This Date in Aviation History: March 21 - March 24

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 03/24/2020 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 March 21 through March 24.

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A US Navy Douglas F3D-1 Skyknight from Composite Squadron VC-3 “Blue Nemesis” in flight circa 1950 (US Navy)

March 23, 1948 – The first flight of the Douglas F3D Skyknight. Today, modern jet fighters with powerful radars are capable of locating and destroying enemy targets day or night, in all types of weather, and beyond visual range. But in WWII, radar tracking systems were in their infancy, and specialized night fighters were developed to carry the bulky radar sets aloft and to seek out enemy aircraft. The specialized radar-guided night fighter continued after the war and into the jet age, along with the specific designations of day fighter and night fighter.

F3D-2T2 Skyknight from VF-101 “Grim Reapers” used for radar operator and electronic warfare training (US Navy)

In 1945, the US Navy issued a requirement for a jet-powered, radar-equipped night fighter that would be capable of operating from aircraft carriers. They accepted proposals from Grumman and Douglas, and the Douglas offering was awarded a development contract in April 1946. Unlike Grumman’s proposal, which featured four engines, lead designer !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and the team at Douglas created a twin-engine fighter built around two !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! engines housed in nacelles nestled along the side of the fuselage. The J34s gave the Skyknight a top speed of 565 mph and, in keeping with standard postwar design practices, the Heinemann’s new night fighter had straight wings and tailplane. The F3D was the Navy’s first two-place jet and the pilot and radar operator sat side-by-side in a large cockpit, but they had no ejection seats. In case of emergency, the crew were required to exit through an escape chute and drop out of the bottom of the aircraft, similar to the system that would later be used on the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . To seek out enemy targets, two radars were housed in the bulbous nose, with one acting as a search radar and the other as a tracking radar. The third radar was located in the tail to alert the crew to attacks from behind during night missions. Once the enemy target was acquired, the Skyknight crew could engage it with four 20mm cannons, rockets, and later, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! air-to-air missiles.

US Marine Corps Douglas F3D-2 Skyknights of Marine Night Fighter Squadron VMF(N)-513 “Flying Nightmares” parked on the flightline, circa 1952 (US Navy)

While the F3D (later !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! F-10) was never designed to be a dogfighter, it’s handling capabilities were still quite good, and it could could even out turn the Soviet !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Though designed operations from US carriers, the US Marine Corps operated the upgraded F3D-2 Skyknight from land bases during the Korean War, usually in support of nighttime bombing missions. On November 2, 1952, Marine Corps pilot Maj. William Stratton and radar operator MSGT Hans Hoglind of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! claimed the first ever nighttime radar-led kill of one jet by another when they claimed to have shot down a North Korean !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Later that month, Skyknight pilots claimed the first victory over a MiG 15 and, in December 1952, a Skyknight crew claimed the first radar lock-on kill of an enemy aircraft without visual contact when USMC pilots downed a North Korean !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! biplane. Throughout the course of the war, Marine Corps pilots flying the Skyknight were responsible for destroying more enemy aircraft than any other US Navy fighter, while only a single Skyknight was lost in air-to-air combat.

A Douglas F3D-1M Skyknight, armed with an AAM-N-2 Sparrow missile, taxis at Naval Air Missile Test Center (NAMTC) Point Mugu, California on March 12, 1952. (US Navy)

The Skyknight was gradually phased out of service following the Korean War, but it continued to serve as a test platform, most famously during the development of the radar-guided !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! missile. The Skyknight was the first aircraft to be fitted with an operational missile of this type, and was also the only Korean War-era jet to see service in Vietnam, where it flew as an electronic warfare platform prior to the introduction of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Marine Corps Skyknight pilots made history again when they carried out the first airborne radar jamming mission in support of a US Air Force raid on missile sites near Hanoi in 1965. While only 265 Skyknights were produced, they hold an outsized place in Naval and Marine Corps aviation history, with the last Skyknight serving until 1970.  

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March 24, 2015 – The crash of Germanwings Flight 9525. Commercial airline passengers can usually rest assured that when they board an aircraft the pilot is in no more of a hurry to crash the plane than we as passengers are, and that the pilot in command will do everything in their power to prevent a crash. However, in a handful of occasions in commercial aviation history, airline passengers and people on the ground have fallen victim to a deranged pilot who commits what is known as !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! where, for whatever reason, the pilot chooses to crash the aircraft intentionally and kill all those on board along with him. While the occurrences are certainly rare, suicide by pilot does happen. In recent history, the first officer of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! allegedly locked the captain out of the cockpit and flew his !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! into the Atlantic Ocean, killing 217 passengers and crew. And, it’s possible that the captain of Malaysian Airlines !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! intentionally flew his Boeing 777 deep into the southern Indian Ocean before running out of fuel and crashing. However, with no wreckage located, we may never know the truth. There can be little doubt, though, about what happened to Germanwings Flight 9525. Investigators believe that first officer Andreas Lubitz deliberately crashed into the French Alps while piloting an !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (D-AIPX), as there is ample, though circumstantial, evidence for suspicion to fall on the Germanwings pilot.

Lubitz became a trainee pilot for Germanwings’ parent company Lufthansa in 2008, but suspended his training voluntarily after being hospitalized for severe depression. In 2013, he reentered the training program, this time in the United States. After a stint as a flight attendant, Lubitz joined Germanwings as a first officer in 2014. On the day of the crash, he was flying with Captain Patrick Sondenheimer, who had flown for Germanwings for 10 years and amassed 6,000 flight hours. Once the aircraft reached its cruising altitude of 38,000 feet on a flight from Barcelona to Düsseldorf, Captain Sondenheimer left the cockpit to use the lavatory. Once the captain was out of the cockpit, Lubitz locked the door and initiated a rapid descent by setting the autopilot for an altitude of 100 feet and pulling the engines back to idle.

When the captain returned from the lavatory, he found the cockpit door locked. Lubitz had also apparently disabled the keypad that allows entry from the cabin. The cockpit voice recorder (CVR) captured the sounds of Captain Sondenheimer first requesting reentry to the cockpit, then sounds of him banging on the door, followed by sounds of him trying to break the door down. The screams of passengers were also heard on the recording. All the while, Lubitz said nothing, and the only sound recorded from his was his slow and steady breathing. He ignored repeated attempts at communication from air traffic controllers, and a French Mirage fighter was scrambled to the scene. After a 10-minute descent, the airliner crashed into the Alps with such force that rescuers found no piece of the airliner larger than an automobile. All 150 passengers and crew were killed, making it the second worst suicide by pilot in history after the alleged EgyptAir crash, and the deadliest air crash in France since 1981.

The subsequent investigation immediately focused on First Officer Lubitz. A search of his apartment found no suicide note, but investigators did discover a letter addressed to Lubitz stating that a doctor had deemed him unfit for work. Though Lubitz had failed to notify Lufthansa of his status, it is also illegal in Germany for a company to access employees’ private medical records, so there was no way Lufthansa could have known of the change in Lubitz’s medical status. Investigators also found that Lubitz was taking prescription drugs, and had been diagnosed with a psychosomatic illness. Perhaps most damning, investigators found search records on Lubitz’s computer for “ways to commit suicide” and for descriptions of the security provisions of aircraft cockpit doors. They also discovered that Lubitz had been treated for suicidal tendencies and had been denied a commercial pilot license in the US. As a result of the crash and investigation, authorities in seven countries instituted a policy requiring that there be at least two crew members in the cockpit at all times, though the requirement was !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! by the European Aviation Safety Agency in 2017. Canada followed suit, thought the rule remains in effect in the US.

The final report by the Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses pour la Sécurité de l’Aviation Civile (BEA) can be read !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

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March 24, 1935 – The first flight of the Avro Anson. For an island nation such as England, keeping watch on the surrounding seas is a vital part of national security, and a task which became substantially easier with the arrival of the airplane. By the 1930s, the task of maritime patrol and reconnaissance was performed by large flying boats, but those aircraft were expensive to build and operate, and required large crews. In 1933, the British Air Ministry issued a requirement for a smaller and simpler coastal patrol and maritime reconnaissance aircraft, one that could operate from land bases and complement, though not entirely replace, the flying boats.

The !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! responded with their !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , a twin-engine biplane airliner that carried six to eight passengers, while !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! offered its Type 652A, a modified version of their !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! airliner. In the ensuing competition, the Avro aircraft was deemed superior, and an initial contract for 174 aircraft, now named “Anson” in honor of 18th-century British Admiral of the Fleet !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , was awarded in 1935. Like many aircraft developed in the years leading up to WWII, the Anson was a low wing cantilever monoplane, and the wing was constructed mostly of spruce plywood. A metal tube framework covered with fabric formed the fuselage. The Anson was powered by a pair of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! radial engines that provided a top speed of 188 mph with a range of just under 800 miles. The landing gear was retractable, though it required a total of 144 cranks of a handle in the cockpit to pull the wheels up. Therefore, many shorter flights were undertaken with the landing gear down.

The Anson was originally designed for a crew of three. The pilot was responsible for aiming the fixed, forward-firing .303 caliber machine gun, while the radio operator/gunner manned a single .303 caliber !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! machine gun housed in a dorsal turret. A fourth crew member was added after 1938. In addition to the machine guns, up to 360 pounds of bombs could be carried on underwing stations. The Anson entered service with the RAF in March 1936 and, though it was designed for maritime patrol, it really came into its own as a training aircraft, and it’s patrol duties were taken over by the newly-arrived !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . By the time England entered WWII, the RAF had 824 Ansons, the majority of which were used to train bomber crews in multi-engine aircraft operation before they transitioned to training in large bombers. It was also used to train navigators, radio operators and bombardiers, and a powered turret was added to train defensive gunners in aerial gunnery.

After the war, production of the Anson continued for use as a small civilian airliner and executive aircraft. By the time production finally ended in 1952, just over 11,000 Ansons had been built, with nearly 3,000 of those produced by Federal Aircraft in Canada, production numbers that are second only to the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! bomber in total aircraft built.

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Short Takeoff

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(US Navy)

March 21, 1971 – The first flight of the Westland Lynx, a multi-purpose helicopter designed and built by Westland Helicopters in England as a replacement for the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Originally built as a utility helicopter for both civilian and military use, the Lynx was further developed into armed gunship and antisubmarine warfare (ASW) variants. The Lynx served with the British Army from 1971-2018, and was retired from Royal Navy service in 2017. It remains in service with Germany, France, and Denmark, as well as other export countries. Still in production, more than 450 have been built to date, and they have seen action in the Iraq War and more recently in Afghanistan.

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(US Department of Defense)

March 21, 1945 – The first operational mission of the Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka piloted bomb. The Ohka , which means “cherry blossom,” was a piloted, rocket-powered flying bomb that was used to attack Allied shipping in the closing stages of WWII. The flying bomb was usually carried aloft by a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! “Betty” bomber, then released to glide towards its target. Once directed at a ship, the pilot lit the rocket motors and dove on the target. The Ohka had a 2,646-pound !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! warhead and made its first appearance during the Battle of Okinawa flown by the Japanese !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , better known as !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The destroyer !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (DD 733) was the first American warship to be struck by an Ohka on April 12th, 1945 with the loss of 84 sailors. Ultimately, the Okha had no effect on the outcome of the war. Most were shot down while still attached to their motherships, and no American capital ships were ever sunk. The final Ohka mission took place on June 22, 1945.

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March 23, 1998 – The first flight of the Chengdu J-10, a lightweight, all-weather, multirole fighter developed and produced by China’s Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group. The fighter features a delta wing and forward canard and bears a strong resemblance to the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , though it is powered by only a singe engine. With fly-by-wire controls, the J-10, NATO reporting name Firebird, is comparable in performance capability to the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Pakistan is the sole international customer for the J-10, though Iran has expressed an interest in the fighter as well. Approximately 400 J-10s have been produced to date.

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(US Department of Defense)

March 23, 1994 – Following a midair collision, aircraft debris crashes into soldiers assembled on the ground in what is known as the Green Ramp disaster. While practicing a flame-out landing at Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina, a US Air Force !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! collided with the tail of a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! landing ahead of it on the same runway. The F-16 crew ejected, but the wreckage of the fighter struck the ground and erupted in a huge fireball. The flaming wreckage struck a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! waiting on the tarmac, then careened into a group of soldiers of the 82nd Airborne from adjacent Ft. Bragg assembled in a part of the base called the Green Ramp. Twenty-three soldiers were killed immediately, 80 were injured, some severely, and a twenty-fourth soldier died nine months later. The disaster is the largest single loss of life suffered by the 82nd since WWII. The C-130 landed safely, and the crew of the F-16D was unhurt. An investigation placed the majority of the blame for the midair collision on civilian and military controllers at Pope Air Force Base and, while some blame was placed on the F-16 crew, the pilot was not disciplined.

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(NASA)

March 23, 1965 – The launch of Gemini 3. Gemini 3 was the third launch of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and the first to carry astronauts into space. The two-man crew of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! made three orbits of the Earth and reached an altitude of 139.3 miles at !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The mission was designed to test the maneuverability of the new Gemini spacecraft, and the crew used onboard thrusters to alter the craft’s altitude during flight for the first time. On splashdown, an error in wind tunnel testing caused the capsule to miss its landing point by 45 miles, and the astronauts had to wait 30 minutes for pickup. Grissom died in 1967 in a launchpad fire during a test of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , but Young went on to a long career with NASA, and served as the commander of the first two flights of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

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(Boeing)

March 24, 1971 – Boeing cancels the B2707 supersonic transport. Envisioned as a larger and faster supersonic transport to rival the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the B2707 arose from a competition initiated by the National Supersonic Transport program announced by President Kennedy in 1963. The B2707 project advanced as far as the construction of two prototypes, neither of which were completed, before the project was canceled. Rising environmental concerns over pollution, fuel consumption, and noise levels, as well as a lack of funding, ultimately led to the demise of the program and the loss of as many as 60,000 jobs.

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March 24, 1944 – RAF Flight Sergeant Nicholas Alkemade jumps out of his burning bomber without a parachute during a raid on Germany . Alkemade was taking part in a raid on Berlin when his !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! was attacked and shot down by a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! night fighter. With the bomber on fire and his parachute damaged, Alkemade decided it would be preferable to die from falling rather than being burned to death. So he bailed out at 18,000 feet and fell into a forest, where tree branches slowed his fall before he came to rest in a deep snowdrift. Despite the fall, Alkemede suffered only severe bruising and a sprained leg. He was captured by German troops and finished the war as a POW. Alkemade died in 1987.

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Halliburton, left (Author unknown)

March 24, 1939 – The death of Richard Halliburton. The 1930s was a wild era of barnstorming, exploration and daredevilry, and one of the more famous daredevils was Richard Halliburton. Born on January 9, 1900 in Brownsville, Texas, Halliburton initially found fame after swimming the length of the Panama Canal while paying a toll of just 39 cents, and was the first to climb Mt. Fuji in winter. His contribution to aviation history stems from an epic, round-the-world flight in a modified !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! named Flying Carpet with pilot !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (eventual co-founder of Northrop Aviation) at the controls. Halliburton called it “one of the most fantastic, extended air journeys ever recorded,” taking 18 months and covering 33,660 miles while visiting 34 countries. Halliburton died (presumed) in 1939 while attempting to cross the Pacific Ocean from Hong Kong to San Francisco in a Chinese junk.

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Connecting Flights

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If you enjoy these Aviation History posts, please let me know in the comments. You can find more posts about aviation history, aviators, and aviation oddities at !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

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TheRealBicycleBuck > ttyymmnn 03/24/2020 at 12:47

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Imagine the stories! “How did you get here?” “I jumped from my plane. You saw it crash, didn’t you?” “Stop lying to us! If you jumped, then where is your parachute?”

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“ Mommy, that man in the woods just fell from the sky.”  

“Be quiet, dear. That’s impossible.”

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“So, how did you get captured?”

“Well, I was fl ying a mission and got shot down. My parachute was ruined, but I jumped anyway.”

“There goes Sarge again...”

ttyymmnn > TheRealBicycleBuck 03/24/2020 at 12:54

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https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/blog/the-indestructible-alkemade/

TheRealBicycleBuck > ttyymmnn 03/24/2020 at 13:04

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“The next day, Alkemade was interrogated, the Gestapo demanding to know what had happened to his parachute. When he told them he hadn’t used one, the interrogators laughed at Alkemade and accused him of being a spy and burying it. Indignantly Alkemade challenged the Gestapo to find his discarded harness – the lift webs, which would unclip and extend when the parachute deployed, would still be in the stowed position. A search of the wood soon bore out Alkemade’s story.”  

ttyymmnn > TheRealBicycleBuck 03/24/2020 at 13:11

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Brass balls.