This Date in Aviation History: May 2 - May 5

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 05/05/2020 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 May 2 through May 5.

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May 4-8, 1942 – The Battle of the Coral Sea. Since the earliest days of sea warfare, naval battles have been relatively close-up affairs. In ancient times, Greek !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! rammed or grappled Persian ships and then boarded for hand-to-hand combat. By the first century, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! was being sprayed by Byzantine warships, or hurled as flaming grenades, but ships still needed to be in close range for it to be effective. Cannons appeared by the 13th century, but hand-to-hand combat was still required to close a battle. By WWI, the guns were much bigger, and ships could duel from greater distances, though a target still had to be within sight to direct the most effective fire. But the arrival of the airplane had a profound affect on naval tactics. Far-ranging aircraft could attack enemy ships from beyond the horizon, or direct accurate fire from capital ships. By WWII, the aircraft carrier had supplanted the battleship as the focus of naval strategy. In the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , Royal Navy !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! biplane torpedo bombers flew from !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! to sink battleships of the Italian Navy, and the audacious Japanese surprise attack on !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! made it clear that a sea change had occurred in naval warfare. In those battles, the targets were mostly lying at anchor. But the Battle of the Coral Sea, fought in open waters, heralded the airplane’s ascendancy as the most powerful weapon in the world’s navies.

In the months following Pearl Harbor, the Japanese continued to make territorial gains in the Pacific. The Allies, unable to stop them, struggled even to slow down the Japanese advance. In order to strengthen defensive positions and to form a buffer zone to cut off Australia, the Japanese carried out !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! which called for the capture of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in New Guinea and an invasion of the island of Tulagi in the southeastern !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! near !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The Japanese combined fleet included a carrier striking force based on the large fleet carriers !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and a covering group assembled around the light carrier !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The American and Australian opposition was centered on the carriers !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (CV-5) and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (CV-2). Arriving in the area on May 4, the Allies were too late to stop the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! which had begun on the previous day. Still, Yorktown’s aircraft harassed Japanese forces on the island before the carrier turned south to join Lexington . For two days, the opposing fleets searched for each other unsuccessfully. At 11:00 am on May 7, dive bombers from Yorktown and Lexington located the Japanese covering group and the carrier Shh . Swooping in to the attack, American !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! dive bombers and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! torpedo bombers struck Shh with thirteen 1,000 bombs and as many as five torpedoes, sinking Shh against the loss of five SBDs. LTC Robert Dixon, the commander of Lexington’s air wing, jubilantly radioed back to the fleet, “Scratch one flat top!” The next morning, both fleets located each other and launched attacks. The Japanese carrier Shkaku was disabled, and the American carrier Lexington was severely damaged. Though still afloat, she was later abandoned and sunk by torpedoes from the destroyer !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (DD-360).

For the first time in history, a naval battle had been carried out between two opposing forces in which no two capital ships ever sighted one another, nor engaged each other directly. The airplane had become the dominant weapon in the world’s oceans. Though each side lost one aircraft carrier, the Japanese could claim a tactical victory based solely on the US Navy’s suffering greater losses of ships and men. With the sinking of Lexington , the US had lost one-quarter of their Pacific carrier fleet. Following the withdrawal of Yorktown from the Solomons, the Allies ceded the battlefield to the Japanese. However, from a strategic standpoint, the Battle of the Coral Sea was the first significant check on Japanese expansion in the South Pacific. The Allies prevented the capture of Port Moresby by sea, and kept open the vital supply lines to Australia. Of equal importance, the simple fact that the Allies were able to stand toe-to-toe against the seemingly unstoppable Japanese provided a major boost to morale. Just one month later, Japanese and American carriers faced off again in the pivotal !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . In the second major battle fought entirely by aircraft, the US Navy sank all four Japanese heavy carriers while suffering the loss of Yorktown. This decisive victory shifted the balance of power over to the side of the Allies, and turned the tide of the Pacific War against the Japanese.

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Short Takeoff

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(Tim Shaffer)

May 2, 1998 – The 100th and final Rockwell B-1B Lancer is delivered . The Rockwell B-1 was originally envisioned as a Mach 2, long-range nuclear bomber to replace the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The B-1A was canceled in 1977 by the Carter administration, but then resurrected during the Reagan administration as the B-1B, and its mission was changed to low-level bombing with conventional armament. Despite the recent emphasis on !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the B-1B has become a mainstay of the US Air Force, serving in all US conflicts since !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 1998. The “Bone” is scheduled to be retired by 2036. However it is likely that the B-52, the aircraft the Lancer was meant to replace, will still be in service.

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(UK Government)

May 2, 1952 – The world’s first regularly scheduled jet passenger flights begin. The age of passenger flight took off in the 1930s, the so-called Golden Age of aviation, but the 1950s marked the transition from piston-powered to jet-powered airliners. The !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , with its four !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! turbojets, took its maiden flight on July 27, 1949, and the first production airliner, registered G-ALYP, carried fare-paying passengers for the first time on a flight from London to Johannesburg. In their first year of service, Comets carried 30,000 passengers, but soon major aircraft manufacturers such as Boeing, Convair, and Douglas in the US, and later Airbus in Europe, joined the jet airliner business. Today nearly 37 million flights a year take place the world over, transporting more than three billion passengers.

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(NASA)

May 3, 2007 – The death of American astronaut Walter Marty “Wally” Schirra. Born on March 12, 1923 in Hackensack, New Jersey, Schirra graduated from the US Naval Academy and became a Naval Aviator in 1948. He served in Korea, and later as a test pilot, before becoming a member of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , America’s first group of astronauts. As a Mercury astronaut, Schirra flew the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! mission in 1962 which orbited the Earth six times. In 1965, Schirra joined astronaut Thomas Stafford in the flight of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and maneuvered his spacecraft to within one foot of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , completing the first rendezvous in space between two manned spacecraft. In 1968, Schirra commanded !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the first manned launch of the Apllo program. The Apollo flight made Schirra the first man to go to space three times, and the only astronaut to have flown in all three American manned space programs. Schirra retired from both the Navy and NASA following Apollo 7 and went on to become an expert commentator for CBS News for future launches of the Apollo program.

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(US Air Force)

May 3, 1952 – The first aircraft lands at the North Pole. US Air Force pilots Lt. Col. William P. Benedict and Lt. Col. Joseph Fletcher beat the US Navy to the North Pole while flying a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! equipped with landing skis. The landing was the team’s second attempt during what was dubbed Operation Oil Drum, and Fletcher became the first person to undisputedly stand at the exact geographic North Pole. On the flight along with Flecther and Benedict was scientist Dr. Albert Crary, who would travel to the South Pole in 1961 and become the first person to stand at both poles.

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May 3, 1945 – British aircraft sink German ships carrying concentration camp prisoners. Three days after the death of Adolf Hitler and just one day before Germany’s unconditional surrender ending WWII in Europe, the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! left Baltic Sea ports loaded with nearly 8,000 prisoners who had been transferred from German prison camps. Neither of the ships was marked as a hospital ship, though a third ship, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , had one white funnel with a red cross on it from its days as a hospital ship. British naval commanders believed that the ships carried members of the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) fleeing to Norway and, despite warnings from the International Red Cross about the true nature of the ships’ cargo, attacked all three ships. Thielbek sank in roughly 20 minutes, while Cap Arcona burned before sinking, and British warplanes machine-gunned the survivors floating in the water. In all, 7,800 former prisoners died in the attack, marking one of the heaviest losses of life in naval history.

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(Martin Clever/PA Archive)

May 4, 1982 – Argentine fighters sink the Royal Navy guided missile destroyer HMS Sheffield . During the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , as England fought to regain control of the Falkand Islands off the Argentine coast, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (D80) was attacked by two !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! fighters armed with French-made !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! anti-ship missiles. One of the missiles struck Sheffield amidships just above the waterline, killing 20 crew members, injuring 20 others, and starting fires that burned unchecked for days after the ship was abandoned. Sheffield eventually sank on May 10, one of six British ships lost in the conflict. Despite the losses of ships and men, England prevailed in the nine-week war and regained control of the disputed islands.

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May 4, 1963 – The first flight of the Dassault Falcon 20. In 1961, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! approved the production of an 8- or 10-seat executive jet. The new plane was called the Dassault-Breguet Mystère 20, and the prototype, registered F-WLKB, made its first flight at Bordeaux-Merignac. The Falcon 20 was the first of what is now an extremely successful line of business jets built by Dassault that now includes aircraft capable of intercontinental flight. In 1973, Federal Express chose a Falcon 20 as the aircraft to start its package delivery service and, in 2012, a Falcon 20 became the first civilian jet to fly using biofuel.  

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(Author unknown)

May 4, 1955 – The death of Louis Charles Bréguet. Born on January 2, 1880, Bréguet was a pioneer in aviation who is notable for the design and production of numerous French aircraft. Bréguet built his first aircraft, the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , in 1909, and was a pioneer in the development of metal aircraft, with the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! reconnaissance biplane being built in large numbers and serving in WWI. Following the war, Bréguet founded the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , one of the world’s first airlines, which after many years evolved into Air France. Other notable Bréguet aircraft were the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! double-deck airliner and the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! anti-submarine aircraft. In 1971, Bréguet merged with !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! to form Aviations Marcel Dassault-Bréguet Aviation .

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May 4, 1949 – An airliner carrying the entire Torino football team crashes on final approach to Turin . While returning from a match in Lisbon, Portugal, the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! of Avio Linee Italiane was making its approach to Turin-Aeritalia Airport in extremely low visibility when it struck the back wall of the Basilica of Superga which, although situated high on a hill, is not on the direct landing path. All 31 passengers and crew were killed. It is unknown why the crew deviated from their approach, but one theory is that high winds had blown them off course, or that a stuck altimeter led them to believe that they would clear the basilica. Grande Torino , as the team was known, were posthumously named the winners of the 1948-49 season of the Serie A, and the team was reconstituted the following year by players loaned from other squads. Pieces of the wreckage are on display at museum near Turin.

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(Author unknown)

May 4, 1924 – The first flight of the Sikorsky S-29-A, an all-metal biplane airliner and the first aircraft designed and built by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! after he emigrated to the United States. The airliner had interior accommodations for 16 passengers, while the pilot and mechanic were seated in open cockpits behind the wing. The airliner failed to attract the interest of the fledgling American commercial airline industry, and only one was ever built. Sikorsky sold the airplane, and it was used for commercial endeavors such as advertising for a clothing manufacturer and as a flying cigar store. It played the role of a German !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! bomber in Howard Hughes’ movie !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!   (1930), but was damaged beyond repair during filming.

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(Tim Shaffer)

May 5, 2005 – The first flight of the Dassault Falcon 7X, a long-range trijet developed from the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and one of only three trijets currently in production (Falcon 8X, Falcon 900). The 7X is powered by three !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! turbofans and has a maximum speed of Mach 0.9 with a range of just under 6,000 nautical miles. The 7X was further developed into the 8X, which has a longer range achieved by improved engines and aerodynamics and greater fuel capacity. More than 260 7X aircraft have been built, and just about half of the fleet is operated in Europe. It also serves the governments and militaries of six nations.

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(NASA)

May 5, 1961 – Alan Shepard becomes the first American to fly in space. In the first launch of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! program, Shepard and his Freedom 7 capsule, named in honor of the seven Mercury astronauts to convey a sense of teamwork rather than an individual accomplishment, launched atop a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and reached an altitude of 263.1 nautical miles in a flight that lasted just over 15 minutes. Though the mission was a success, the United States was still stinging from the fact that the Russians had beaten them into space by only 23 days, after cosmonaut !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! orbited the Earth in his Vostok 1 space capsule on April 12, 1961. America would not put an astronaut into Earth orbit until !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! flew on February 20, 1962.

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(US Navy)

May 5, 1948 – The McDonnel FH Phantom enters service with the US Navy. Designed in the waning days of WWII and too late to see action in that conflict, the FH Phantom was the first production aircraft built by the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the first jet-powered aircraft to land on an American carrier, and the first jet flown by the US Marine Corps. The Phantom was only built in small numbers, but it proved the viability of jet operations from carriers and ushered US Naval aviation into the Jet Age. Following the development of the more advanced !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , production on the FH Phantom was halted, cutting the program off at just 62 aircraft. The Phantom was retired from frontline service in 1949, though it was flown by the US Naval Reserve until 1954.

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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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Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > ttyymmnn 05/05/2020 at 12:50

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This is a particularly heavy day. I never knew that bit about the German prison ships being sunk and I almost wish I hadn’t.

TheRealBicycleBuck > ttyymmnn 05/05/2020 at 12:53

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Excellent job, once again. I especially enjoyed  the overview of the rise of importance of the airplane to naval warfare.

Chariotoflove > ttyymmnn 05/05/2020 at 12:56

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I’m skimming the web now to see how naval aviation started. It seems that the US Navy began experimenting with aviation almost as soon as the plane was able, even building a aviation base. However, it’s a little fuzzy to me  so far when the US carriers shifted from carrying US Army Air Force planes to exclusively launching it’s own.

user314 > ttyymmnn 05/05/2020 at 12:57

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Despite the recent emphasis on stealth technology , the B-1B has become a mainstay of the US Air Force 

Well actually, the B-1B does have a lower radar cross-section (1.5 m 3 vs 10 m 3 ) than the B-1A due to the variable geometry intakes of the B-1A were replaced with fixed ramps.

ttyymmnn > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available 05/05/2020 at 12:57

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Overzealous victors, it would seem. 

The Ghost of Oppo > ttyymmnn 05/05/2020 at 13:02

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I feel like Battle of the Coral Sea somehow always get overlooked between Pearl Harbor and Midway.  

ttyymmnn > TheRealBicycleBuck 05/05/2020 at 13:20

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Thanks. WWI was really the end of the classic era of naval warfare. Check out the Battle of Jutland .

ttyymmnn > Chariotoflove 05/05/2020 at 13:27

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Before the U.S. Navy had airplanes or pilots, it had an interest in aviation. As aviation pioneers demonstrated their inventions in the United States and Europe, naval planners attended airshows to watch the new technology develop. By 1910, the Navy had appointed an aviation officer, and a civilian pilot, Eugene Ely, demonstrated that an airplane could take off from a ship. About the same time, Glenn Curtiss proposed free flight instruction to the Navy, and Lieutenant Theodore Ellyson was ordered to the Glenn Curtiss Aviation Camp at North Island, San Diego, to accept his offer. By 1911, naval aviation was under way. That year, the U.S. Navy bought its first airplane, the Curtiss A-1 Triad. From these humble beginnings the Navy’s aircraft inventory has grown to more than 30 types of fixed-wing, rotary, and remotely piloted aircraft today. ( Air and Space Magazine )  

ttyymmnn > user314 05/05/2020 at 13:28

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Yes, it’s stealthi er , but not designed with stealth in mind from the outset, like the B-2, B-21, F-22, F-35, etc.

ttyymmnn > The Ghost of Oppo 05/05/2020 at 13:29

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It does, probably because it was more or less a stalemate. But super important nonetheless. 

Chariotoflove > ttyymmnn 05/05/2020 at 13:46

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Yes, that’s the stuff I was reading. But even in WWII, carriers were still carrying and launching USAAF planes. Today, however, my understanding is that carrier wings are made up entirely of Navy planes flown by Navy pilots under direct command of the ship captain (and yes I know that everything on a ship is ultimately under the captain’s command regardless) . I’m wondering how the shift in command structure proceeded to where it is today.

user314 > ttyymmnn 05/05/2020 at 13:55

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True, just wanted to point that out. It also gives me an excuse to post this:

ttyymmnn > Chariotoflove 05/05/2020 at 13:58

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Yes, that’s the stuff I was reading. But even in WWII, carriers were still carrying and launching USAAF planes.

[citation needed]

Not being snarky, I just have never heard of this, and I can’t seem to think of an example. .

ttyymmnn > user314 05/05/2020 at 13:59

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That’s a great graphic.

Chariotoflove > ttyymmnn 05/05/2020 at 14:36

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Well one example was the Doolittle Raid . That was the thing that started me asking this question. Now, I don’t know for sure if that was an exceptional arrangement, or if there were more widespread use of Army air groups transported by carriers. But it make sense to me that if the Navy were operating it s own planes, they would have procured the medium bombers for the operation itself.

I’m researching this on and off as I can in between doing actual work.

ttyymmnn > Chariotoflove 05/05/2020 at 14:51

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The Doolittle Raid was very much a special circumstance, since we didn’t have land bases close enough to Japan to launch the raid. Escort carriers were used as plane ferries in the Pacific, but that was mostly for USN aircraft, at least as far as I can tell. Some USAAF aircraft were sent to Europe in cargo holds, but most were flown over North Atlantic ferrying routes  to keep them safe from U-boats and to save a significant amount of time. So, while USAAF aircraft may have been ferried on carriers, I can’t imagine the Navy, being the Navy, and the Air Force, being the Air Force, would be interested in sharing the equipment. 

Chariotoflove > ttyymmnn 05/05/2020 at 14:56

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Today, absolutely not. In the beginning, however, when things were in flux and there was no Air Force, but rather a branch of the Army, I wondered if these combinations happened more often and you might see USAAF air wings attached to carrier groups . But you’re probably right over all.

BTW, I ran across this interesting article on Air Force vs. Naval air power and Naval doctrine. Thought you might find it an interesting read.

https://www.airforcemag.com/article/0399carrier/

ttyymmnn > Chariotoflove 05/05/2020 at 15:04

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I saw that very same article, and read a bit of it. the intraservice rivalry is alive and well, it would seem. At the end of the day, Army/Air Force pilots have never been trained to operate from carriers. I hesitate to make an absolute statement, but I believe that carrier operations , at least  since 1911, have been the sole bailiwick of US Navy pilots. 

Chariotoflove > ttyymmnn 05/05/2020 at 15:07

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I sometimes wonder if things would be better off without so much rivalry, not that I have any skin in the game beyond being a taxpayer. It’s mostly academic interest.

On topic, someone posted this recently, and I found it funny.

ttyymmnn > Chariotoflove 05/05/2020 at 15:11

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I think the rivalry can be healthy, except when it’s not (see: Operation Eagle Claw, Operation Just Cause). At the end of the day, though, we’re all on the same team. I do believe we’ve come a long way with inter service cooperation since those ops I mentioned.

Chariotoflove > ttyymmnn 05/05/2020 at 15:16

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Hope so!

gmporschenut also a fan of hondas > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available 05/05/2020 at 20:27

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The baltic campaign was pretty brutal. One youtuber put it as “there were a number of heroic last stands, but this story doesn’t have heros”. The germans had shitloads of troops in pockets along the Baltic. Due to the heavy marshy area this aided in their defence, and they were funneling troops from these back to germany prolonging the conflict. .

gmporschenut also a fan of hondas > Chariotoflove 05/05/2020 at 20:31

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Only time USAAF planes were on a carrier, they were in no condition to fly.

Its pretty much impossible to do with a tailhook.

though there have been some crazy experiments.

Chariotoflove > gmporschenut also a fan of hondas 05/05/2020 at 20:53

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Well, we were talking earlier about the the Doolittle Raid, in which Army B-25 in most definitely operational condition, took off from the USS Hornet.

You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much > gmporschenut also a fan of hondas 05/06/2020 at 11:09

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I can’t begin to wrap my head around trying to land a U-2 on a carrier.  From everything I’ve seen these just didn’t want to land.  Trying to land a plane that usually gets a chase car talking them down to a long runway and instead putting it down on a carrier is just a whole other level of piloting skill.