Milestones of Flight: 7/19

2007 - Time magazine's cover story this week is called "How to Leave Iraq."

Great imagery to match the fall of Saigon, right? But look closely at the silhouette of the chopper. It's a Soviet Mil Mi-24 Hind

2006 - Lockheed Martin today unveiled a secret unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) prototype designed to demonstrate technologies that will later be applied to the U.S. Air Force's Long Range Strike program.

2005 - 19-24: The 16th FAI World Precision Flying Championship in Herning, Denmark. Individual winners: Krzysztof Wieczorek (Poland) - 3Xtrim, 2. Petr Opat (Czech) - Cessna 152, 3. Wacław Wieczorek (Poland) - PZL Wilga 2000; team winners: 1. Poland, 2. Czech Republic, 3. France.

2001 - First forward flight of the MH-60R aircraft, successfully performing basic flight Acceptance Test Procedures, including engine power checks, auto rotation and vibration checks. The initial flight lasted 1.7 hours.

The aircraft is a remanufactured U.S. Navy SH-60B that has been retrofitted at Sikorsky with a new Lockheed-Martin glass cockpit. Airframe improvements include a new cabin, strengthened floor, high-speed machined parts, and future growth provisions.

This helicopter represents the cornerstone of the Navy's Helicopter Master Plan. The Navy's Helicopter Master Plan is a major naval aviation initiative that upgrades the Navy's helicopter war fighting capability, improves readiness and reduces life cycle costs. The plan calls for reducing the Navy's helicopter fleet from eight different helicopter types to two variations H-60 helicopter, the MH-60R and the MH-60S. (and the MH-53E ?)

1997 - First flight of the Be-103 amphibious aircraft.

1991 - First Deputy Chairman of Military-industrial Commission (1958-1965) Sergei Ivanovich Vetoshkin died this date.

1986 - Twenty-four C-141 Starlifters and eight C-130 Hercules aircraft flew 32 missions through July 28 to supply 535.9 tons of donated hay to drought-stricken farmers in seven southeastern states during Operation Southern Haylift.

1985 - Sharon Christa McAuliffe is chosen by NASA to be the first private citizen passenger in the history of space flight.

1984 - Tactical Airlift Command took possession of its first E-3B Sentry at Tinker AFB, Oklahoma.

1984 - Lynn Rippelmeyer is first female to captain a 747 across the Atlantic in a People's Express¹airliner.

¹ People Express Airlines, aka PEOPLExpress, was a U.S. no-frills airline that operated from 1981 to 1987. People Express was also often called "Air Bulgaria" by many air travellers. This was a sarcastic reference comparing People Express' service to the poor customer service associated with Eastern Bloc countries during the Cold War.

1974 - Vasili Mikhailovich Ryabikov died this date.

Chief of Third Chief Directorate of Council of Ministers 1951-1953. Chaired Military-Industrial Commission 1955-1957and Sputnik State Commission.

1973 - NASA's X-24B lifting body completed the first captive flight on a B-52 at the Edwards AFB, California.

1973 - Russian cosmonaut Vasily Dmitriyevich Shcheglov died from lung cancer.

1969 - U.S. Air Force Southern Command aircraft airlifted emergency supplies in a seven-nation effort to mediate a cease-fire in a conflict between Honduras and San Salvadore.

1966 - Austro-Hungarian Empire WW I ace Franz Lahner died in Austria.

1962 - Maj. Robert M. White received astronaut wings for flying the X-15, a winged aircraft, into space.

1961 - An Air Force H-43B Huskie rescue helicopter claimed two time-to-climb records; 3,000 meters in 2 minutes 44.5 seconds and 6,000 meters in six minutes 42.3 seconds.

1961 - TWA shows its first in-flight movie¹, ``By Love Possessed,'' starring Lana Turner, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Jason Robards Jr., and Barbara Bel Geddes.

¹ The first Inflight Movie "Howdy Chicago" was shown in 1921 by Aeromarine Airways to its passengers as the amphibian airplane flew around Chicago.

1960 - Aeroflot opens a helicopter station at Moscow Central airfield.

1957 - The U.S. Air Force fires the first air-to-air nuclear defense rocket, the Douglas a live MB-1 nuclear rocket Genie, AKA Ding Dong from a Northrop F-89J Scorpion over Yucca Flat, Nevada.

1952 - The United States Air Force (USAF) announces that it has successfully flown free balloons at controlled constant altitudes in the stratosphere, for periods of over 3 days.

1950 - U.S. Fifth Air Force F-80s shot down three enemy Yak-9 fighters near Taejon, while seven F-80s from the 8th Fighter-Bomber Group destroyed 15 enemy airplanes on the ground near Pyongyang.

1950 - First attempted launch from Cape Canaveral.

Pad abort of Bumper No. 8, a German V-2 with a 320 kg Army-JPL Wac Corporal. Launch scrubbed first due to emergency landing of aircraft in the range, and during the second attempt the main chamber did not ignite.

1950 - Maiden flight of Boeing 707 in Seattle; cruises at
600 mph; can carry 219 passengers.

The course of commercial aviation witnessed a major change on this day in 1954, when the prototype of the nation’s first production jetliner, the Boeing 707, lifted off a runway near Seattle for its maiden flight. The 707 quickly replaced propeller-driven aircraft and served both airlines and the military for many decades, logging 30 million flying hours and carrying more than half-a-million passengers in its many passenger and cargo versions by the time its production ceased.

The designers of the Boeing 707 did not make the mistake of others of having its turbojet engines buried within its wings. Piston-era practices started all big-jet designers off on the wrong foot. Propeller airliners had their engines in line with the wing and actually faired into it, so by default that was where people thought jets hould have their engines. This good example of the tyranny of a reigning paradigm led de Havilland's designers to place the Comet's four engines inside its wings. And the Russians did the same thing in the second commercial jetliner to enter service, the Tupolev Tu-104. Boeing was the first company to come up with the optimal solution: strut mounting. Mounting the engines on struts below the wing distanced any propulsion-related threats to safety.

1948 - Strategic Air Command activated the U.S. Air Force's first two air refueling squadrons, the 43rd and 509th, at Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona. and Roswell AFB, New Mexico.

1943 - B-17 copilot 2nd Lt. John Morgan clashed with Luftwaffe fighters and saves wounded crewmen in a furious battle which earns him the Medal of Honor.

He is the only draft-classified 4-F to serve with the air forces of three nations, fly 26 combat missions (he says it really was only 25 and a half) with the RAF and the AAF, earn this country's highest decoration for valor, and spend 14 months as a POW.

1943 - America bombs Rome for the first time.

700 American bombers drop 800 tons of bombs aimed at railway yards in Rome in an attempt to break the will of the Italian people to resist. Panic broke out among the Romans. Convinced by Mussolini that the Allies would never bomb the holy city, civilians poured into the Italian capital for safety. The bombing did more than shake their security in the city--it shook their confidence in their leader

1943 - Roy Dunbard Bridges Jr., astronaut, is born in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A.

1942 - The Messerschmitt Me-262 flew for the first time, piloted by Fritz Wendel. The aircraft was the world's first operational jet fighter.

1941 - Capt. Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., a West Point graduate whose father had been the first black graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, reported to Tuskegee Institute in Alabama with 12 aviation cadets to begin flight training as the first class of black pilot candidates in the U.S. military.

1941 - Capitano Bartolomeo Costantini, Italian WW I ace (6 victories) died in Vittorio Veneto, Treviso, Italy.

1940 - President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs second Naval Expansion Act.

1937 - The Directorate of International Air Routes is formed within the Main Directorate of the USSR's Civil Air Fleet.

1937 - The official search for missing flyers Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan is abandoned.

1935 - Test pilot V.A. Sevan'kaev is born.

1934 - July 19-August 20: Lt. Col. Henry H. Arnold commanded 10 Martin B-10s from Bolling Field, D.C. to Fairbanks, Alaska and back. They covered 7,360 miles in 51 hours, 30 minutes, or 25 hours, 30 minutes going north and 26 hours going south.

For this flight, Colonel Arnold received the Mackay Trophy and Distinguished Flying Cross.

1934 - F9C Sparrowhawk parasite fighters from airship USS Macon successfully launch from the airship, scout out the cruiser USS Houston and return to the Macon.

1927 - Non-stop flight Sevastopol' - Moscow by Yu.I. Piontkovskiy in an AIR-1, the first Soviet (unofficial) world records for distance - 1,420 km, and endurance - 15 hours 30 minutes.

1923 - Czechoslovakian airline CSA commences operations.

1923 - Test pilot V.S. Eliseev is born.

1920 - First flight of the Vickers R. 80 airship, designed in an innovative streamlined shape by company designer Barnes Wallis.

1920 - Goddard accepts contract from US Navy for US$100 per month.

On weekends, holidays, and vacations, when not working at Clark University, Goddard travels to Dahlgren, Virginia to test his military solid fuel rockets.

1919 - The RAF's top ranking ace of WW I, Major Edward "Mick" Mannock is posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.

1919 - Walter C. Williams is born in California, U.S.A.

He went to work for the NACA in 1940, serving as a project engineer to improve the handling, manoeuvrability, and flight characteristics of World War II fighters. Following the war, he went to what became Edwards Air Force Base to set up flight tests for the X-1, including the first human supersonic flight by Capt. Charles E. Yeager in October 1947. He became the founding director of the organization that became Dryden Flight Research Facility. In September 1959 he assumed associate directorship of the new NASA space task group at Langley, created to carry out Project Mercury. He later became director of operations for the project, then associate director of the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, subsequently renamed the Johnson Space Center. In 1963 Williams moved to NASA Headquarters as deputy associate administrator of the office of manned space flight. From 1964 to 1975, he was a vice president for Aerospace Corporation. Then from 1975-1982 he served as chief engineer of NASA.

1915 - Georges Marie Ludovic Jules Guynemer scores his first victory while flying a Morane-Saulnier Parasol 2-seat monoplane, eventually he becomes the highest scoring French pilot in WW I.

1913 - The first female Muscovite sits for the pilot's exam (Ye.P. Samsonova is the 5th woman to take the exam in Russia).

1911 - Orville Wright delivered the Navy's frist airplane (a Wright B land machine) at Annapolis, Maryland. The aircraft was subsequently converted into a seaplane by the addition of twin floats.

1909 - Military pilot Sergey Ivanovich Gritsevets is born.

Ace (40 victories--11 confirmed) in Spain and Halkin Gol (Mongolia).

1896 - oyal Naval Air Service ace Major Ronald Graham is born in Yokohama, Japan.

1895 - Australia's highest scoring ace (47 victories) Royal Naval Air Service Capt. Robert Alexander Little is born in Windsor, Melbourne, Australia.

1893 - United States Air Service ace Lt. Harold Huston George is born in Lockport, New York, U.S.A.

He joined the New York national guard in 1916 during the Mexican border crisis. In 1917 he transferred to the United States Signal Corps. A SPAD XIII pilot, he shot down five Fokker D.VIIs in 1918 while serving with the 139th Aero Squadron on the Western Front. During WW II, George commanded the 31st Pursuit Group at Selfridge Field, Michigan before he was assigned to the Phillipines on March 3, 1941. He was promoted to Brigadier General in January 1942 and commanded the air force during the Philippines campaign, accompanying General Douglas McArthur from Bataan to Australia. George was critically injured in a plane crash on April 29, 1942. He died the following day, at age 48, and was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for "exceptionally meritorious service to the government in a position of great responsibility." In June 1950, George Air Force Base, near Victorville, California, was named in his honor.

1893 - Austro-Hungarian Empire Air Service ace (10 victories)Oberleutnant Friedrich Navratil is born in http://www.sarajevo.ba/en/.

1892 - Imperial German Air Service ace (9 victories) Leutnant Hans Karl Müller is born in Loschwitz, Saxony.

1891 - Royal Flying Corps ace (7 victories) Capt. Roy Edward Dodds is born in Detroit, Michigan, U.S.A.

1867 - Englishmen J.W. Butler and E. Edwards make the first delta-wing airplane designs. They take out patents for delta-wing monoplanes and biplanes to be propelled by jets of steam, compressed air, or gas>

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¹ People Express Airlines, aka PEOPLExpress, was a U.S. no-frills airline that operated from 1981 to 1987. People Express was also often called "Air Bulgaria" by many air travellers. This was a sarcastic reference comparing People Express' service to the poor customer service associated with Eastern Bloc countries during the Cold War.