This Date in Aviation History: October 7 - October 9

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 10/09/2020 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 October 7 through October 9.

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A Finnish Tupolev SB in flight. The swastika, while associated with Nazi Germany, was also used by the Finnish Air Force, where the ancient symbol represented good luck or success.

October 7, 1934 – The first flight of the Tupolev ANT-40 / SB. Prior to the start of WWII, the design of bomber aircraft began to separate into two general trends. The first was large, heavy strategic bombers capable of flying long distances with large bomb loads. These bombers packed a punch, but they weren’t particularly fast, and were vulnerable to interception by opposing fighters. The second was the development of medium-sized, twin-engine bombers that carried fewer bombs but used their higher speeds as protection from enemy fighters. In 1933, the Soviet Air Force ministry issued a requirement for a new high speed bomber designated Skorostnoi Bombardirovschik (SB) and work on the new aircraft began at the Tupolev design bureau at the Central Aerodynamic Institute ( !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ).

Tupolev ANT-40RT in Aeroflot livery

Beginning in the early 1930s, aircraft designers moved away from fabric-covered wooden frameworks to !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! aircraft, an arrangement where the aircraft’s metal skin helps to keep the aircraft’s box frame rigid. Tupolev’s prototype bomber, known as the ANT-40, was the first modern stressed skin aircraft produced by the Russians in large numbers, and was initially created two versions. The first, known as the ANT-40RT, was powered by a pair of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! engines and was the first to fly. The second, known as the ANT-40IS, was powered by two French-made !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! liquid cooled V-12 engines. The bomber had a crew of three and a top speed of 280 mph, could carry up to 2,200 pounds of bombs, and was armed with four defensive machine guns.

Finnish Tupolev SBs lined up at an airfield during WWII

The ANT-40IS served as the production prototype for the Skorostnoi Bombardirovschik , but the first SBs started rolling off the production line before the testing program had even completed. As a result, the assembly lines faced numerous difficulties because of constant modifications to the production process. Many pilots and maintenance personnel were upset with the early shortcomings of the SB and, when the Russian Commissar for Heavy Industry, Sergo Ordzhonikidze, came for an inspection, the crews covered their aircraft with placards complaining about the problems. !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! was summoned for an audience with Soviet leader !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , where he told the Russian leader that most of the defects were trivial. Stalin replied, “There are no trivialities in aviation; everything is serious and any uncorrected triviality could lead to the loss of an aircraft and its crew.”

A pair of ShKAS 7.62mm machine guns protect the nose of this Finnish Tupolev SB

As production of the SB continued, refinements and improvements slowly made their way into the fleet, and the SB first saw action with the Spanish Republicans during the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 1936. There, the SB proved to be faster than contemporary fighters, and significantly faster than the older biplane fighters it faced. The SB also saw service in China, Mongolia, Finland, and some captured aircraft were flown against the Russians by the German Luftwaffe and Finnish Air Force. Despite its speed, the rapid pace of fighter development rendered the SB obsolete by 1941, and the remaining aircraft were used as transports and cargo aircraft. A total of 6,656 SBs were produced between 1936 and 1941, making it one of the most numerous aircraft of its day.

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October 7, 1932 – The first flight of the Stipa-Caproni. The decades of the 1920s-1930s are known as the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , an era marked by an explosion in the popularity of flying as well as rapid technological advancement in aircraft design. While many designers worked to refine more traditional aircraft, others took the opportunity to experiment with radical aircraft of entirely new design. While some of those innovative aircraft were developed into successful production designs, others, though ultimately unsuccessful, paved the way for aircraft of the future.

The engine at the front of the tubular fuselage of the Stipa-Caproni

One of the more exotic ideas to come out of this period was the Stipa-Caproni, also known by the reverse name Caproni Stipa. Created by Italian engineer !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and built by manufacturer !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the barrel-like fuselage was a tapered airfoil shape which created a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! that compressed the air moved by the propeller and sped it up, putting into practice the principles of fluid dynamics first described by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 1738. Stipa called his invention an intubed propeller , and he rigorously calculated the shape of both the tube and the prop, as well as the speed of the propeller for optimal efficiency. The aircraft’s elliptical wing passed through the oversized fuselage behind the propeller, and the rudder and elevators were mounted directly behind the tubular fuselage to benefit from the passage of air through the gaping fuselage. Two pilots sat in tandem in a blister high atop the aircraft.

The vertical and horizontal stabilizers mounted at the rear of the fuselage tube allow air from the engine to flow over the control surfaces.

In 1932, Stipa convinced the Italian government to fund the construction of his unorthodox airplane. Test pilots found that the aircraft was extremely stable, almost to the point of being difficult to turn. And the fact that the entire aircraft helped generate lift meant that extremely slow landing speeds were possible. Despite promising test results, the Stipa-Caproni failed to outperform contemporary aircraft, and the project was canceled. However, Stipa’s work was quite influential and widely studied, and some consider his intubed propeller, which is essentially a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , as the precursor to the modern !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! engine.

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October 9, 1999 – The final flight of the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. Before the advent of reliable reconnaissance satellites, it was up to aircraft to perform the often dangerous job of spying on an adversary. But early postwar reconnaissance aircraft were vulnerable to the new breed of jet fighters, and a number of American spy planes were shot down as they probed the borders of the Soviet Union. The high-flying !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , which could reach altitudes beyond the reach of contemporary fighters, removed much of the danger of interception, but it remained vulnerable to anti-aircraft missiles. In 1957, Lockheed began investigating an aircraft that could take over the dangerous job of spying on the Soviet Union from the vulnerable U-2, a task which became more urgent in 1960 when a U-2 flown by Francis Gary Powers was !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! by a surface-to-air missile over the Soviet Union while photographing nuclear missile sites. Lockheed’s goal was to create a plane that was untouchable by any fighter or missile then in existence. In addition to making a plane that flew still higher and faster, Lockheed also experimented with technologies that reduced the aircraft’s radar signature and served as the precursor to what we know as !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! today.

The Lockheed A-12, which formed the basis for the SR-71 Blackbird

The result of Lockheed’s work was the single-seat !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , which first flew in 1962. The A-12 was followed by the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and though it was not as fast as the lighter A-12, the Blackbird’s increased range and more advanced sensors made it a more capable aircraft. The SR-71 also added a second crewmember to handle the reconnaissance work, allowing the pilot to concentrate on flying the plane. Powered by two !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! continuous bleed afterburning turbojets, the Blackbird was capable of speeds up to Mach 3.3 at 80,000 feet. It could not be shot down by the surface-to-air missiles of the day, and it was faster than any Soviet fighter. The SR-71 took its maiden flight on December 22, 1964 and entered service four years later. Blackbirds based in Okinawa were soon flying as many as two missions a week over enemy territory, most often North Vietnam and Laos. Flying from European bases, Blackbirds probed the edges of the Soviet Union and provided intelligence during US military operations in Libya.

But along with the unsurpassed capabilities of the SR-71 came very high operating costs, and the remarkable spy plane became part of a political tug of war in an era of shrinking budgets and competition for funds. In 1989, the Blackbird was retired from service, even at a time of escalating tensions in the Middle East when it could have performed valuable reconnaissance in the upcoming !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . When the US government realized that it still had a need for the high-flying spy plane, the SR-71 was updated with real-time data transmission capabilities and reactivated in 1993, despite stiff opposition from the US Air Force who said they didn’t have the funds to operate it. The Air Force also claimed that restarting the Blackbird would drain funds from the unmanned reconnaissance projects under development at the time.

After another political battle over funding the aircraft, the SR-71 was permanently retired in 1998, and the last two airworthy Blackbirds were transferred to NASA for research. The book on the Blackbird was finally closed on October 9, 1999 when the last flying aircraft, an SR-71A (61-7980/NASA 844), landed at Edwards AFB in California and was placed in storage with the other NASA Blackbird. As of its official retirement, the Blackbird had logged 53,490 flight hours with only one pilot lost to an accident. None were lost to enemy fire. All remaining aircraft (as far we know) are now housed at aviation museums around the country.  

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Short Takeoff

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October 7, 1995 – The first flight of the Mitsubishi F-2, a fighter built in cooperation between !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! for the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force. Based on the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the F-2 features a larger wing made of composite materials, larger tail plane, larger nose housing a more a powerful radar, a larger air intake and a three-piece canopy. Under the terms of the partnership, advances made in the F-2 were transferred back to Lockheed Martin for use in future US fighters. A total of 94 aircraft were produced from 1995-2011.

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October 7, 1963 – The first flight of the Learjet 23, the world’s first light business jet. A true pioneer in the world of business jet (bizjet) aviation, the LearJet 23 originated in Switzerland where it was conceived by !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and designed by Hans-Luzius Studer, who had worked previously on the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! fighter for Switzerland. The six-passenger bizjet became an instant success, and production was moved to the US where 105 aircraft were completed from 1962-1966. The LearJet has been continuously upgraded and enlarged since, and newer variants remain in production.

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October 9, 2009 – The Centaur module of NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) crashes on the Moon. In an effort to determine whether or not the polar regions of the Moon contain subsurface frozen water, NASA launched LCROSS along wth the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! on June 8, 2009 atop an !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! rocket. LCROSS consisted of a Shepherding Spacecraft that was attached to the spent Centaur upper stage of the Atlas rocket. Once over the southern pole of the moon, the rocket stage was launched into a shaded crater and followed down to the surface by the Shepherding Spacecraft with its sensors. The Atlas stage impacted the crater at approximately 5,600 mph and, while the debris plume was not as large as scientists hoped for, the trailing spacecraft was still able to confirm the presence of water on the Moon.

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October 9, 1987 – The first flight of the AgustaWestland AW101, a joint venture of the Italian company !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and the British company !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! to produce a medium-lift naval helicopter. Known by Britain, Denmark, Norway and Portugal as the Merlin, the AW101 is powered by three !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! turboshaft engines and entered service in 1999 in the transport, anti-submarine warfare (ASW), and ship-based utility roles. It now serves with both military and civilian operators of 11 nations. In 1999, the US Navy and Marine Corps initiated the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! program to find a replacement for the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! used to transport the US president, and the AW101, designated the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , was considered in the competition before the program was canceled in 2009 after significant cost overruns.

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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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facw > ttyymmnn 10/09/2020 at 12:52

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It could not be shot down by the surface-to-air missiles of the day, and it was faster than any Soviet fighter

I think I’ve complained about this before, but this strikes me as unlikely to be true. For starters a North Vietnamese missile did damage an A-12, which suggests that it was not impossible (granted hundreds of missiles were fired and A-12s and SR-71s during the Vietnam War and this was the only known hit, and it wasn’t bad enough for the pilot to realize he had been hit, the damage was found in a post-flight inspection ). Furthermore, despite the hype around replacing the now vulnerable U-2 with an untouchable SR-71, I’ve never seen anything to indicate that we ever actually flew a single SR-71 mission in Soviet airspace, instead using them over less capable (and smaller) states like North Vietnam, North Korea, and Cuba. And of course a major reason for the cancellation of the Valkyrie was that we no longer believed that a high-speed, high-altitude bomber would be able to penetrate Soviet air defenses, so it seems unlikely that a high-speed, high-altitude reconnaissance plane would do much better.

Future next gen S2000 owner > ttyymmnn 10/09/2020 at 12:56

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the first SBs started rolling off the production line before the testing program had even completed. As a result, the assembly lines faced numerous difficulties because of constant modifications to the production process.

Huh. It’s almost as if this reminds me of something.......

ttyymmnn > facw 10/09/2020 at 13:13

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That’s fair. And I have not come across any mentions of missions over the USSR, at least none that have been made public. I think it could be worded more accurately, perhaps,

It was practically immure to SAMs of the day, and was faster than any fighter an adversary could launch against it.

facw > Future next gen S2000 owner 10/09/2020 at 13:14

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I have no idea what sorts of things you could be talking about ...

ttyymmnn > Future next gen S2000 owner 10/09/2020 at 13:15

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I had a long talk at an air show a few years ago with an F-35 pilot. We talked a lot of  military history, and he said, “History doesn’t always repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”

user314 > facw 10/09/2020 at 13:26

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Not flying OXCARTs or Blackbirds over the USSR was more a political decision than a technological one. Ike outlawed overflights in the wake of the U-2 shoot- down, and neither Kennedy nor LBJ reversed that decision. The Golden BB catches up to everyone eventually, but the SR-71 proved she could absolutely   outrun SA-2s or SA-4s.

Darkbrador > ttyymmnn 10/09/2020 at 13:27

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One minor correction : Hispano Suiza is a French, not Spanish company. 

ttyymmnn > Darkbrador 10/09/2020 at 13:34

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Reading comprehension FTW:

Hispano-Suiza (English: Spanish-Swiss ) is a Spanish automotive–engineering company and, after World War I, a French aviation engine and components manufacturer.

I didn’t get the part where the aviation engines were French. Thanks for pointing that out.

Darkbrador > ttyymmnn 10/09/2020 at 14:00

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T he name is confusing, and I hope it didn’t come across in a negative way.

ttyymmnn > Darkbrador 10/09/2020 at 14:02

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No, not at all. I welcome all questions and corrections. I’d rather have it right than worry about getting my feelings hurt. I consider you all my army of proof readers. 

John Norris (AngryDrifter) > ttyymmnn 10/09/2020 at 20:35

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Tupo le v successfully took a basic early airplane shape and made it ugly.

This is amazing.

ttyymmnn > John Norris (AngryDrifter) 10/09/2020 at 21:12

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Somebody has built a flying scale replica of the Stipa Caproni. 

gmporschenut also a fan of hondas > facw 10/09/2020 at 21:41

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I recall a documentary on the U2 talking about the cameras after Gary Powers , being at 18miles up, they could see 70miles inland. so technically not over the USSR, but high enough to spy on ports, air defences etc along the coast and inland

John Norris (AngryDrifter) > ttyymmnn 10/09/2020 at 21:41

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Pitch control looks problematic but what a great project.