This Date in Aviation History: February 23 - February 26

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 02/26/2019 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 February 23 through February 26.

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A Royal Air Force Hawker Typhoon Mk.IB of No. 56 Squadron at RAF Maltase in 1943 (Royal Air Force)

February 24, 1940 – The first flight of the Hawker Typhoon. The !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! was one of two British fighters that beame a symbol of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , a 1930s-era fighter design that fought with great effectiveness throughout the war. Though it wasn’t able to tussle with the high-flying German fighters, it proved quite effective against low-flying German bombers. The Hurricane took its maiden flight in 1935, but even before it entered production in 1937, Hawker and famed engineer !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , who had designed the Hurricane, had already begun work on a more powerful successor.

The Hawker Typhoon prototype. Note the original covered cockpit with doors and crank windows. (British Air Ministry)

Camm worked with two basic designs, both bearing a family resemblance to the Hurricane, though somewhat larger. One reason for the increase in size was to accommodate a massive engine, the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The Sabre produced up to 3,500 hp in its later versions, and would become one of the most powerful inline piston engines in the world. By 1938, Hawker was ready to proceed with the development of a prototype following the receipt of Air Ministry Specification F.18/37 which called for a fighter with a top speed of at least 400 mph at 15,000 feet using a British-built engine, and accommodations for no fewer than twelve .303 Browning machine guns.

Not only did the Typhoon bear an outward resemblance to the Hurricane, it shared many of the same construction techniques of its predecessor, as well a relatively thick wing. While the wing provided excellent strength, its thickness led to significant drag at high speeds, and also affected high altitude performance and climb rate. All of this led to a fighter that was ultimately unable to counter the high-flying German !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . As a result, the mission of the Typhoon changed from that of a high-altitude interceptor to a low-level interceptor, a switch which played to the strengths of the Typhoon. Like the Hurricane before it, the Typhoon became a specialized bomber killer, flying high enough to attack the bombers from above, and having the speed and hitting power to knock them out of the sky.

Members of the ground crew arm a Hawker Typhoon in preparation for Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of France (UK Government)

As the war in Europe progressed, the Typhoon matured as well, and truly became a work in progress. As the needs of the RAF changed, the Typhoon changed with it, and many new features and redesigns made their way into production or as retrofits in the field. The original solid cockpit with side door and cranking window gave way first to a clear canopy with added rearward visibility, then to a bubble canopy. The 12 machine guns gave way to four 20mm cannons, and provisions were made to carry greater external loads. Having proven itself an effective interceptor, the Typhoon found its true calling as a devastating ground attack aircraft, one of the most potent of WWII. Already potent with its cannons, the Typhoon was capable of carrying two 1,000 pound bombs, earning it the nickname “Bombphoon.” The addition of rockets to the Typhoon’s arsenal made it a potent tank killer in the hands of a skilled pilot, and switching between the two loads in the field was expedited by exchangeable racks. With wing-mounted drop tanks, Typhoons could 1,000 miles from bases in the Netherlands and Belgium to hit enemy targets deep in France.

Following the war, Typhoons were quickly relegated to the scrap pile, and it was thought that not a single example of the more than 3,300 aircraft produced survived the axe. However, a single aircraft was discovered in a crate in the collection of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. Following a trade for a Hawker Hurricane, the sole remaining Typhoon now resides in the collection of the Royal Air Force Museum London.

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February 24, 1935 – The first flight of the Heinkel He 111. The Armistice of November 11, 1918 ended the First World War, and the negotiations between the victors and the vanquished resulted in numerous treaties, the most famous of which was the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , negotiated between the Allied Powers and Germany. Not only did the treaty force Germany to accept the blame for starting the war, it also contained many provisions that were intended to prevent Germany’s future capability to wage war, including a prohibition on the construction of military aircraft. But once Adolf Hitler assumed the office of German Chancellor in 1933, he immediately set about secretly rebuilding the German Luftwaffe. New pilots were trained in Russia, and new bombers were designed ostensibly as civilian airliners.

An He 111F of the Turkish Air Force. This aircraft has the original stepped cockpit which was later replaced by the iconic bullet-shaped nose. (Author unknown)

The Heinkel He 111 traces its development back to the early 1930s, when !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , head of Heinkel Flugzeugwerke , was working on what he hoped would be the world’s fastest passenger plane. Two of his designers, the twin brothers !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , developed the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , a 4-passenger, single engine aircraft with elliptical wings, and the Blitz , as its name implies, was indeed fast and set numerous speed records. But in order to compete with American aircraft such as the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , Heinkel needed a larger aircraft. So he had the Günter brothers develop a twin-engine version of the Blitz, which was called the Doppel-Blitz (Double Blitz). It was this aircraft that would serve as the basis for the wartime He 111. Development of the He 111 continued under civilian registrations, and the first prototype was recognized as “the fastest passenger aircraft in the world” when its speed exceed 250 mph. Ultimately, Lufthansa operated 12 He 111s on routes throughout Europe and even as far as South Africa.

Following the German design ethos of the time, the He 111 was powered by a pair of inverted, liquid-cooled engines, in this case the Junkers Jumo 211 V-12, which gave the bomber a top speed of 273 mph. In its military guise, defensive machine guns were mounted in the nose and in dorsal and ventral blisters, and up to 4,400 pounds of bombs could be carried internally. Using external hard points, nearly 8,000 pounds of bombs could be carried, but this made the 111 so heavy that it required rockets to assist with takeoff. Where the original doppel-blitz had a traditional stepped canopy, the later versions of the He 111 received the iconic bullet-shaped nose that made the bomber instantly recognizable.

An He 111 drops bombs on England during the Battle of Britain in 1940 (Royal Air Force)

The 111 flew its first combat missions during the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (1936-1939), a conflict which served as a testing ground for Germany’s burgeoning air force and as a means of developing the tactics of combined operations of aircraft and ground troops. Flying in support of the fascist Nationalist government, the He 111 became famous (or infamous) for the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! of the city of Guernica, one of the first times bombs were dropped on a defenseless civilian population. Based on experiences in Spain, and the ability of the He 111 to outrun all Spanish fighters of the time, Heinkel believed that the minimal defensive armament on the 111 would be sufficient in the looming war. However, during the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 1940, the He 111 began to show its vulnerability. Though fast when it was first built, it was no match for the faster British fighters, nor was it very maneuverable. And its light defensive armament made it a relatively easy target for British guns.

A Heinkel He 111 H-22 of Kampfgeschwader 3 armed with a V-1 flying bomb (US Air Force)

But, with no new bomber to take its place, the He 111 soldiered on, and served throughout the war on all fronts, though it was essentially obsolete by 1942. Nevertheless, the He 111 was constantly upgraded and modified until production ended in 1944, and it proved to be an extremely versatile aircraft. The 111 served as a torpedo bomber, troop transport, reconnaissance aircraft, pathfinder (target marker), and glider tug. It was even modified to carry out aerial launches of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Ultimately, more than 6,500 civilian and military 111s were produced and, following the war, an upgraded version of the He 111 continued to be built under license in Spain as the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Powered by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! engines, some of these aircraft operated into the early 1970s.  

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February 25, 1965 – The first flight of the McDonnell Douglas DC-9. The period following WWII was one of rapid technological development, as piston engine technology began to give way to emerging jet engine technology. In 1952, the British manufacturer !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! was the first to produce a jet-powered airliner with the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , but other manufacturers clung to the proven radial engines of WWII. Others began to implement the turboprop engine, which was, in some ways, the best of both worlds. By the 1960s, de Havilland, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! had all fielded large four-engine airliners powered by either turbojets or turbofans. Douglas’ entry into that category was the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , which entered service in 1959 with Delta Air Lines and United Airlines.

The DC-9 prototype, registered N9DC (Douglas Aircraft)

While the large four-engine airliners were efficient at hauling lots of passengers to far-flung destination, the growth of the hub-and-spoke system meant that airlines needed smaller planes to bring passengers from the spokes into the hub. Douglas had already begun to investigate such an airliner with their Model 2067, which was basically a smaller version of the DC-8, but the airlines were not interested and Douglas dropped the idea. In 1960, Douglas entered into an agreement with !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! of France to sell and support the twin-engine !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in the US, but when orders for the Caravelle didn’t materialize, Douglas decided to forge ahead on its own. Thus, it is likely no coincidence that, when the design of the DC-9 was finalized in 1962, it bore a strong resemblance to the Caravelle. The placement of the engines on the rear of the aircraft allowed for a clean, efficient wing which was better suited to lower-speed takeoffs and landings, and it also helped limit the ingestion of debris into the engines.

With the DC-8, Douglas had been slow to offer a stretched version of the airliner, a decision that hurt sales in their competition with the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . That mistake was not repeated with the DC-9. Douglas planned from the beginning that the airliner would be the first in a series of aircraft, and they quickly followed the initial DC-9-10 with the successively larger -20, -30 and -40 variants, with the final -50 variant taking its maiden flight in 1974. With each successive variant, the airliner gained a longer fuselage, more seats, more powerful engines, and larger wings. The initial production version of the DC-9-10 was powered by a pair of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! low-bypass turbofan engines and seated 90 passengers in a one class configuration. The -30, -40 and -50 variants saw passenger capacities increase to 115, 125, and 139 passengers respectively. The maximum takeoff weight (MTOW) of 82,000 lbs for the -10 was steadily increased to 121,000 lbs for the -50. But Douglas wasn’t done yet.

A Boeing 717, the final derivative of the DC-9 series, lands at Austin Bergstrom International Airport. Note the registration: N717DL. (Tim Shaffer)

Following the -50 series, continued development of the DC-9 resulted in the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! series (Douglas had merged with McDonnell in 1967) and, after McDonnell Douglas and Boeing merged in 1997, the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , a variant that was closer in size to the earlier DC-9-30. Production of the DC-9 ended in 1982 after the completion of 976 airliners, but production of the entire series that started with the DC-9 ended in 2006 after 41 years with the final Boeing 717 delivered to !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . In addition to its commercial service, the DC-9 was also flown by the US Air Force as a medical evacuation aircraft designated the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and with the US Navy and Marine Corps as the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Delta Air Lines was the last major US carrier to retire the venerable DC-9 in 2014, and only a handful remain in service today, and the MD-80 and MD-90 are starting to be phased out as well in favor of newer, more fuel-efficient airliners. Only four airlines continue to fly the 717.

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For plane spotters, it can be difficult to differentiate between the major variants of the series of twinjets that began with the DC-9. But there are some specific characteristics to aid in identification.

DC-9 series: Short fuselage, no !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! under the cockpit, pointy tail. (The last DC-9 variant, the DC-9-50, was equipped with strakes, but it retained the cone-shaped tail.)

MD-80 series: Longer fuselage, strakes under the cockpit, pinch tail, skinny engines.

MD-90 series: Longer fuselage, strakes under the cockpit, pinch tail, fat engines.

Boeing 717: Shorter body, no strakes under the cockpit, pinch tail, fat engines.

Basically, you can tell the DC-9 from the B717 by the tail cone, and the MD-80 series from the MD-90 series by the size of the engines.

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Short Takeoff

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February 23, 2008 – A Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit bomber crashes at Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. The !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! belonging to the 393rd Bomb Squadron, 509th Bomb Wing based at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri experienced an uncommanded 30-degree nose-high pitch up during takeoff which led to the stall and crash of the $1.4 billion bomber. Both crew members ejected; the pilot was uninjured, but the co-pilot suffered a spinal compression fracture from the ejection. The cause of the crash was traced to moisture that had collected in the air data sensors following a night of heavy rain which gave the flight computer incorrect altitude and windspeed data. It remains the only crash of the B-2 bomber, and the most expensive write off in the history of the US Air Force.

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February 23, 1951 – The first flight of the Dassault Mystère, a fighter-bomber built by the French firm Dassault as a swept-wing development of the earlier !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Prototypes of the Mystère were powered by an upgraded !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! centrifugal-flow turbojet in place of the Ouragan’s !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , while production models of the Mystère were powered by a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! axial-flow turbojet. Armed with two 30mm cannons, rocket pods, and up to 2,000 pounds of bombs, the Mystère entered service with the French Air Force in 1954, though it never saw combat. Nevertheless, the Mystère was an important step in the development of modern French jet fighters.

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February 23, 1934 – The first flight of the Lockheed Model 10 Electra. Lockheed’s first twin-engine, all-metal monoplane airliner was developed from the single engine !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! to compete with the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The Model 10 suffered from early problems with stability which were eventually solved by a brilliant young engineer named !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , who would go on to head Lockheed’s famous !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Following the US ban on single-engine passenger aircraft, the Electra became one of the more popular new aircraft with the budding airline industry. Many Electras were also flown by private pilots, including !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Earhart was flying an Electra when she disappeared during her attempt to circumnavigate the globe. A total of 149 Model 10s were produced.

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(NTSB)

February 24, 1989 – The forward cargo door blows off of United Airlines Flight 811 in flight. UAL 811 was a regularly scheduled !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! flight that took off from Honolulu, Hawaii bound for Auckland, New Zealand. While climbing to cruising altitude and passing between 22,000 and 23,000 feet, the forward cargo hatch blew off after it closed improperly by the ground crew. As the door departed the aircraft, it took a large section of the cabin wall with it, and the ensuing explosive decompression caused the floor to buckle and sucked ten seats and eight passengers out of the aircraft. The ensuing investigation found that damaged locking pins on the door gave a false reading of the door’s being shut properly. Both United and the ground crew were faulted, and Boeing redesigned the locking mechanism.

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(US Air Force)

February 24, 1955 – The first flight of the CIM-10 BOMARC missile, a long-range supersonic surface-to-air missile fielded by the United States during the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! for the defense of North America against attacking nuclear bombers. The BOMARC (an acronym of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ) had an operational radius of 200 miles, was designed to fly at Mach 2.5-2.8 at 60,000 feet, and could be armed with either a conventional or nuclear warhead. The USAF ultimately set up 16 BOMARC sites armed with 56 missiles each. With the arrival of the intercontinental ballistic missiles, attacking bombers were no longer perceived as a threat, and the BOMARC was retired in 1972.

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February 25, 1990 – Smoking is banned on all US domestic flights. Consumer protection advocate !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! was the first to call for a smoking ban on US airlines, and United Airlines was the first to implement a separate smoking section on their airliners in 1971. By April 1988, a smoking ban was instituted on flights of two hours or less and, by 1990, smoking was banned on all domestic flights of six hours or less. Ten years later, the ban was further extended to all domestic and international flights. Smokers who violate the ban face a fine of up to $500 or 10 days in prison. Initially, pilots were allowed to continue smoking on the flight deck due to safety concerns over the effects of nicotine withdrawal in chronic smokers, though the FAA !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! the smoking ban to the flight deck in 1992. The use of E-cigarettes, or “vaping,” is also prohibited.

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(US Air Force)

February 25, 1978 – The death of Daniel “Chappie” James, Jr, a USAF fighter pilot and the first African American to attain the rank of four-star general. James served as a flight instructor for the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , but saw no combat in WWII. In Korea, James flew 101 combat missions in the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and then flew 78 combat missions in Vietnam. Most of those missions were in the dangerous areas of Hanoi and Haiphong Harbor, and included one mission he led whose pilots claimed seven !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! kills, the highest for a single sortie in the war. After achieving the rank of General, James was named commander in chief of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , where he held operational command of all strategic aerospace defenses of the US and Canada. James died of a heart attack on February 25, 1978, just three weeks after his retirement from the US Air Force.

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February 25, 1963 – The first flight of the Transall C-160, a twin-turboprop military transport and cargo aircraft developed as a joint venture between Germany and France. “Transall” is an acronym for Transporter Allianz , and the C-160 was developed to satisfy requirements that arose in the late 1950s for a new transport aircraft to replace the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The Transall consortium was formed in 1959 and, following a delay in production while Lockheed unsuccessfully marketed the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! to Germany, the first production aircraft were delivered in 1967. A total of 214 were built between 1965-1985, and the C-160 has since become one of a handful of aircraft to see over 50 years of service.

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(San Diego Air and Space Museum)

February 25, 1933 – The launch of the USS Ranger (CV-4), the first US Navy ship to be designed from the keel up as an aircraft carrier. Similar to the Navy’s first carrier, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (CV 1), which had been converted from a collier, Ranger was not designed with an island superstructure, though one was added later. Since Ranger was too slow to keep pace with more modern carriers plying the Pacific Ocean, she served in the Atlantic and provided air support for the landings in North Africa during !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in November 1942. In 1943, Ranger participated in raids against German shipping in the North Atlantic as part of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and served as a training carrier late in the war. Ranger decommissioned in 1946 and scrapped the following year.

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(US Navy)

February 26, 1979 – Production of the Douglas A-4 Skyhawk ends. With delivery of an A-4M Skyhawk II to Marine Squadron VMA-331, Douglas closed the book on 25 years of production of one of the most versatile attack jets ever to serve the US Navy and Marine Corps. Designed as a replacement for the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the Skyhawk was a small yet powerful jet capable of delivering both conventional and nuclear weapons and, despite its diminutive size, the A-4 could carry a heavier payload than a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Known to its pilots as the Bantam Bomber , Mighty Mite and Scooter , the Skyhawk was also nicknamed Heinemann’s Hot Rod after its designer !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and in homage to its excellent performance. The A-4 entered service in 1956 and first saw combat over Vietnam in 1964. Until the arrival of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the Skyhawk served as the Navy’s primary ground attack aircraft, though the Marines continued to fly their Skyhawks. After retirement from fleet duty in 1991, the Skyhawk found a new lease on life as an adversary aircraft at the Navy’s !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (commonly called Top Gun). The A-4 was chosen as the bandit aircraft because of its small size, excellent maneuverability and smokeless trail, often playing the role of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The Blue Angels also flew the Skyhawk from 1974 to 1986. The last operational A-4s were retired in 2003. When production ended, Douglas had delivered a total of 2,960 copies of the plucky attacker in a host of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

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(Author unknown)

February 26, 1937 – The first flight of the Fiat G.50 Freccia , a single-engine fighter flown by the Italian Air Force ( Regia Aeronautica ) in WWII and Italy’s first single-seat all-metal monoplane. It was also the first Italian aircraft to enter production with retractable landing gear and an enclosed cockpit. The Freccia ( Arrow ) was powered by a 14-cylinder !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! radial engine and, with a maximum speed of 292 mph, was considered quite fast for its day. It was also highly maneuverable, but suffered from a lack of firepower provided by its pair of 12.7mm machine guns. The Freccia first saw service in the Battle of Britain, but it was far outclassed by more modern fighters. They were somewhat more successful fighting in the Mediterranean, but the type found its greatest success in the hands of Finnish pilots, who enjoyed a 33/1 kill ratio against Russian fighters.

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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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facw > ttyymmnn 02/26/2019 at 12:57

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Good stuff as always.

The last operational A-4s were retired in 2003. 

Last operational in the US. I believe the Argentine Air Force still flies them. The Brazilian Navy did so recently too, though Wikipedia now lists them as a former operator (without any source).

TheRealBicycleBuck > ttyymmnn 02/26/2019 at 13:02

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Another excellent post!

I wasn’t aware that the V-1 was mounted for aerial launch. Since air-to-air wasn’t a possibility, I wonder what targets they were going for that required the extended range from an aerial launch.

user314 > facw 02/26/2019 at 13:22

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Oddly, the A-4 main page lists Brazil as a former operator, but the List of Douglas A-4 operators page notes that Brazil’s A-4s are in service, but are being upgraded by Embraer. Furthermore, the List of active Brazilian Military aircraft page has 3 A-4KU and 1 AF-1B/C .

Of course, with the Sao Paulo being struck last year the A-4s may have similarly been retired, and so the latt er pages are simply out of date.

OPPOsaurus WRX > ttyymmnn 02/26/2019 at 13:34

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I can;t believe it took until 1990 to ban smoking. Smoking in a flying tin can just seems like a horrible idea, aside from the whole smo king and cancer thing.

user314 > TheRealBicycleBuck 02/26/2019 at 13:37

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Germany kept losing static launch sites to Allied bombing, then France was retaken after the Normandy landing, so the Luftwaffe switched to air-launching the V-1s to be able to continue to hit England. Around 1,200 V-1s were launched from He 111 H-22 variant, but estimates after the war indicate up to 40% failed. There were plans to also launch missiles from the Ar 234 jet bombers, but that never went anywhere.

user314 > OPPOsaurus WRX 02/26/2019 at 13:42

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user314 > ttyymmnn 02/26/2019 at 13:53

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BOMARC sites:

‘A’ Models: Liquid-fuel boost; electron-tube based guidance radar and computer.

‘B’ Models: Solid-fuel boost; transistor based guidance radar and computer.

TheRealBicycleBuck > user314 02/26/2019 at 14:26

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Wow. That’s something I never knew. Looking at that model, I have to wonder about launch procedures. The exhaust from a V-1 couldn’t have been good for the aircraft’s tail.

user314 > TheRealBicycleBuck 02/26/2019 at 14:30

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They planned to use a trapeze to raise the missile up to clear the tail, which probably would have only made the exercise that much more failure-prone. 

facw > OPPOsaurus WRX 02/26/2019 at 15:19

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And it was still allowed on domestic flights longer than six hours and international flights until 2000! Though I’m pretty confident most US airlines had abandoned the practice sooner than that.

facw > ttyymmnn 02/26/2019 at 15:28

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My parents were going through some old stuff and found a 1941 (pre-Pearl Harbor) comic-bookish guide to warplanes of the era titled Battle Planes . Here’s it’s take on the He-111 (this is probably the worst illustration in the book, I have no idea why the far nacelle appears to be vastly larger than the near one):

 The little blurb is pretty complimentary compared to some of the others which can be a bit propaganda-y.

ttyymmnn > facw 02/26/2019 at 15:36

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There you go again, pointing out my US bias. Or more properly, my lack of thorough research. But I’ll let Skyfire77 do the hard work for me.

Thanks for reading.

ttyymmnn > user314 02/26/2019 at 15:36

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Desperate times breed desperate measures .

ttyymmnn > TheRealBicycleBuck 02/26/2019 at 15:38

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Thanks! The He-111 was really jack of all trades.

Have you been following the Atlas Air crash? That’s kind of in your neck of the woods. I read that a nearby detention facility has security camera footage of the 767 nosing in. I also heard that they are having trouble locating the recorders.

ttyymmnn > OPPOsaurus WRX 02/26/2019 at 15:41

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I can assure you, it was miserable. Especially if you were in the last row of non-smoking. My brother and I took a 24-hour bus ride many years ago from VA to visit our grandparents in VT. Our parents must have been pretty trusting, since it required a change of buses in the Port Authority in NYC. What a skeezy place that was. In the middle of the night somewhere a couple of guys in the back row fired up a bowl. The reek of cheap pot soon filled the bus. The bus driver got on the intercom and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, the last three rows of the bus are for smoking pipes, cigars, or cigarettes. No marijuana, please.” And we rolled on through the night. 

ttyymmnn > facw 02/26/2019 at 15:43

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That’s really neat. I’d love to see that book. As for the drawing, it’s not very good, to be sure, though certainly better than I could ever do. Also, rubber boat. 

facw > ttyymmnn 02/26/2019 at 15:52

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I may scan the whole thing at some point, or at least the more interesting pages. Here’s the cover:

And the table of contents:

And for fun, a 1937 view of the drug store where it was purchased:

In that photo, I’m actually curious about the star flag/mural thing painted on the side of the building. The pegasus makes me wonder if it is some sort of Mobil thing, but I can find any ad or flag that looks like that.

We also have no idea where this thing came from, as far as we know, no one in the family was in Portland around the right time period. Closest we can get is that my grandfather’s minesweeper spent some time in Seattle in ‘45, so maybe it made its way up there an he picked it up then.

And yes, rubber boat is weird... I assume rubber is supposed to be rudder, but I’ve got nothing on boat, unless it was considered to be boat shaped or something. Either way, I think something was lost along the way. Alternatively, maybe it had a rubber boat for ditching in the channel, but they just put the label in a very weird place?

ttyymmnn > facw 02/26/2019 at 16:04

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Love those early Corsairs. They got decidedly more attractive with the later canopies, but the greenhouse really speaks to the era. Interestingly, the F4U didn’t have its maiden flight until 1940, and didn’t enter service until 1942. So that drawing may well have been made from a blueprint or some early production plan.

My guess is that it’s a giant blue (or gold) star flag. You probably know this , but people with family members in the service hung a flag with the number of stars representing how many people were serving. If a family member died, the blue star was swapped for gold. However, those flags are usually vertical. Other than that, I have no idea.

ttyymmnn > facw 02/26/2019 at 16:05

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And if you do scan the whole thing, I’d love to get a copy of it somehow.

facw > ttyymmnn 02/26/2019 at 16:13

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I hadn’t thought of that for the flag, but given that the photo is supposed to be from ‘37, it seems like an odd time for that.

ttyymmnn > facw 02/26/2019 at 16:17

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Agreed. Are you certain of the date?

ttyymmnn > facw 02/26/2019 at 16:19

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Wiki says the flags were around since WWI. So maybe people used them to denote service in peacetime as well? I don't know.

facw > ttyymmnn 02/26/2019 at 16:26

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Just what it said on the internet, so may not be 100% right. Feels right for the cars shown though.

TheRealBicycleBuck > ttyymmnn 02/26/2019 at 17:35

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I’ve heard the same things. Although there was inclement weather in the area, they are starting to think that wasn’t a factor. They were on their descent, 18 to 20 miles out. They still had a long way to go, were traveling at about half their cruise speed, and just before the crash they were still at or above 6,000 feet, so I doubt it had anything to do with wind shear or a microburst.

I look forward to the results of the investigation.

ttyymmnn > TheRealBicycleBuck 02/26/2019 at 17:37

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It’s definitely a strange one. I hope they find the recorders.

TheRealBicycleBuck > ttyymmnn 02/26/2019 at 17:55

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I’m sure they will. The debris field isn’t that big. I’m betting they will be found buried in the muck.

ttyymmnn > TheRealBicycleBuck 02/26/2019 at 17:56

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I had read, though, that the muck was blocking the ping.

TheRealBicycleBuck > ttyymmnn 02/26/2019 at 18:06

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I hadn’t seen that. If the muck is blocking the ping, they’ll bring in GPR equipment and search for it that way.

user314 > ttyymmnn 02/27/2019 at 08:44

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True, though the desperation would have been mitigated had someone told Herr Hitler to sit down, shut up, and let the generals and experts figure out how to best use the cutting-edge tech they were developing. Thank God that never happened. 

MattHurting > ttyymmnn 02/27/2019 at 15:38

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So Chappie Sinclair (played by Louis Gosset Jr) from the movie Iron Eagle is probably a nod to General Daniel James Jr. 

ttyymmnn > MattHurting 02/27/2019 at 16:03

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Never seen the movie, but I would certainly think so.