This Date in Aviation History: May 13 - May 15

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 05/15/2020 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 13 through May 15.

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May 13, 1949 – The first flight of the English Electric Canberra. With a mere 44 years from first flight to the breaking of the sound barrier, the history of aviation is notable for incredibly rapid technological development. On a smaller scale, aircraft that were cutting edge technology when they took their first flight are often eclipsed by newer designs in only a few years, and some are obsolete the first time they turn a wheel or even before they come off the assembly line. But a handful of aircraft have proven to be so rugged, so reliable, and so adaptable to changing mission requirements that they reached and surpassed the extraordinary milestone of 50 years of active service, and one of those diehards is the English Electric Canberra.

The Canberra arose from a British Air Ministry requirement for a bomber to replace the remarkable !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , a piston-powered, multi-role fighter bomber that served with great distinction during WWII. Though several well established manufacturers offered proposals, English Electric was named a finalist, even though they had a very sparse history of aircraft manufacture. Up to that point, their entire aircraft construction experience came from manufacturing the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! bombers, which they built under license during the war. But with the Canberra, English Electric took cues from de Havilland and adopted the design ethos of the Mosquito: put the most powerful engines available into the lightest, most aerodynamic airframe you can design, and then provide the greatest possible space for weaponry. With these principals in mind, English Electric designed an aerodynamically clean airframe with no fuselage protrusions, and powered the bomber with two !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! turbojet engines mounted in the broad wings. Though designers considered swept wings, they chose instead to use wings that tapered outboard of the engine nacelles, since the Canberra’s mission requirements did not call for great speed. Maneuverability was considered of greater importance. In some regards, the Canberra actually resembled a scaled up !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the first British jet fighter to enter production.

The Air Ministry ordered four prototypes, and by the time the first prototype took its maiden flight, orders had already been placed for 132 aircraft. Despite their lack of experience, English Electric produced an aircraft that was so easy to fly that new pilots required only 20 hours of jet training on the Meteor followed by a mere three hours of training in the dual-control Canberra trainer. The Canberra entered service with the Royal Air Force in 1951 and quickly showed its mettle. With a top speed of 580 mph, it was capable of outrunning contemporary jet fighters until the introduction of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and an RAF Canberra won the “Last Great Air Race” in 1953 by covering the 12,300 mile distance from London to Christchurch, New Zealand in just under 24 hours, a record that still stands. Though the Canberra had been envisioned as a tactical nuclear bomber, early nuclear bombs were too large for it to carry, and early variants of the bomber suffered from relatively short range. Therefore, initial missions included tactical conventional bombing and reconnaissance. By 1957, changes in nuclear bomb design finally allowed the Canberra to take on the tactical nuclear attack mission, and bombers were stationed in Germany, Cyprus and Singapore to serve as a nuclear deterrent to the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

A US Air Force Martin B-57C Canberra of the 3rd Bombardment Group flies over Mt. Fuji in 1957. Note the tandem cockpit added to increase visibility for pilot and navigator. (US Air Force)

The Canberra also became a popular export aircraft, and when the US Air Force found themselves in dire need of a tactical bomber in Korea, they took the rare move of adopting the British-designed Canberra as the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , with the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! building and modifying just over 400 bombers. The B-57 earned the distinction of being the first American jet bomber to drop bombs in combat during missions over Vietnam in 1964. It also served extensively in the reconnaissance role.

NASA’s high-flying WB-57 research aircraft (NASA)

As a testament to the Canberra’s adaptability, and the reason for its longevity, no less than 27 variants were produced, plus seven variants developed by Martin. The Canberra has also proven to be an excellent research aircraft, and though the USAF retired their B-57s by 1983, NASA still operates three WB-57Fs for high-altitude research, earth science, and mapping missions. The Royal Air Force retired their last Canberras in 2006 after a remarkable service life of 59 years.  

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Short Takeoff

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(US Library of Congress)

May 12, 1926 – Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen carries out the first airship flight over the North Pole. Amundsen headed a 16-man expedition to cross the North Pole flying an Italian-built semi-rigid airship named !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . After leaving Spitzbergen, Norway on May 11, the team reached the North Pole at 01:25 (GMT) on May 12 and dropped Norwegian, American and Italian flags onto the polar ice below. They had planned to continue to Nome, Alaska, but a build up of ice on the propellers forced them to land in Teller, Alaska. While others, including !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , all claim to have reached the Pole before Amundsen, those claims remain subject to dispute. Only Amundsen’s flight has been officially verified.

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May 12, 2001 – The death of Alexei Tupolev. Tupolev was born in Moscow on May 20, 1925, the son of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , a pioneering aircraft designer and founder of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Alexei studied engineering at the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and slowly worked his way up through his father’s company. He became Chief Designer in 1963 and assumed control of the design bureau following his father’s death in 1972. Alexei’s work on the development of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the world’s first truly successful jet airliner, and his knowledge of jet propulsion, led to his heading the design team working on the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! supersonic airliner starting in 1963. Alexei also worked on the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! supersonic bomber, and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , Russia’s attempt to build its own space shuttle.  

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(Betty Miller Collection)

May 12, 1963 – Betty Miller becomes the first woman to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean. While many of the most famous record-breaking flights were carried out simply for notoriety or to prove that such a flight was possible, Miller’s flight from California to Australia was made simply to deliver a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (N4315Y) to its new owner. Miller, a commercial pilot and flight instructor, set out on April 25 and flew 17 hours from Oakland, California to Honolulu, Hawaii. After waiting four days in Hawaii for repairs to the plane’s radio, Miller flew on to Canton Island in the Phoenix Islands, then Fiji, then Noumea, New Caledonia. She finally reached Eagle Farm Airport in Queensland, Australia on May 12 after covering 7,400 miles and spending 51 hours, 38 minutes in the air. In recognition of her feat, Miller received both the Federal Aviation Administration Gold Medal for Exceptional Service and the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

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May 12, 1949 – The Soviet blockade of West Berlin ends. In the first major international crisis of the Cold War, the Soviet Union began a blockade of the city of Berlin on June 24, 1948 in an effort wrest control of the western sectors of the city from the Western allies. While the Soviets were able to block all land travel to the city, they could not halt air traffic, and the Allies began supplying the city by air in what came to be known as the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . By the end of August 1948, 1,500 flights per day—one landing every minute—were delivering more than 5,000 tons of cargo, enough to keep the city fed and powered in spite of the blockade. On Easter Sunday 1949, cargo aircraft managed to deliver 13,000 tons of cargo, including the equivalent of 600 railroad cars of coal. The airlift continued for 11 months, made more than 189,000 flights totaling nearly 600,000 hours of flying, and amassed more than 92 million miles flown. Faced with this herculean effort, the Soviets finally conceded and lifted the blockade at 12:01 am on May 12, 1949. West Berlin remained a free city, and it stood as an important symbol of the West’s resolve to fight the spread of Communism in Europe until the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 1990.

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May 13, 1940 – The Sikorsky VS-300 makes its first untethered flight. !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! quest for a viable rotorcraft lead to the development of the VS-300 in 1938. However, Sikorsky had particular difficulty figuring out a system for !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! control. So, as a safety measure, he undertook a series of tethered flights to work out the details of the control system. Once solved, Sikorsky untethered the helicopter and achieved completely controlled free flight. The VS-300 became the first single lifting-rotor helicopter in the US, and the first successful helicopter to use a single vertical tail rotor. The VS-300 was also the first to employ a single engine to power both rotors. The basic control system devised by Sikorsky is still in use today.

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(US Navy)

May 14, 2013 – The Northrop Grumman X-47B becomes the world’s first unmanned aircraft to launch from an aircraft carrier. In 2000, the US Navy committed to the development of an Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAS) and awarded contracts for demonstrator aircraft to Boeing and Northrop Grumman. Following its launch from the nuclear carrier !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (CVN 77), the X-47B performed the first autonomous touch-and-go landings three days later and the first arrested carrier landing on July 10 of that year. The X-47B later demonstrated autonomous aerial refueling in April of 2015. The X-47 program has finished, and the Navy is now focusing on the development of an autonomous !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! (CBARS) with delivery scheduled for 2021.  

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May 14, 2005 – Didier Delsalle lands a helicopter on the summit of Mt. Everest. Delsalle began his flying career in 1979 as a fighter pilot before transitioning to helicopters and working as a search and rescue pilot, and eventually became the chief test pilot for Eurocopter (now !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ). Flying a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ( Squirrel ), Delsalle touched down on the summit of Mt. Everest at an elevation of 29,029 feet, marking not just the highest elevation ever landed on but also the highest elevation possible on Earth. Delsalle repeated the feat the following day under more adverse conditions. The AS350 was only modified by the removal of seats to lighten the aircraft’s weight, and Delsalle reported that he discovered such strong updrafts that he barely needed any of the helicopter’s power to reach the summit.

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(NASA)

May 14, 1973 – The launch of Skylab, the United States’ first orbiting space station. !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! was launched from Kennedy Space Center atop a modified !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! rocket and orbited Earth for six years. During that time, NASA sent three manned missions to the station, where the crews performed scientific experiments and made observations of the Earth and Sun. NASA originally intended to use the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , under development at the time, to boost Skylab to a higher orbit, refurbish it, and expand it to accommodate six to eight astronauts, thus extending Skylab’s mission for an additional five years. However, delays in the Shuttle program made that impossible, and Skylab re-entered the atmosphere and disintegrated over the Pacific Ocean and western Australia in 1979.  

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(Royal Air Force)

May 14, 1939 – The first flight of the Short Stirling, a heavy bomber developed for the RAF and the first four-engine heavy bomber of WWII. The Stirling entered service in 1941 and was capable of carrying an enormous 14,000-pound bomb load. It was also larger than both the four-engine !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the bombers that were designed to replace it. However, both of those aircraft were modified from twin-engine aircraft, while the Stirling was conceived with four engines from the outset. The Stirling’s service life was relatively short, and it was withdrawn from frontline duties by 1943. Following its withdrawal, it was used primarily for mine laying, and also played a significant role in the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! invasion as a glider tug.

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May 14, 1928 – Mickey Mouse makes his debut in the short animated film Plane Crazy . Though the animated short !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , which debuted in November of the same year, marked Mickey Mouse’s debut in talking pictures, Plane Crazy debuted six months earlier and marked the true debut of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! most famous character. A silent picture in the nascent era of the talkie, Plane Crazy failed to find a distributor, and was re-released on March 17, 1929 with a sound track, making it the fourth Mickey Mouse film after Steamboat Willie , !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and   !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

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(NASA)

May 15, 1963 – The launch of Mercury-Atlas 9, the sixth manned and final flight of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and the last time NASA launched a spacecraft with only a single astronaut on board. Astronaut !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! completed 22 orbits of the Earth in the Faith 7 capsule before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean on May 16. The flight marked the first time an American astronaut spent an entire day in space (officially, the flight lasted 1 day, 10 hours, 19 minutes, 49 seconds), and Cooper was also the first American to sleep in space. Following Project Mercury, NASA moved on to the two-man !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , where Cooper flew as Command Pilot of !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , making him the first astronaut to make a second orbital flight.  

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(Imperial War Museum)

May 15, 1941 – The first flight of the Gloster E.28/39, the first British jet-powered aircraft. British engineer !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! is credited with the invention of the turbojet engine (though credit for the first operational jet engine goes to Germany’s !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ) and, in September of 1939, Gloster received a specification from the Air Ministry for an airplane that could test one of Whittle’s new engines in flight. The result was the Gloster E.28/39 (the unwieldy name comes from the aircraft’s conforming to the 28th specification in the year 1939), and two prototypes were ordered. Testing proved successful, and paved the way for the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the first British jet fighter and the first operational Allied jet aircraft of WWII.  

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May 15, 1930 – Ellen Church becomes the world’s first flight attendant. Born in Cresco, Iowa in 1904, Church was a pilot and registered nurse whose goal was to become an airline pilot. When Boeing Air Transport (eventually !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ) refused to hire her in that capacity, Church put her nursing skills to work and was hired in the position of stewardess in order to help ease the fears of nervous passengers. Church took her first flight as a stewardess on May 15, 1930 on a !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! flying from Oakland to San Francisco. Though an automobile accident ended her flying career after just 18 months, Church served in the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in WWII as a flight nurse, where she earned the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Church died in a horse riding accident in 1965.  

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(US Army)

May 15, 1918 – The first regular US airmail service commences. With the advent of (relatively) reliable air transport following WWI, the US Army Air Service took on the job of transporting United States mail. Under the command of Major !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , six !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! “Jenny” biplanes began operating on the route between Washington, DC and New York City, with a stop in Philadelphia, PA. However, the service got off to an inauspicious start when Army pilot 2nd Lt. George Boyle got lost and made a hard landing when he stopped to ask for directions. As a result, the first delivery had to be completed by truck. After four months, the Air Mail service was taken over by the US Post Office Department employing civilian pilots.

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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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RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > ttyymmnn 05/15/2020 at 12:45

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One thing worth mentioning on the Canberra is that some versions had a bizarrely offset cockpit. Something which offhand I can’t think of any other production aircraft to feature, to that extent.

Apparently, this was due to crew access and arrangement in the lower cockpit making it impossible to put the 1-wide pilot position in the center.

Interesting access pic:

For Sweden > ttyymmnn 05/15/2020 at 12:48

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Who would win?

The combined forces of the Socialist World

A bunch of cargo planes

user314 > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 05/15/2020 at 12:57

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de Havill and Sea Vixen had a similar arrangement:

The pilot was in the left hand position, while the RIO was ensconced in the “coal hole”

The idea was to place the radar operator, and the screen he was watching, in a dark place for better visibility. 

Just Jeepin' > ttyymmnn 05/15/2020 at 13:01

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Church’s story is fascinating. Flew when flying was still fairly risky. Served in a world war. Seriously i njured in an automobile accident.

You’d think, we re she to die in an accident, it would have been from one of those, but no, it was a friggin’ horse.

Just Jeepin' > For Sweden 05/15/2020 at 13:02

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I wonder how many cargo planes were available immediately after a major world war relative to today. Could we do it again?

ttyymmnn > user314 05/15/2020 at 13:08

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Beat me to it. 

ttyymmnn > Just Jeepin' 05/15/2020 at 13:14

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“Irony” is a difficult word to define, but you know it when you see it.

facw > ttyymmnn 05/15/2020 at 13:14

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This unfortunate picture is the best I can find to show it but:

The Polish LWS-6 medium bomber had a short production run prior to the start of WWII and featured an off-center canopy for the pilot.

For Sweden > Just Jeepin' 05/15/2020 at 13:16

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The only reasons we are not doing that now are containerization (air freight containers cannot fit though personnel doors) and fire extinguisher requirements (freighters have that equipment on the main deck; passenger planes do not).

ttyymmnn > facw 05/15/2020 at 13:17

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Planes You’ve (Probably) Never Heard Of

Nope. Never heard of it. 

facw > ttyymmnn 05/15/2020 at 13:19

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Neither had I, had to go hunting to find it...

That bombardier station looks like it belongs more on the front of a late-19th century tumblehome warship hull than an airplane.

ttyymmnn > facw 05/15/2020 at 13:22

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Does this count?

user314 > Just Jeepin' 05/15/2020 at 13:26

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As it turns out, a lot:

Altogether, a total of 692 aircraft were engaged in the Berlin Airlift, more than 100 of which belonged to civilian operators.

As it stands now, the US has 52 C-5M Galaxies, ~100 C-130 Herc of various models, 222 C-17s, and a smattering of various smaller transports. The Brits bring 22 A400M Atlas es, 22 Hercules C.4 s, 14 Voyager KC.2 s and 8 C-17s. Pretty sure though that those ~500 planes could move more pounds in fewer sorties though .  

facw > ttyymmnn 05/15/2020 at 13:27

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My feeling was that though asymmetrical would be something different. Certainly one of the strangest aircraft ever to make it into production though.

I hadn’t noticed before, but learned when looking at this stuff that the YB-35/49 (not a production aircraft so it doesn’t count here) had an offset cockpit:

Photo from this site, which despite its weird domain, is highly relevant to your interests: https://waterandpower.org/museum/Aviation_in_Early_LA_(Page_2).html

TheRealBicycleBuck > ttyymmnn 05/15/2020 at 13:32

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“Sergey! Get me my best suit and hat. Today, I fly!”

ttyymmnn > TheRealBicycleBuck 05/15/2020 at 13:36

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This is one of the few photos I have seen of Sikorsky not wearing his fedora. Maybe because he’s not flying, or because he’s getting ready to ride the sling and didn’t want his hat to blow off. Otherwise, dude is always wearing a suit, tie, fedora.

facw > facw 05/15/2020 at 13:36

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I did of course mean to reply to rambling rover here...

facw > user314 05/15/2020 at 13:41

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We also of course have massive fleets of commercial freighters and airliners we could charter, and of course while many are too far gone, or would take a long time to get back in the air, we do have some additional military transports:

TheRealBicycleBuck > ttyymmnn 05/15/2020 at 13:45

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I wonder if he pulled an Einstein and treated his clothing as a “uniform” of sorts - several nearly identical suits in order to cut down on decision-making.

facw > ttyymmnn 05/15/2020 at 13:45

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Of course people also just dressed more formally, look at crowds from photos of old baseball games and you’ll see that nearly everyone is wearing a suit, a tie, and a hat, though perhaps not a dapper an outfit as Mr. Sikorsky there.

ttyymmnn > TheRealBicycleBuck 05/15/2020 at 13:48

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I don’t know. I’d like to think he was just a dapper dude. I still can’t get my head around wearing a suit to work every day like they did back in the day. Of course, those suits were more functional than the more formal suits we wear today.

ttyymmnn > facw 05/15/2020 at 13:49

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Of course. And those daily- wear suits were likely much more comfortable than the more formal suits we wear today.

TheRealBicycleBuck > ttyymmnn 05/15/2020 at 14:00

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This flight occurred in Stratford, CT, so perhaps the weather was considerably cooler up there. It would be difficult to be dressed like that in central Texas in the summer.

At least it was for me working in Houston.

user314 > facw 05/15/2020 at 14:18

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Exactly. FedEx alone has a fleet of 669 (nice...) airplanes, and UPS has 265, with another dozen or so 747-8F cargo lifters on order.

This is also not counting the aircraft from the EU nations, the rest of Europe, Africa or Asia. We could collectively move a mind-breaking amount of stuff if we need to.

Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen > ttyymmnn 05/15/2020 at 15:12

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“ an RAF Canberra won the “Last Great Air Race” in 1953 by covering the 12,300 mile distance from London to Christchurch, New Zealand in just under 24 hours, a record that still stands.”

But only because nobody can be bothered beating it. That’s roughly the in-the-air time of a regular commercial flight nowadays. Organize a short-turnaround refueling, drop the load so you can carry enough fuel to open the throttles, optimise the routing, a nd you could beat it with half a load of pax on board. From that perspective I’m surprised nobody has: enough people would pay (or would have, now) a decent premium to be on a record beating flight, I’m sure.

Cé hé sin > ttyymmnn 05/15/2020 at 15:26

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Ooooh, a BV 141 !

gmporschenut also a fan of hondas > facw 05/15/2020 at 23:30

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