This Date in Aviation History: July 8 - July 10

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 07/10/2020 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 July 8 through July 10.

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July 8, 2011 – The launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis on STS-135, the final flight of the Space Shuttle program. Before the Space Shuttle !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! took its maiden flight on April 12, 1981, going into space had been the work of expendable spacecraft. Multi-stage rockets were left in orbit after their fuel was spent, or burned up re-entering the atmosphere, and the comparatively tiny capsules that held the astronauts were so heavily damaged by the friction and heat of re-entry that they could not be used again. Since every component of the spacecraft had to be built from scratch for every launch, it was not only a wasteful way to get into space but also terribly expensive. Though we tend to think of the Space Shuttle as a product of the 1980s, NASA had already begun the process of developing a reusable spacecraft all the way back in 1969, the same year that !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! took his “one small step” on the Moon. The space agency envisioned a “space truck” that could haul payloads into space relatively cheaply, return to Earth, and then quickly be used again.

A model of a concept by North American Rockwell for a shuttle with an expendable booster

The !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! got its official start in 1972 with an announcement by President Richard M. Nixon that NASA would develop what later came to be called a Space Transport System (hence, all Shuttle missions were given the prefix “STS”). NASA considered many different concepts for the launch system and orbiter, and debated over just how much of the system would be reused. Engineers considered placing air-breathing engines on both the Shuttle and its booster, so both could be flown like an airplane during landing, or even flown between landing and launch sites. They also considered placing the Shuttle directly on top of an expendable launch rocket. Ultimately, NASA settled on a design where the orbiter was attached to a huge expendable fuel tank flanked by a pair of solid rocket boosters that would parachute into the ocean after launch to be used again. The Shuttle, after completing its orbital mission, would then re-enter the atmosphere and glide to an unpowered landing. At the start of the program, the goals for the Shuttle were quite ambitious, and NASA hoped to preform as many as one launch per week. However, by the time the Shuttle was ready for launch, the realities of both the complex system and Congressional funding meant that the Shuttle never became the flying truck that NASA originally envisioned, though it did become NASA’s orbital workhorse during its thirty years of service.

NASA built six Shuttles (the first, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , never went to space and was used for testing), and the Shuttle fleet carried out hundreds of science experiments in the reusable !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! module carried in the Shuttle’s cargo bay. Ultimately, shuttles ferried 3,513,638 pounds of cargo into orbit over the life of the program. Shuttles were instrumental in the construction of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (ISS), rotated crews between Earth and the Russian !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! space station and the ISS, and placed the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , along with many satellites, into both low and high Earth orbit. They also carried classified Department of Defense payloads into space. Over the thirty years of Shuttle service, orbiters circled the Earth 20,830 times and carried 355 astronauts (306 men, 49 women) from 16 different countries into space.

Shuttle flights began on April 12, 1981 with STS-1, a manned flight that lasted just over two days, and the program ended with STS-135, the 135th and final !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! of the Shuttle program. !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! lifted off from !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! July 8, 2011 and docked with the ISS two days later. The mission was originally not scheduled to be flown due to a lack of funding, but NASA administrators stated the need to resupply to the ISS in light of delays in commercial rocket development and Congress eventually provided funding for the mission. The crew of four astronauts was the smallest since !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 1983, a necessity since there were no Shuttles available for a rescue mission should the need arise. If Atlantis were damaged during launch, the crew would have to stay at the ISS and return to Earth on regularly scheduled Russian !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! capsules, a process that would have taken a year.

Over the span of operations, the Shuttles Challenger and Columbia were lost in flight along with a total of 14 astronauts. Following the end of the program, the remaining Space Shuttles were distributed to museums and display sites around the country. Atlantis is on display at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. With the end of the Shuttle Program, resupply missions to the ISS have been taken over by commercial space interests as part of NASA’s !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! program. The !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! program seeks to end American reliance on Russian rockets to take crews to the ISS, and on May 30, 2020 the first commercially built spacecraft, the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! successfully docked with the ISS and transferred two astronauts, becoming the first commercial enterprise to do so.

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July 8, 1947 – The first flight of the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser. When the passenger airliner entered service before WWII, it was a relatively small aircraft by today’s standards, with room for only 10-15 passengers. But during the war, strategic bombing missions called for aircraft that could carry heavy bomb loads, and the development of large piston-powered aircraft reached its zenith by the end of the war in August 1945. With the cessation of hostilities, Aircraft companies that had built bombers for the military took their expertise into the civilian sector, and many of the heavy bombers that had originally been designed for battle formed the basis of a new generation of large passenger airliners. The RAF had focused solely on the development of bombers during the war rather than transport aircraft, and the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! were developed from the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! bomber, while the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! bomber formed the basis for the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . But England wasn’t the only country that took advantage of military aircraft conversions.

Flight attendants sit on the upper deck of the double-bubble fuselage in this Model 377 under construction.

Boeing had been working on a large pressurized bomber since 1938, and when the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! entered service in 1944 it was by far the most technologically advanced four-engine bomber of its day. Designed to cross the vast reaches of the Pacific Ocean, the Superfortress had unparalleled range and power and carried enough fuel for flights of over 3,000 miles. Based on the success of the B-29, Boeing chose it as the basis for a large cargo aircraft, and work on the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! began in 1942. They took the wings and lower fuselage from the Superfortress and added a second, enlarged fuselage tube on top, creating a double-bubble cross section with both an upper and lower deck. This enlarged cargo aircraft then formed the basis for a civilian airliner which became known as the Model 377. While double-decker seating wasn’t necessarily an innovation (earlier large flying boats such as the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! had two decks), the 377 was one of the first postwar land-based airliners to feature a seating area that accommodated 14 passengers in a lower deck lounge in addition 1oo passengers in upper deck seating. The top section was wider than competing airliners by Douglas, and the supercharged !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! engines provided a higher level of pressurization for the cabin passengers, as well as air conditioning.

Pan Am was the launch customer for the 377 and ordered 20 Stratocruisers in 1945. The first passenger-carrying flight took place in April 1949 from San Francisco to Honolulu. For overnight flights, 28 passengers could be accommodated in berths that were more reminiscent of railroad !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! than airliners. By the sixth year of operation the 377 had carried over three million passengers, completed almost 3,600 transcontinental flights, and crossed the Atlantic Ocean 27,000 times. As with other propeller-powered airliners, the 377 was eventually superseded by jet-powered airliners such as the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and its last passenger flight was made in 1954. But the remarkable aircraft that started with the B-29 had yet one more conversion to make. Once its airliner days were over, the 377 served as the basis for the line of oversized !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! cargo carriers.

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Smoke billows over London following the first major German air raid on the city on September 7, 1940

July 10, 1940 – The Battle of Britain begins. WWII in Europe officially started on September 1, 1939 with the German invasion of Poland, followed by a push into Scandinavia and Northern France the following spring. As German forces spread westward, France fell to the Nazis in the summer of 1940, and the situation began looking decidedly bleak for the British. The !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! fighting in France had been beaten back to the English Channel at Dunkirk, and only through a truly heroic and herculean effort of the Royal Navy and British civilians were the soldiers !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! from the beaches. Though nearly 240,000 British, French and Belgian troops had been rescued, the Allies were on the run in Europe. On June 22, France officially signed an armistice with Germany, marking the end of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . England was now alone to face the Germans in western Europe, and Adolf Hitler turned his sights on the island nation.

Luftwaffe Air Marshall Hermann Göring (sixth from right, facing left) and his staff, gathered on the coast of France, contemplate the white cliffs of Dover across the English Channel

Hitler knew that as long as England stayed in the war Germany would not be able to claim complete victory over Europe, nor could the Wehrmacht turn fully against Russia in the east. Hitler hoped that he might negotiate peace, but Britain was not interested. Despite the odds, they chose to fight, spurred on by the stirring words of Prime Minister !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! :

...The Battle of France is over. The battle of Britain is about to begin.... The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world...will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age.... Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”

With Britain resolved to defend their island, the Germans began planning for a cross-channel invasion code named !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!   (Operation Sea Lion). But before such an invasion could take place, the Luftwaffe needed to achieve air superiority over the RAF. Luftwaffe Air Marshal !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! was certain that his forces could knock the RAF out of the sky while giving the Wehrmacht time to prepare for an invasion.

German Heinkel 111 bombers fly low over the English Channel

The Battle of Britain began on July 10, 1940 (German historians observe different operational dates), and while the battle came to be symbolized by the indiscriminate bombing of London and other British cities, it opened with attacks against British shipping and ports. One month later, on August 13, the Luftwaffe launched !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (Operation Eagle Attack), with three German Luftflotten (air fleets) unleashed against British air bases, radar installations, and aircraft factories. To face this onslaught of 2,500 fighters and bombers, the RAF put up about 600 fighters. But they weren’t just flown by British pilots. Commonwealth pilots from New Zealand, Australia, Canada, South Africa, and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) fought, as wells pilots from Belgium, France, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and a handful of pilots from neutral America and Ireland.

The two principle fighters at the RAF’s disposal were the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and the newer !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Generally, the “Spit,” which was the more agile of the pair, tangled with the fighters, while the heavily armed “Hurries” took on the bombers, which included !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . German !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! fighters were every bit the match for the British Spitfire, and clearly outmatched the slower Hurricane, but long flights from the European continent left them low on fuel with little time to fight. The British also had the advantage of fighting over their home soil, where pilots could land quickly to re-arm and repair their fighters. The defenders also employed a network of coastal radar stations that warned Fighter Command of attacking waves of German planes and gave the RAF time to concentrate their defenses where they were most needed.

An RAF Spitfire harries a Luftwaffe Dornier Do-17 somewhere over England

By early September, Göring and his Luftwaffe were destroying British planes faster than they could be replaced, along with their experienced pilots, and the RAF teetered on the brink of annihilation. But when some German bombs accidentally fell on London, the British retaliated by bombing Berlin, and an outraged Hitler ordered Göring to shift his attacks from the RAF to London. This proved to be a fateful move. In what was known as !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , German bombers rained their bombs down on British civilians, hoping to break British morale and force the government to the negotiating table. However, all the bombing did was strengthen British resolve to fight, and give the RAF the breathing room it so desperately needed to rest their air crews, repair their bases, and replace their losses in planes and pilots. In what proved to be a stunning tactical blunder, the Blitz raids only continued to deplete the Luftwaffe while bringing them no closer to eliminating the RAF, which Göring continued to tell Hitler was down to their last few planes. As a result, Hitler pushed back the launch date for Operation Sea Lion, and eventually abandoned it altogether.

A jubilant British soldier sits in the cockpit of a downed Luftwaffe Bf-109. The thumbs up gesture was similar to Churchill’s famous V for victory.

In a speech to Parliament on August 20, 1940, as the battle was drawing to a close, Winston Churchill praised the RAF for their effort and sacrifice to protect the British homeland:

The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the World War....Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

St. Paul’s Cathedral stands among the smoke of German incendiaries, a lasting symbol of British resolve in the face of relentless German air raids

When the Battle of Britain finally ended on October 31, 1940, the RAF had lost 544 pilots against roughly 2,500 Luftwaffe pilots, and more than 40,000 British civilians had been killed. But England would not face the threat invasion again, and for the RAF, and all the defenders and citizens who withstood the German attack, it was indeed their finest hour.  

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Short Takeoff

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July 8, 1999 – The death of Charles “Pete” Conrad, a test pilot, aeronautical engineer, astronaut, and the third man to walk on the Moon. Born on June 1, 1930, Conrad began his astronaut career with NASA as a member of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and flew alongside astronaut !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! on !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! on an eight-day mission orbiting the Earth that set an endurance record for the time. Conrad followed Gemini 5 with the flight of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! partnered with astronaut !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and went to the Moon as mission commander on !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Conrad then commanded !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the first manned mission to the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! orbital space station. For Skylab 2, which carried out significant repairs to the space station, Conrad was awarded the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 1978. After leaving NASA, Conrad worked in the television industry and with McDonnell Douglas, and was a member of a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! crew that set a record for circumnavigating the globe in 49.5 hours in 1996.

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July 8, 1977 – The death of Katherine Stinson. Born on February 14, 1891, Stinson soloed at the age of 21 after just four hours of instruction and was the fourth woman in the US to obtain her pilot certificate. The following year, she began touring on the flying exhibition circuit, where she was known as “The Flying Schoolgirl” and, in 1915, she became the first female pilot to perform a loop. In 1917, Stinson set an American record for non-stop flying when she completed a 606 mile flight from San Diego to San Francisco. During WWI, Stinson drove an ambulance in Europe, where she contracted influenza and was forced to give up flying. Her brothers, inspired by her aviation feats, started the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 1920. Katherine Stinson was 86 at the time of her death.

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July 8, 1965 – The death of Paul Mantz, who was best known for his work as both an air racer and movie stunt pilot. Ater a stint as a commercial pilot, Mantz returned to the film industry. He worked for !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and others, and made his film debut flying a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! biplane in the 1932 film !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . During WWII, Mantz served in the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and took up racing after the war, winning the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in three consecutive years. Returning once more to his movie career, Mantz was hired to fly the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , a highly modified aircraft that was meant to represent a jury-built aircraft flown out of the desert by a marooned aircrew in   !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . During filming, Mantz carried out a particularly aggressive maneuver and the plane broke apart, killing him. The FAA investigation cited alcohol consumption as a factor in the crash, though others dispute that finding.

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July 8, 1948 – The first flight of the Ilyushin Il-28, an early postwar twin-engine bomber produced for the Soviet Air Force and the first jet-powered Soviet bomber to enter large scale production. Ilyushin developed the Il-28 (NATO reporting name Beagle ) first using !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! turbojet engines purchased from Britain, and then reverse engineered copies designated as !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The Il-28 had a top speed of 560 mph and could carry up to 6,600 pounds of bombs. It was also fitted with four cannons, two in the nose and two in the tail for defense. A total of 6,635 were produced, with just under 200 converted to two-seat trainers. The Il-28 was widely exported, and was also built under license in China as the Harbin H-5. The Soviets retired the Il-28 in the 1980s, though some remained in service into the 1990s.

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July 8, 1947 – The Roswell Daily Record reports that a UFO crash landed near Roswell, New Mexico. The UFO craze traces its roots to rural New Mexico when a farmer near Roswell found pieces of what he believed was an alien spacecraft, and the local newspaper !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! announcing the capture of a “flying saucer.” The US military arrived, quickly took the wreckage away, and told local residents that it was debris from a crashed weather balloon, which immediately fueled theories of a government cover up. Recently released documents now explain that the debris was actually part of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , a balloon that carried secret listening devices to detect Soviet nuclear tests. Other reports explain that the aliens found in the wreck were most likely weighted mannequins that were dropped from Air Force planes to test the the effects of high-altitude ejections from aircraft.

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July 8, 1941 – The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress flies its first combat mission of WWII. The !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! was the iconic American heavy strategic bomber in the airwar over Europe, but despite its association with the US Army Air Corps (USAAC) and US Army Air Forces (USAAF), the Flying Fortress first flew into battle in the hands of Royal Air Force pilots in 1941 before the US became involved in the war. When war broke out in Europe, England did not yet have a heavy bomber of its own. So the USAAC provided the RAF with 20 B-17Cs (known as the Fortress I in RAF service), and the bomber saw its first action of the war in an unsuccessful raid against the German port city of Wilhelmshaven. The B-17 never really caught on with the RAF and, after losing eight of their initial fleet, the remaining bombers were shifted to Coastal Command for use in maritime patrol.

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Perot, right, with pilot J.W. Coburn

July 9, 2019 – The death of H. Ross Perot. Born on June 27, 1930 in Texarkana, Texas, Ross Perot is best known as a billionaire businessman and twice-unsuccessful third party presidential candidate. But Perot entered the annals of aviation history in 1981 when he took part in a world record circumnavigation of the globe by helicopter. In an effort to beat Australian Dick Smith, who had started his own attempt at a round-the-world helicopter flight, Perot purchased a stock !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , christened it Spirit of Texas , and modified the helicopter with larger fuel tanks, deployable pontoons, and upgraded navigational equipment. With pilot J.W. Coburn, the pair set out from Dallas on September 1 and made 56 refueling stops while crossing 26 countries and flying 26,000 miles before returning to Dallas. One stop was made aboard a container ship in 15-foot seas and 40 mph winds since Russia would not allow the team to land in the Soviet Union. Perot also paid for a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and crew to support the flight. The circumnavigation took a total of 246 flight hours at an average ground speed of 117 mph, and an overall average of 35 mph, setting a world record for flight time in a helicopter. The Spirit of Texas now resides at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.

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July 9, 1991 – Bombardier-Navigator Lt. Keith Gallagher survives partial ejection from a US Navy Grumman KA-6D Intruder. While flying from the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72), Gallagher’s ejection seat malfunctioned and he was partially ejected through the canopy of his !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . As the aircraft flew at 264 mph, Gallagher found himself stuck in the broken canopy while his arms flailed in the gale outside the aircraft. His helmet and air mask were ripped off, and he could not breathe because of the wind blasting into his face. Pilot Lt. Mark Baden declared an emergency and was immediately routed back to the carrier, where he landed safely, with Gallagher still sticking out of the cockpit. Miraculously, Gallagher was still alive. He suffered paralysis in half of his right arm, and damage to his left shoulder, as well as significant facial injuries. After six months of recovery, Gallagher returned to service. A full account of the incident can be read !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

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July 10, 2013 – The Northrop Grumman X-47B unmanned combat air vehicle lands aboard USS George Washington (CVN 73). In 2000, the US Navy committed to the development of an Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAS) and awarded contracts for demonstrator aircraft to Boeing and Northrop Grumman. Following its first launch from the USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77) on May 14, 2013, the X-47B performed the first autonomous touch-and-go landings three days later and the first arrested carrier landing on July 10. The X-47B also demonstrated autonomous aerial refueling in April of 2015. The X-47 program was followed by development of a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (UCLASS), though the Navy is now focusing on an unmanned aerial refueling system with the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

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July 10, 1968 – The first flight of the Mil V-12, a twin-rotor helicopter capable of lifting up to 88,000 pounds and the largest helicopter in the world. After experimenting with a tandem rotor system similar to the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , Mil settled on a transverse system of rotors that eliminated the need for a tail rotor. Power is provided by a pair of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! turboshaft engines that give the V-12 a top speed of 162 mph. Two aircraft were built, and they set eight world records, four of which still stand today. However, by the time the helicopter was ready for production the Soviet Air Force decided that they no longer needed the gargantuan helicopter and it was never put into serial production.

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July 10, 1962 – Launch of Telstar 1. The !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War began when the Russians launched their !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! satellite into Earth orbit on October 4, 1957. The earliest satellites simply sent electronic signals back to the ground, but Telstar 1, along with Telstar 2 which launched May 7, 1963, was the first truly utilitarian communications satellite and the first capable of relaying television pictures, telephone calls, and facsimile images. It also transmitted the first live television images across the Atlantic Ocean. Both Telstar satellites were launched from !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! atop a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! rocket, and Telstar 1 beamed its first images back to Earth the day after it launched. Telstar 1 and 2 were followed by a series of more powerful satellites that share only the Telstar name, and the original satellites, no longer functioning, continue to orbit the Earth.

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July 10, 1942 – The first flight of the Douglas A-26 Invader, a fast, powerful attack aircraft designed as a successor to the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and one that was unusual for having a single pilot for a plane of its size. The A-26 featured a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! wing and was powered by a pair of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! radial engines which allowed the Invader to carry up to 6,000 pounds of bombs. It was produced in two main versions: one with a plexiglass nose housing a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! for traditional bombing missions, and a second with a solid nose armed with up to eight .50 caliber machine guns. Later versions mounted an additional six machine guns in the wings, for a total of 14 forward-firing guns. Delivery of the Invader to the Pacific began in August 1943, then to Europe the following year, where it flew over 11,000 sorties and dropped over 18,000 tons of bombs. After WWII, the Invader saw service in Korea and Vietnam, plus numerous other Cold War conflicts. Almost 2,500 A-26s were produced, and it served until 1980 with the Colombian Air Force.

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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 07/10/2020 at 12:47

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On a more serious note, I remember the news about Gallagher. It was shocking that it happened and that he survived.

Taylor Martin > ttyymmnn 07/10/2020 at 13:21

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What a fantastic bundle of good reads! You really know your stuff my friend. I’d be lying if I said I knew an awful lot about aviation history, even some of the more recent stuff like the space shuttle is new-ish to me (I knew it existed, just didn’t know when and all the nitty gritty details, but now I do!)

Real interesting stuff on the 377 , I would’ve loved to take a trip in one of those... well, maybe... depends on how comfy they really were. It looks good on paper but anything older has its drawbacks when compared to anything newer. I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for these man, this was great!

ttyymmnn > Taylor Martin 07/10/2020 at 13:42

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Thanks, but I can’t say I know it all. I just write it up, but I do enjoy the writing and learning about it myself. My goal is to bring as much interesting info without writing novel or getting into the minutiae. I’ve been an aviation history junkie all my life, and I’ve enjoyed the chance to give some of it back, and maybe make a new junkie or two along the way. Think of me as a history pusher. 

I’d love to fly on one of those Golden Era flying boats. The food and legroom alone would make it worth it.

Thanks for reading. These drop every Tuesday and Friday at 12:35, and there are also a bunch of one-off posts on Wingspan .

Cheers!

My X-type is too a real Jaguar > ttyymmnn 07/10/2020 at 13:43

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Pete Conrad died as all astronauts should he wrecked his motorcycle

https://www.amazon.com/Rocketman-Astronaut-Conrads-Incredible-Beyond/dp/0451215095/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=pete+conrad+biography&qid=1594402950&sr=8-2

His biography is outstanding the writer was interviewing him at the time of his death.

ttyymmnn > My X-type is too a real Jaguar 07/10/2020 at 13:46

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I’ve been meaning to do a post about this Air and Space article about the astronauts and their Corvettes.

https://www.airspacemag.com/space/my-other-ride-is-spaceship-astronauts-corvettes-180972234/

user314 > ttyymmnn 07/10/2020 at 14:51

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Other reports explain that the aliens found in the wreck were most likely weighted mannequins that were dropped from Air Force planes to test the the effects of high-altitude ejections from aircraft. 

That would not at all be surprising that people drawn to the area by the initial “crash” started finding shit the Air Force lost (or never bothered retrieving in the first place). 

benn454 > ttyymmnn 07/10/2020 at 15:12

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 Like the Boomers had the Saturn V, my generation had the Shuttle. I used to dream about flying it one day. Looks like that's not gonna happen, sadly.