This Date in Aviation History: November 12 - November 15

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 11/15/2016 at 12:35 • Filed to: Planelopnik, planelopnik history

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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 November 12 through November 15.

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November 12, 2001 – The crash of American Airlines Flight 587. If you’ve seen the movie Top Gun , you remember the accident that that took the life of Maverick’s friend and Radar Intercept Officer, Goose, when their F-14 flies through the “jet wash” of the plane ahead. Maverick loses control, they eject, and Goose is killed. That sort of Hollywood-contrived scenario is very real, but the phenomenon that doomed Goose is actually called !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Jet wash just sounds cooler, though, and would probably have left movie audiences scratching their head. It wasn’t until the 196os that aerodynamicists began to understand that it wasn’t the air coming out of the jet engines that was causing turbulence, it was the horizontal tornadoes of air generated the wings of an aircraft that can wreak havoc on airplanes coming behind. All pilots are trained to deal with wake turbulence, and air traffic controllers routinely advise aircraft during landing or takeoff to be aware of wake turbulence from aircraft in the pattern ahead. A number of crashes have been either directly caused, or suspected to have been caused, by wake turbulence, but perhaps the best known, and most tragic, was the crash of American Airlines Flight 587. AA587 was a regularly scheduled flight from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to the Dominican Republic. Shortly after takeoff, the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (N14053) passed into the wake turbulence left behind by a Japan Air Lines !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and the first officer initiated a series of very hard, complete deflections of the rudder to maintain control of the airliner. These actions, lasting approximately 20 seconds, placed roughly twice the amount of stress on the vertical stabilizer than Airbus had designed it for, and resulted in the entire vertical stabilizer breaking off from the fuselage. As a result, the plane entered a flat spin, which caused both engines to shear off the wings. The airliner crashed into a Queens, New York neighborhood, killing all 260 passengers and crew plus five more on the ground, making it the second deadliest crash in New York state and the second deadliest accident involving an A300.

The vertical stabilizer from American 587, recovered from Jamaica Bay

Coming just two months after the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! on New York City and Washington, DC, immediate speculation was that the crash was another act of terrorism. However, National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigators quickly ruled that out, and focused instead on the joint where the composite tail structure attached to the aluminum fuselage using titanium bolts and composite lugs. These components were found to be sufficiently strong, so attention turned to the first officer’s rudder deflections as the likely cause of the break up. American Airlines blamed Airbus for making the rudders too sensitive, and Airbus blamed American for faulty pilot training, saying that its pilots were trained to handle wake turbulence in an overly aggressive fashion. Ultimately, the NTSB !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! into the crash found that, while both parties shared some responsibility, it was the first officer’s “unnecessary and excessive rudder pedal inputs” that caused the structural failure leading to the crash. American Airlines has since modified its training program.   (Photo by JetPix via !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ; US Government photo)

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Short Takeoff

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November 12, 1981 – The launch of Space Shuttle Columbia on STS-2, the second !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! mission, the second flight of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and the first time a spacecraft was reused and returned to orbit. It was also the first mission to utilize the robotic arm developed for the Shuttle by Canada. Officially called the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , it is more popularly known as the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and is used to maneuver payloads out of and into the Shuttle’s cargo bay. STS-2 was originally envisioned as a boost mission to push the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! space station into a higher orbit, but delays in the Shuttle program made that impossible, and Skylab fell to earth in 1979, two years before the the launch of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . (NASA photo)

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November 12, 1932 – The first flight of the de Havilland Dragon. Building on the success of the single-engine !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , de Havilland responded to a request by Hillman’s Airways for a larger, twin-engine design. Using the same engine and construction techniques of the Fox Moth, the Dragon had capacity for 6-10 passengers and pilot and a maximum speed of 128 mph. Though production had stopped before WWII, the Dragon re-entered production to serve as a navigational trainer for the Royal Australian Air Force. A total of 2,002 Dragons were built, and it was subsequently developed into the larger and more powerful !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . (Public domain photograph)

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November 12, 1921 – The first air-to-air refueling is completed. While the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! via a long hose strung between two !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! biplanes is considered the first official or somewhat practical aerial refueling of an airplane, a wing-walking daredevil named Wesley May lays claim to the actual first refueling, when he strapped a five-gallon can of gas weighing approximately 36 pounds onto his back and climbed from a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! biplane in flight onto a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! flying alongside. Certainly, this stunt was not meant to be a practical solution, but barnstorming was never about being practical. (Photo via Peter M. Bowers Collection, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! )

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November 13, 1907 – The first flight of the Cornu helicopter. Built by French bicycle-maker !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , many historians credit the twin-propeller helicopter with the first free flight of a rotary-wing aircraft. The Cornu helicopter was controlled by a system that varied the pitch of the propellers, and also employed vanes that directed the downdraft from the rotors. Cornu made several short hops, perhaps as much as six feet in the air, each lasting less than a minute. The brief flights gave Cornu just enough time to determine that his steering mechanism was ineffective and he soon abandoned the project. !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! indicates that Cornu’s machine would likely never have flown successfully. (Photo author unknown)

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November 14, 1970 – The crash of Southern Airways Flight 932, a chartered !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (N97S) flying from North Carolina to West Virginia. While conduction a nonprecision instrument landing at Tri-State Airport in Ceredo, West Virginia, the DC-9 struck trees short of the runway and crashed, killing all 75 on board, including 37 members of the Marshall University football team, including 9 coaches and 25 team boosters. Investigators determined that, during poor weather condition, the airliner had descended below minimum altitude for unknown reasons due to a possibly malfunctioning altimeter or the pilot’s improper use of instrument data. The crash ended the school’s football program, but it was reconstituted in 1971 by a coach who wasn’t on the plane and with many players from the school’s junior varsity squad. The story has been dramatized in the movies !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . (Crash photo via !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ; team photo via Marshall University)

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November 14, 1969 – The launch of Apollo 12, the second manned mission to the surface of the Moon. Launched only four months after !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , Mission Commander !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and Lunar Module Pilot !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! spent thirty-one hours on the surface of the Moon, while Command Module Pilot !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! remained in orbit. Bean was able to land the Lunar Module exactly at the site of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! unmanned probe, and, during two moonwalks, he and Conrad retrieved parts of the probe and returned them to Earth. They also carried the first color TV camera to the Moon, but Bean ruined the camera when he accidentally pointed it at the sun. Apollo 12 returned to Earth on November 24. (Photo of Conrad with Surveyor 3 via NASA)

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November 14, 1933 – The birth of Fred Haise. Born in Biloxi, Mississippi, Haise served as a US Marine Corps fighter pilot from 1954 to 1956, but retired from active duty to complete a degree in aeronautical engineering. While serving in the Oklahoma Air National Guard, including an active duty stint during the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , Haise was selected for !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and flew as the Lunar Module Pilot on the ill-fated !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! mission in 1970. He was assigned as a backup on !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and scheduled to fly on Apollo 19, though the mission was canceled due to budget constraints. Following Apollo, Haise worked on the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , piloting three unpowered landings of the Shuttle !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and was scheduled to fly in space on the Shuttle before delays canceled that flight as well. Haise left NASA in 1979 to work for !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and retired in 1996. (NASA photo)

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November 14, 1930 – The first flight of the Handley Page H.P.42, a four-engine biplane passenger airliner that was built for !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The H.P.42 had an all-metal fuselage with fabric covered wings and tail, and was designed for long-range eastern routes, while the H.P.45, which carried more passengers but less baggage, was designed for European routes. Four of each type were constructed, and were given the mythological and historical names of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Five of the aircraft were lost to crashes or other incidents, but the remaining three flew long enough to be pressed into service in the early days of WWII, but all were eventually lost by 1940. (Library of Congress photo)

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November 14, 1930 – The birth of Edward White, an aeronautical engineer, US Air Force pilot, test pilot, and NASA astronaut. White was born in San Antonio, Texas, attended the US Military Academy, was commissioned in the US Air Force, and served as a fighter pilot in Europe. Along with 8 others, White was chosen for !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and piloted !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 1965, becoming the first American to walk in space. The following year, White was selected to be the Senior Pilot for !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the first manned mission of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . During a ground test of the Saturn IB booster and spacecraft components, a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! engulfed the Command Module, killing White, along with astronauts !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . White was buried with full military honors at West Point Cemetery, and was posthumously awarded the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . (NASA photo)

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November 14, 1910 – Eugene Ely becomes the first person to take off from a ship. In 1910, the Secretary of the Navy appointed Ely, along with aviation pioneer !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , to investigate the operation of aircraft from ships. The appointment led to two experiments, the first with Ely piloting a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! from a temporary runway constructed on the deck of the light cruiser !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (CL-2) anchored in Hampton Roads near Norfolk, Virginia, then, two months later, Ely landed on the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (ACR-4) anchored in San Francisco Bay. While neither ship was a true aircraft carrier, Ely’s achievements helped prove the feasibility of naval aviation. (US Navy photo)

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November 15, 1979 – The attempted bombing of American Airlines Flight 444. Flight 444 was a regularly scheduled flight of a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! from Chicago to Washington, DC. !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , better known as the Unabomber, had placed a bomb in the cargo hold of the aircraft, and, though the bomb malfunctioned and failed to detonate, it still filled the cabin with smoke. The airliner diverted to Dulles International Airport and landed safely, though 12 passengers and crew were treated for smoke inhalation. This was the second of 16 bombings by Kaczinski directed at symbols of modern technology and global industrialization. Three people were killed and 23 injured before Kaczinski was arrested in 1996. (FBI photo; 727 photo—not accident aircraft—by Aero Icarus via !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! )

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November 15, 1957 – The first flight of the Tupolev Tu-114 Rossiya , a turboprop-powered long-range airliner with swept wings developed from the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! bomber. Powered by four !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! engines turning massive, 18-foot diameter !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! propellers, the Rossiya was the fastest airliner of its day, and still holds the record as the fastest propeller-driven aircraft, which it set in 1960. Capable of carrying up to 224 passengers, the Tu-114 more commonly carried 170 passengers in sleeping berths, and also included a dining lounge. The Rossiya transported over six million passengers in its fourteen years of civilian service, and a total of 32 aircraft were produced from 1958 to 1963. (Photo by FOTO:Fortepan via !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! )

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November 15, 1929 – The first flight of the McDonnell Doodlebug, the first aircraft designed by famed aircraft designer !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Built by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (Hamilton Standard), the Doodlebug was a two-seat, tandem monoplane designed in response to a safety contest sponsored by the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics. Though ultimately unsuccessful (the competition was won by a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! biplane), McDonnell went on to become one of the great American pioneers of aviation. He founded the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 1939 (later McDonnell Douglas), one of the major suppliers of aircraft to the US Air Force and US Navy. The Doodlebug was sold to the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (NACA) for continued research into the aircraft’s !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . (NASA photo)

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Recent Aviation History Posts

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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!!! .

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Jcarr > ttyymmnn 11/15/2016 at 12:48

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Did the pass out complimentary hearing aids at the end of TU-114 flights?

facw > ttyymmnn 11/15/2016 at 12:54

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Wake turbulence is no joke. Had a Beech 1900 of all things flip my 152 hard after it took to long to take off (we aborted our landing attempt, but were still following to close when it got in the air). Suddenly felt like we were flying sideways, though I’m sure the roll wasn’t actually that extreme. Definitely sudden though.

Also unless you are considering the two 9/11 crashes as one crash, AA587 seems like it should be the third deadliest crash in New York, not the second?

facw > ttyymmnn 11/15/2016 at 13:03

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Also mildly confused? Why would a flight from Chicago to DC divert to Dallas? That’s definitely not on the way? Did they just want to go “home” to AA’s main facility, or what this route via some other airport?

Rock Bottom > ttyymmnn 11/15/2016 at 13:16

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NASA did a neat 747 wake study in the 40x80 ft wind tunnel in 1974. There was a lot of speculation about the amount of time necessary to hold a plane following a new behemoth on take-off, so a short experiment was performed. It’s sad to know that even though the science is now very well understood, we still occasionally send planes up before it’s safe to.

ttyymmnn > Rock Bottom 11/15/2016 at 14:39

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I think I recall seeing a recent headline that stated that aircraft can now fly closer together than originally thought. I’ll have to see if I can find that.

ttyymmnn > facw 11/15/2016 at 14:40

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No idea. Let me look into it. It’s entirely possible that I made a mistake.

ttyymmnn > facw 11/15/2016 at 14:49

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I’d have to do some digging. The two flights that hit the WTC claimed 151 lives (not including the hijackers). And I don’t know if you can count TWA 800, which exploded after takeoff. That claimed 230. So there is at least one greater than 587, I just don’t know which one it is.

ttyymmnn > Jcarr 11/15/2016 at 14:51

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That would definitely be something to hear. Just once.

Smallbear wants a modern Syclone, local Maple Leafs spammer > ttyymmnn 11/15/2016 at 15:29

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Fun fact: The Canadarm cannot actually support itself on earth, let alone a payload. Now this does make sense, considering that it doesn’t have any weight to move in it’s operating environment. But consider the difficulties of testing it during development...

You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much > ttyymmnn 11/15/2016 at 15:59

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According to Wikipedia,  Flight 444 diverted to Dulles. Maybe you’re a victim of autocorrect?

ttyymmnn > You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much 11/15/2016 at 16:58

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Dulles, Dallas. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to. Let’s call the whole thing off.

Thanks. I’ll correct it.

ttyymmnn > Smallbear wants a modern Syclone, local Maple Leafs spammer 11/15/2016 at 17:00

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So, how did they test it?

Thanks for the added info. I enjoy writing for an educated audience.

You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much > ttyymmnn 11/15/2016 at 17:12

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From what I remember they basically used a giant air hockey table. The joints were mounted on “pucks” that floated over an air table. Not sure how they dealt with 3D movement though. I can’t find anything online at the moment so I may be remembering that totally wrong.

facw > ttyymmnn 11/15/2016 at 17:25

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I’d assume you’d count people on the ground too, in which case Wikipedia’s list says:

AA11 ~1700

UA175 ~1000

AA587 265

If you are just talking about on the plane, then:

AA587 260

TWA800 230

UA826/TWA266 128

EA66 113

AA1 95

AA11 92

EA663 84

ALV253 74 

AV52 73

AA320 65

UA175 65

Not sure what either of these lists would look like if you included planes en route to/from NY. Pan Am 1736 (Tenerife) had arrived via NYC and Pan Am 103 was flying to NY for example, but don’t have a quick lookup on other flights.

Smallbear wants a modern Syclone, local Maple Leafs spammer > ttyymmnn 11/15/2016 at 17:35

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To tell the truth, I’m really not sure. They had to build some kind of specialized facility for it but I’m not sure how it worked. I just remember that fact because I was surprised myself when I found out. Stolen from gc.ca :

Designing and building the robotic device was difficult enough but testing the final product proved to be even more challenging. Meant for a weightless environment, the Canadarm could not even lift itself off the ground in Earth’s gravity. A special test room was built to allow the arm to flex its joints under operating conditions. In addition, a computer-based simulation facility, much like a video game, was built to evaluate controllability and provide training for astronauts.