was working well. From launch to landing, the entire flight, with its single orbit of the Earth, took 108 minutes. The capsule re-entered Earth’s atmosphere safely and, as he neared the ground, Gagarin was automatically ejected from his capsule and parachuted to the ground. The capsule descended separately by its own parachute. After landing, Gagarin encountered some Russian farmers, and told them, “Don’t be afraid, I am a Soviet citizen like you, who has descended from space and I must find a telephone to call Moscow!”

The Russians followed Vostok 1 four months later with !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , when Titov spent just over 25 hours in space and made 17 orbits of the Earth. The Americans responded to Gagarin’s flight with the launch of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! on May 5, 1961, a short suborbital flight. However, it provided important data for the American program, and astronaut !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! became the first to exercise manual control over a spacecraft. The American orbital response finally came on February 20, 1962, when !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , flying !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ,   became the first American—but the third man—to orbit the Earth.

Yuri Gagarin receives a hero’s welcome in a parade in the Polish capital city of Warsaw in 1961.

Though Gagarin served as a backup crew for the ill-fated !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , he never returned to space. For being the first man in space and, more importantly, beating the Americans, Gagarin was named a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , his nation’s highest honor. He became an international celebrity, and served as the deputy training director of the Cosmonaut Training Center. However, his fame would be short-lived. Seven years after his momentous flight, Gagarin was killed on March 27, 1968 in the crash of his !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! trainer at the age of 34. The cause of the crash remains a matter of debate.

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Short Takeoff

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April 10, 1963 – The first flight of the EWR VJ 101, a supersonic vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) interceptor developed as a replacement for the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Two aircraft, designated X-1 and X-2, were completed during the five-year test program. The X-1 performed the first successful hover in April 1963, then the first transition to forward flight five months later. In all, a total of 40 level flights, 24 hover flights and 14 full transitions were performed. On July 29, 1964, the X-1 reached Mach 1.04 without using an afterburner and, though the program showed promise, it was canceled in 1968 after its role was changed from interceptor to fighter.

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(Author unknown)

April 11, 1943 – The first flight of the Piasecki PV-2, the second successful helicopter flown in the US after the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Constructed as a technology demonstrator, the PV-2 introduced new features such as dynamically balanced rotor blades, a rigid tail rotor with a tension-torsion pitch changing system and full cyclic and collective pitch control. Only one example was ever produced, and it is now on display at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum’s !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in northern Virginia.

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(US Air Force)

April 11, 1952 – The first flight of the Piasecki H-21 Workhorse/CH-21 Shawnee, a multi-mission tandem-rotor helicopter developed from the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The H-21 was originally designed for Arctic rescue missions and featured full winterization for polar climates. However, it was pressed into service in the early days of the Vietnam War primarily as a troop transport where it received the designation CH-21. Called the “Flying Banana” by troops, the Shawnee was poorly suited to the hot jungle climate of Southeast Asia, and was removed from service in 1964 with the arrival of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , better known as the Huey. The Shawnee was finally retired from active service with the arrival of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 1965.

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(NASA)

April 12, 1985 – United States Senator Jake Garn becomes the first sitting politician to fly in space. !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! launched from Kennedy Space Center and was the 16th flight of the Space Shuttle program and the first spaceflight carrying a sitting politician. !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , a Republican Senator from Utah, flew as a Payload Specialist after he asked to go to space as part of his role as the head of the Senate appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA. Discovery’s primary mission was the deployment of two communications satellites, and Garn was along primarily as an observer, though he did serve as the subject of medical experiments. Garn suffered from such severe !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , better known as space sickness, that the system for measuring the severity of the malady is now counted (jokingly) in “Garns.” The !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! was named in the Senator’s honor.

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April 12, 1945 – The destroyer USS Mannert L. Abele is sunk by a Japanese Ohka suicide rocket plane. In the closing stages of WWII in the Pacific, the Japanese carried out !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! attacks on the US fleet using the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , a rocket-powered, piloted flying bomb that was dropped from a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! bomber mother ship. Off the island of Okinawa, a flight of six bombers released their Ohka rocket bombs against the American fleet, with one striking the destroyer !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!   (DD 733). The piloted bomb penetrated the starboard side and its 2,646-pound warhead detonated in the aft engine room. The explosion broke the destroyer’s keel midships and the ship broke in two and sank in a matter of minutes with the loss of 84 sailors. Though Ohkas damaged a handful of ships, Abele was the only ship sunk, and the kamikaze rocket was negligible had no affect on the outcome of the war.

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April 12, 1935 – The first flight of the Bristol Blenheim, a British light bomber that was originally conceived as a fast airliner. The Blenheim saw extensive service early in WWII. It was one of the first British aircraft to employ an all-metal stressed-skin fuselage, retractable landing gear, a powered gun turret, and variable-pitch propellers. The Blenheim served as a light bomber, long range fighter, and night fighter, but, while it was capable of outrunning most fighters in the early days of the war, it was no match for the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! during daylight bombing raids. The British retired the Blenheim in 1944, though it served in Finland until 1956.

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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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Chariotoflove > ttyymmnn 04/12/2019 at 13:57

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NASA had originally considered using STS-1 to test the Return To Launch Site (RTLS) abort procedure, but Commander Young overruled that idea...

I don’t know how that conversation went, but in my imagination , the transcript isn’t family friendly. :)

EngineerWithTools > Chariotoflove 04/12/2019 at 14:11

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I’ve read it included something like “we don’t need practice bleeding”, although I imagine there may have been some additional language, for emphasis.

facw > ttyymmnn 04/12/2019 at 14:12

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Columbia launched into space without incident twenty years to the day after the launch of Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin 

This is one of those things that always messes with my perception. To me Gararin, launching well before I was born, seems like the distant past, while the shuttle still seems the epitome of high-tech. To have them only 20 years apart seems amazing, and I guess really highlights how fast aerospace was moving in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

In a similar vein, this xkcd observation from 2012 (so it’s even more true today):

The first Star Trek episode aired closer in time to the ratification of the 19th Amendment—guaranteeing women in the US the right to vote—than to today. 

ttyymmnn > facw 04/12/2019 at 14:43

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My favorite example of the speed of technological development is the fact that Orville Wright was still alive when Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier.

user314 > facw 04/12/2019 at 16:22

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There were fewer years between the Wright’s first flight and the B-52's then there are between the BUFF’s 1st flight and now.

Just Jeepin' > ttyymmnn 11/15/2019 at 13:42

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Suggestion f or next year’s April 12th edition:

https://www.tristar500.net/library/flight1080.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Air_Lines_Flight_1080

ttyymmnn > Just Jeepin' 11/15/2019 at 14:28

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Interesting! Hadn’t heard of that one. I look forward to reading more about how the pilots dealt with it than is in the Wiki article. 

Just Jeepin' > ttyymmnn 11/15/2019 at 14:31

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The pilot’s account in the PDF is compelling, even to someone who didn’t understand a word of it.