Current Flight Buzz: 03/25/2006

* Boeing Delivers Aeromexico's First 777-200ER.

* Frequent fliers, no longer elite-class?

* Airbus likely to rule long-distance market.

* Few airlines can match Singapore's service and profit. But it has to be inventive to keep ahead.

* Airline Takes Delivery of Airplane That Broke the World's Distance Record.

* 'FLIGHT 587' FLAW FOUND IN AIRBUS.

Women's History MonthMilestones of Flight -- Batten

Jane (later known as 'Jean') Gardner Batten was born in September 1909, a few weeks after Blériot's first cross-Channel flight. She spent her first years in Rotorua, a small town on New Zealand's North Island where geysers, boiling mud and thermal pools drew tourists from all over the world, and then in Auckland.

She discovered a passion for music and when she went to boarding school practiced playing the piano so diligently that her parents hoped that one day she might become a concert performer.

But by the time she was 10-years-old she'd begun to be fascinated by airplanes and long-distance flying. Initially, her interest was spurred by the first flight ever made from England to Australia, a month-long journey completed in 1919 by two Australian aviators, Ross and Keith Smith. Then in 1928, Bert Hinkler flew solo from England to Australia and Australian pilots Charles Kingsford-Smith and Charles Ulm flew from San Francisco to Brisbane. "I was deeply interested in these two flight," she wrote in her autobiography, "and when later Charles Kingsford-Smith flew over the Tasman Sea to New Zealand my enthusiasm for aviation increased and I decided to become a pilot." During a visit to Australia, she was taken for her first airplane ride by the famous Kingsford-Smith. "Cruising about high above the Blue Mountains," she wrote, "I had felt completely at home in the air and decided that here indeed was my element."

Her father was opposed to her choice and declared that flying was too dangerous and lessons were too expensive. Jean sold her piano to finance her start in aviation.

After the initial shock, Jean Batten's mother became her most enthusiastic supporter. They traveled to England, a center of flying activity, in 1929. Jean shortly earned her private, or A, license in one of the Aeroplane
Club's Gipsey Moths. She immediately tried to obtain backing for a flight to Australia. Somewhat to her surprise no one in England was interested in financing her. She wen back to New Zealand, where there was equal disinclination on the part of friends, relatives and everyone else she approached.

Undeterred, she returned to England, rolled up her sleeves to learn aircraft maintenance, studied meteorology and navigation, and gained enough flying hours for her commercial, or B, license.

A fellow pilot had enough confidence in her skill to help finance a solo flight to Australia -- in return for 50% of any proceeds that might result. In April 1933 she flew non-stop to Rome, nearly 1,000 miles, but in Baluchistan, India (now Pakistan), she was forced down by a sandstorm, made a blind landing and damaged her propeller. After getting a replacement prop she continued on her way, but less than 70 miles further, "A connecting rod broke," she explained later, "and went bang through the side of the crankcase." Trying to make a dead-stick landing on a road outside Karachi, the plane veered and smashed into a stone fence.

Lord Wakefield, whose generous interest in aviation had already helped many aspiring record-breakers, came to the rescue, first by arranging for Jean to travel back ot England, and then with the money for a second attempt.

On her next try, in April 1934, she got no farther than Rome. Jean was flying from Marseilles to Rome when head winds slowed her progress. She finally rant out of fuel, "at midnight in teeming rain and pitch darkness over the Italian capital." She managed to maneuver the plane in to a small field on the outskirts of Rome. The plane was damage enough that this landing ended the second attempt to reach Australia.

When she returned to London to make another start, she discovered the press was poking fun at her problems. "Try Again, Jean," advised more than one headline.

And she did, less than a month later. It seemed that her chances were worse than ever. Her airplane, a patched-up Gipsey Moth was almost five years old. And because of her mishap outside of Rome she was taking off when the weather in Southeast Asia would be the worst for flying.

The weather forecast in Rangoon had warned that the monsoon season had arrived. Jean took off hoping that the information would turn out to be incorrect. However, she ran into severe squalls as she traveled southward and five hours out of Rangoon found herself enveloped in rain clouds. There wasn't any way around the huge tropical storm and her fuel supply was too low for her to turn back. The monsoon rain completely blotted out side of the land. The open cockpit was soon almost flooded. The engine protested with occasional splutters, and when, nine hours after leaving Rangoon, she aw the aerodrome through a break in the rain, it looked more like a lake.
As she landed, throwing up great sprays of water, she was directed to a "dry patch," where the water was only a few inches deep.

The worst -- indeed, the only bad part -- was over. Mon May 23, 1934, 14 days, 22 hours, and 30 minutes after taking off from England, Jean Batten landed in Darwin. She had beaten the previous record set by Amy Johnson by more than four days.

All Australia went wild with enthusiasm. Her homeland of New Zealand, which she visited by ship because her plane lacked the range to cross the 1,200-mile-wide Tasman Sea, gave her an almost hysterical welcome.

Jean Batten set more long distance record,¹ including beating Jim Mollison's time across the South Atlantic by more than four hours. And her total elapsed time from England to Brazil was 61 hours and 15 minutes, almost a day less than the earlier record. Jean's career flourished during the romantic and myth-making period of aviation, and there is little doubt that she was more skilled than many other celebrated pilots of the time.

She gave up flying at the start of WWII and offered herself and her Percival Gull to the Air Ministry in London, expected for use in the ATA. To her chagrin, the airplane was accepted, but she was not. Officially, her rejection was on the grounds of 'poor near-ocular vision,' but it seems more likely that those in authority doubted her ability to work as part of a group, or even her loyalty to the Allied cause as her name had been linked with some possibly pro-Nazis. For a while she tried to obtain work as a ferry pilot. Eventually she gave up and first drove an ambulance, and then work on the production line at the Royal Ordnance factory, inspecting weapons used in the Spitfire. She also travelled extensively throughout Britain to speak in support of the National Savings campaign.

Not until 1980, did anyone better Jean Batten's record for a solo flight in a small plane from England to New Zealand. When that pilot, Britain's Judith Chisholm, landed in Auckland, she was greeted by the woman whose record she had broken, Jean Batten, who had made her epochal flight 16 years before her challenger was born.

¹Jean Batten’s Principal Flights

1933 (9 – 16 April) England-Karachi. De Havilland Gipsy M Moth with Gipsy II engine (G-AALG). After series of forced landings crashed following engine failure on approach to Karachi, thus ending first attempt to fly to Australia.

1934 (21 April) England-Rome. De Havilland Gipsy M Moth with Gipsy I engine (G-AARB). This second Australia attempt ended in disaster when she ran out of fuel and crashed in rain and dark in the middle of the San Paolo wireless station in Rome. After major repairs to the aircraft she flew it back to Brooklands on 5-6 May for a third attempt.

1934 (8 – 23 May) England-Australia. Gipsy Moth (G-AARB). Women’s solo record of 14 days 22 hours 30 minutes from Lympne to Darwin, beating Amy Johnson’s 1930 time by over 4 days for the 10,500-mile flight. Reached Sydney 30 May.
Route: Lympne – Marseille – Rome – Brindisi – Athens – Cyprus – Damascus – Rutbah Wells – Bagdad – Basra – Bushire – Jask – Karachi – Jodhpur – Allahabad – Calcutta – Akyab – Rangoon – Victoria Point – Alor Star – Singapore – Batavia – Lombok – Kupang – Darwin – Katherine – Newcastle Waters – Brunette Downs – Camooweal – Cloncurry – Blackall – Charleville – Bourke – Narromine – Sydney.

1935 (11 – 13 November) England-Brazil. Percival Gull 6 with Gipsy Six engine (G-ADPR). World absolute record (for pilots of either sex in any type of aircraft) of 2 days 13 hours 15 minutes for the 5,000-mile flight from Lympne to Natal and of 13 hours 15 minutes for the 1,900-mile South Atlantic crossing from Thies in Senegal to Natal in Brazil. First woman to fly herself from England to South America.
Route: Lympne – Casablanca – Villa Cisneros – Thies – Natal –Araruama (forced landing on beach compelled by fuel leak) – Rio de Janeiro – Pando – Buenos Aires – Montevideo – Buenos Aires.

1936 (5 – 16 October) England-New Zealand. Percival Gull 6 (G-ADPR). World absolute record: 14,224 miles in 11 days 45 minutes total elapsed time which included 2 1/2 days stopover in Sydney. First direct flight from England to New Zealand and world absolute record for flight from Australia to New Zealand (Sydney-Auckland in 10 1/2 hours). Also broke England-Australia solo record (for either sex) with Lympne-Darwin time of 5 days 21 hours.
Route: Lympne – Marseilles – Brindisi – Cyprus – H3 landing ground (Syrian Desert) – Basra – Karachi – Allahabad – Akyab – Penang – Singapore – Rambang – Kupang – Darwin – Brunette Downs – Longreach – Charleville – Sydney – Auckland.

1937 (19 – 24 October) Australia-England. Percival Gull 6 (G-ADPR). Solo record (for either sex) of 5 days 18 hours 15 minutes becoming first person to hold both England-Australia out and back solo records simultaneously.
Route: Sydney – Charleville – Winton – Camooweal – Newcastle Waters – Daly Waters – Darwin – Rambang – Batavia – Alor Star – Rangoon – Allahabad – Karachi – Basra – Damascus – Athens – Naples – Marseilles – Lympne – Croydon.

Milestones of Flight: 3/25

2006 - West Point graduate. Fighter pilot. Spacewalker. Apollo 11 astronaut. Man on the moon. Such is the storied career of Buzz Aldrin.

For all his contributions to America's space program, Aldrin received NASA's Ambassador of Exploration Award today, at the California Science Center in Los Angeles.


1993 - The first woman Concorde pilot makes her first flight as First Officer of the daily supersonic London-New York route. British-born, Barbara Harmer, is one of only 17 co-pilots in the British Airways Concorde fleet.

1970 - First supersonic flight of the prototype British-built airplane Concorde 002 (700 mph; 1,127 kph). A few months earlier, the French prototype, Concorde 001, had broken the sound barrier on October 1, 1969. Mach 2 was achieved by Concorde 001 on November 4, 1970, and by Concorde 002, a few days later on November 12, 1970. The combined number of supersonic flights by the two aircraft reached 100 by January of the following year, 1971.

1960 - The first NASA flight in the X-15 hypersonic research program gets under way when test pilot Joseph A. Walker makes the first of his flights in this aircraft.

1957 - Mach 2.335and an altitude of 25,600 meters are reached in a Ye-50 from the MiG OKB by Vp.P. Vasin.

1926 - Willie Messerschmitt, a graduate of Munich Technical High School and already an experienced designer of light aircraft and sailplanes, forms the Messerschmitt Flugzeugbau G.m.b.H.

1917 - One of the greatest fighter pilots of WWI, Canada-born Lt. Col. William Avery Bishop, scores his first combat victory over an Albatros single-seat fighter while flying a Nieuport.

Milestones of Flight: 3/24

2006 - The maiden flight of the SpaceX Falcon 1 has ended in disaster moments after blasting off from Omelek Island in the Central Pacific today. The rocket appeared to go out of control soon after liftoff.

1960 - First flight of the Tu-124 passenger airplane.

1949 - First flight of the swept-wing “82" jet bomber (the Tu-22-2), crew led by A.D. Perelet.

1939 - Jacqueline Cochran achieves a woman’s altitude record of 30,052 ft. 5 in. over Palm Spring, California in a Beechcraft Model 17.

1932 - Jim Mollison leaves Lympne, Kent, England at the start of a record-breaking attempt to fly to South Africa in a D. H. 80A Puss Moth (G-ABKG) specially modified as a long-range single seater. His time was 4 days, 17 hours, and 19 minutes.

1917 - Krafft Arnold Ehricke, German-born American physicist; rocketry engineer and space-travel theorist, is born.

During WW II, he was a key member of the famed Peenemunde Rocket Development team, specializing in the propulsion system for the German V-2 rocket (1942-45). He moved to the U.S. with Wernher Von Braun's rocket team in 1945. Entering the U.S. private industry in 1953, he helping develop the Atlas missile at General Dynamics. Subsequently, he invented the first liquid hydrogen propelled upper stage launch vehicle, the Centaur which enabled the U.S. to explore the solar system by launching planetary probes. A vial of his cremated remains accompany those of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and others in space orbit, launched April 20, 1997.

1909 - The Wright brothers found a school in the USA to train pilots for exhibition flights. The first pupil is a childhood friend, Walter Brookins, 21-years-old, from Dayton. Because Dayton’s weather is not good enough, Orville Wright sets up the school at Montgomery, Alabama, where winds are generally light.

1904 - The Wrights apply for a German patent for their airplane. Two earlier ago they applied for a French one.

Women's History MonthMilestones of Flight -- Gökçen

Sabiha Gökçen (1913-2001) the only woman to have flown on active combat before 1939. Scarcely a decade after her country-women had been liberated from the harems of the Ottoman Empire Sabiha Gökçen became her nation's first woman flier, its first female Army pilot and the first woman anywhere to fly combat missions.

It helped that this Turkish orphan was adopted by Kemal Ataturk who ruled and modernized the country during the 1920s and 1930s.

When his adopted daughter had the desire to fly, Ataturk used his clout to have her admitted to a civilian flying school. After having had training on gliders, she received 'A' and 'B' licenses and was sent to the Academy at U.S.S.R. for advanced training on glider piloting and to become a glider instructor, and subsequently enrolled at the Military Aviation Academy in Eskisehir in 1936. She also received training at the First Aircraft Regiment in Eskisehir, and flew fighter and bomber planes. She became famous in 1937 when she joined a nine-plane force that helped to quell a revolt by Kurdish tribesmen. Called an Amazon of the Air by the press, she bombed and strafed the rebels for a month.

In 1938, she carried out a five-day flight around the Balkan countries to great acclaim. Later, she was appointed chief trainer of the Turkish Aviation League's "Turk Kusu" where she served until 1955. Later, she became a member of the Turkish Aviation Executive Board. She flew around the world and had logged over 4,000 hours in the air for a period of 28 years until 1964.

Current Flight Buzz: 03/23/2006

* Europe bans more than 90 airlines from its airports.

* New Travel Tool Locates the Most Comfortable Airline Seat on most Airplanes; Seatscorecard.com Providing At-A-Glance Airline Seat Reviews and Ratings.

* Getting Your Game on at 30,000 Feet.

Milestones of Flight: 3/23

2006 - First flight of the Cessna Aircraft Company's Citation Encore+.The company expects certification in fall of 2006.

2002 - SPACE MILESTONE: MIR.

The Russian space station, Mir, burned up in Earth's atmosphere as the way chosen to bring an end to its life, which had far exceeded the original planned five years after its launch in 1986. A docked Progress tanker had been remotely commanded by mission controllers to fire rockets and lower its orbit and cause re-entry into the atmosphere. After the launch of the core module in 1986 further launches brough new components linked into a six-module complex.

1996 - SPACE MILESTONE: MIR AND ATLANTIS DOCK

The U.S. space shutttle Atlantis docked with the Russian space station Mir, for the first time dropping off a U.S. astronaut for an extended stay on the Mir. The linkup was the third in a series of dockings intended as preparation for a planned internationally operated space station. The flight was the 76th in the U.S. shuttle program and the 16th for the Atlantis orbiter, which had performed the two prior Mir dockings.

1965 - SPACE MILESTONE: GEMINI III (US) launched. America's first two-person space flight began as Gemini III, nicknamed the "Molly Brown," blasted off from Cape Kennedy with astronauts Virgil I. Grissom and John W. Young aboard.

1948 - Test pilot Gp. Capt. John Cunningham sets a new Federal Aeronautique Internationale (FAI) ratified world altitude record of 18,118 m (59446 ft.) during tests with the third production D. H. 100 Vampire (serial no. TG278).

1935 - First flight with the acquisition of a parasite fighter in the air (the I-Z and a TB-3, pilot was V.A. Stepanchenok).

1932 - Flying a Bleriot 110, French aviators Lucien Bossoutrot and Maurice Rossi take off for a record closed-circuit distance of 6,587.442 miles at Oran, Algeria.

1921 - Lieutenant Arthur Hamilton sets a new world record when he jumps by parachute from 24,400 feet.

1912 - Wernher Magnus Maximilian von Braun was born in Wiersitz, Germany.

He was a German-born American engineer who played a prominent role in all aspects of rocketry and space exploration, first in Germany where his work and that of his colleagues led to development of the V-1 and V-2 guided missiles used against the Allies during World War II.and, after World War II, -- as part of a military operation called Project Paperclip -- came to America and was installed at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, to work on rocket development and use the V-2 for high altitude research. Later, in 1950 von Braunmoved to the Redstone Arsenal near Huntsville, Alabama, to concentrate on the development of a new missile for the Army. His will to expand man's knowledge through the exploration of space led to the development of the Explorer satellites, the Jupiter and Jupiter-C rockets, Pershing, the Redstone rocket, Saturn rockets, and Skylab, the world's first space station. Additionally, he led to mankind setting foot on the moon.

1908 -. French industrialist Lazare Weiller signs a contract with the Wrights establishing a Wright airplane company in France, on condition that the brothers make two demonstration flights covering 50 km (31.1 miles) within a hour’s flying time. They will receive FF500, 000 and half the founders’ share.

1903 - The Wright brothers file a patent request for a powered flying machine based on the second (modified) version of their 1902 glider successfully tested at Kill Devil Hill.

Women's History MonthMilestones of Flight -- Cheung

Katherine Sui Fun¹ Cheung was born on December 12, 1904, in Canton, China. From an early age, Cheung had an affinity for music, and thought playing the piano would be her calling. When 17-years-old, she traveled across the Pacific Ocean to California where she attended the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music (and later the University of Southern California) where she studied music and piano.

She was married in 1924 to George B. Young. In 1931, a pilot cousin invited Cheung to take an airplane ride. That was when her love for flying began and she signed up for flying lessons. She was disturbed at the news that women were not allowed to enroll in flying schools in China. After only 12 1/2 hours of instruction, Cheung flew solo. Cheung received her certificate in 1932 as the first licensed Asian American aviatrix in the U.S., at a time when only 1% of licensed pilots in the U.S. were women. She also became a member of the Women's International Association of Aeronautics. she chose aeronautic acrobatics as her specialty.

In 1935, Cheung became an American citizen in order to receive her commercial pilot’s license and fly as a commercial pilot. She flew aerobatics in an open cockpit Fleet and regularly entered competitive air races including the Chatterton Air Race in 1936.

Three years after Cheung became a pilot, she caught the attention of early film legend, Anna May Wong. In 1934, the first Chinese American starlet — a trailblazer herself — helped purchase a $2,000, 125-horsepower Fleet biplane for Cheung. It was also a gift from the Chinese American community, which was beginning to tout her as a role model.


In 1931, women pilots started the Ninety-Nines Club and its first president was the legendary pilot Amelia Earhart. In 1935, a year after Cheung was given her Fleet biplane, the Ninety-Nines asked her to join their ranks, and Cheung began a close friendship with Earhart. A year later, she became a member of the American Aviation Association and met aviator greats such as Charles Lindbergh, Roscoe Turner and Pancho Barnes.


On July 7, 1937, Japan invaded China. Cheung had 17 years of memories in Canton. She began to tour American cities that had large Chinese populations to perform stunts and motivate them to support their homeland. “I don’t see any reason why a Chinese woman can’t be as good a pilot as anyone else. We drive automobiles — why not planes?” she reportedly told audiences. In the middle of raising funds for a women’s aviation school in China, Cheung received further bad news. Just days before the invasion, Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared off the coast of New Guinea. President Roosevelt authorized a $4-million search that employed nine naval ships and 66 aircraft. But their bodies were never found.

Cheung mourned the disappearance of her friend. It was difficult to continue raising money so she could fly to China, where she wanted to teach other women to fly for their country. However, the Chinese American communities collected enough money to buy her a Ryan ST-A so she could make the trip overseas. But Cheung was to witness another tragic event that would nearly bring her flying career to an end.

Her cousin, who had taken her on her first plane ride, died in an airplane crash.

Later, just before her father passed away, he asked her not to fly again because of how her cousin died. For a time, Cheung honored her father’s dying wish. But soon after her father’s death, she took off again. She continued to fly commercially and perform stunts for another six years, finally hanging up her pilot’s wings at38-years-old.

After her retirement, she became a part-time public speaker, speaking on aviation and what it meant to be an ethnic woman pilot when the industry was still in its infancy. She continued to be an inspiration to women until she passed away at the age of 99 (100 under the Chinese lunar calendar).

¹ Sui Fun in Cantonese means “long life” and “courage.”

Milestones of Flight: 3/21

1999 - A balloon achieved the first non-stop round-the-world balloon flight.

At 9:05 a.m. ocl time on March 1, 1999, the 180-foot-tall balloon lifts off from the snow-covered ground in the village of Château-d'Oex. Weeks earlier the launch had been delayed until Swiss diplomats could obtain permission for the balloon to cross China. After 20 days of flight, the experimental Breitling Orbiter 3 balloon, flown by Brian Jones and Bertrand Piccard, touched down on a sandy plateau near the Egyptian oasis town of Mut.

Bertrand is the grandson of the balloon flight pioneer, Auguste Piccard.

Until this flight no one had come close to circling the globe in a balloon.

1956 - Strategic Air, Tactical Air and Air Defense commands are formed by the soon-to-be independent US Air Force.

1935 - First flight of the Consolidated PBY Catalina.

1933 - First flight of the Fairey’s TSR.1¹ torpedo spotter-reconnaissance airplane at Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England.

¹ Most historians say this event took place in April.

1933 - James L. Kinney makes the first cross-country test of blind flying and landing from College Park, Maryland to Newark, New Jersey.

1910 - First demonstration flight in Russia by Russian airman M.N. Efimov in Odessa.

1908 - Henri Farman covers 6,275 feet in 3 minutes 47 seconds in his Voisin-Farman No.1 bis at Issy-les-Moulineaux.

1877 - Maurice Farman (1877-1964), aviation pioneer and manufacturer, is born in Paris, France.

In 1908, he made the first circular flight of more than one mile (1,6 km) with his brother, Henri. They built a plane the following year and flew a record distance of 160 km (100 miles). Four years after that, the two brothers started their own aviation company at Boulogne-sur-Seine, supplying the army in France and other countries. The UK also made use of Farman's inventions, for example, air-screw reduction gears, in WW II. In 1917 the Farman brothers built the first long-distance passenger plane, Goliath, originally a bomber.

Women's History MonthMilestones of Flight -- M. Stinson

The Stinsons were a flying family. Marjorie Stinson soon followed her sister into the air, although at first Katherine tried to dissuade her because of the danger. Marjorie earned her license at the age of 20 to become the youngest licensed female pilot in the country.

On their private airfield at San Antonio, Texas, the Stinsons opened a flying school, with Marjorie as chief instructor and Katherine's exhibition flying providing the financial backing.

Stinson was inducted into the U.S. Aviation Reserve Crops, as its only woman, in 1915.

In November 1915 Marjorie had a class of five Canadians who, after her training, all joined the Royal Navy Flying Service.

In 1916, with the war in Europe raging, the Royal Canadian Flying Corps began sending their cadets to the Stinson School for training. Stinson became known as "The Flying Schoolmarm" and her students as "The Texas Escadrille." Before she was 22-years-old, she had instructed more than 100 Canadian military pilots.

A tiny woman, she made what she called "a gentleman's agreement" with her students that would instantly release the controls whenever she told them she wanted to take over, thus avoiding struggles that she would almost certainly have lost and that could esily have resulted int he loss of the plane as well.

Marjorie Stinson was the only woman to whom a pilot's license had been granted by the Army and Navy Committee of Aeronautics.

The US postmaster general approves the appointment of Marjorie Stinson as the first female airmail pilot in 1918.

When the American government banned civilian flying, the Stinson school was liquidated and Marjorie became a draughtswoman with the Aeronautical Division of the US Navy in Washington, D.C. She retired in 1945 and returned to her first love, aviation, devoting her time to research into the history of aviation.

Marjorie was a member of the Early Birds. Founded after the National Air Races of 1928, the Early Birds (later to be known as the Early Birds of Aviation, Inc.) consisted of pioneer aviators banded together for the purposes of preserving aviation history, advancing interest in aeronautics and the enjoyment of good fellowship. Membership in the group necessitated documentary evidence of solo flight in heavier- or lighter-than-air craft before December 17, 1916.

Numbering nearly 600 members at its peak, the Early Birds was conceived of as a "last man's club" whose existence would cease with the passing of its last surviving member.

Milestones of Flight: 3/20

1940 - The British Royal Air Force conducted an all-night air raid on the Nazi airbase at Sylt, Germany.

1937 - An attempted round-the-world flight by leading US woman aviator Amelia Earhart ends dramatically when the starboard tire of her Lockheed Electra airliner bursts during take-off from Honolulu, Hawaii. Because of damage, the expedition is temporary abandoned. The first leg from Oakland, California to Honolulu on March 17 was made in 16 hours, an east/west record.

1934 - The first test of a practical radar apparatus was made by Rudolf Kuhnold in Kiel Harbour, Germany.

Chief of the German Navy Signals Research Department. His 700-watt transmitter worked on a frequency of 600 megacycles, had a receiver and had disk reflectors. It received echoes from signals bounced off the battleship Hesse, anchored 600 yards away. In an October test, it picked up echoes from a ship seven miles away. Radar was to be an important asset in the coming WW II, but ironically it was the U.S. and Great Britain, that took Kuhnold's pioneering work and developed it into a reliable detection system. Kuhnold may thus be described as the man who won the Battle of Britain for the English, as it will be the British radar network that will enable the hard-pressed Royal Air Force to muster its strength to beat back the vaunted German Luftwaffe.

1932 - The airship Graf Zeppelin begins a series of flights between Germany and Brazil. Several round-trips are planned per year, embarkation being at Friedrichshafen bound for Recife and later to Rio de Janeiro.

1922 - The CV-1 Langley, America’s first aircraft carrier, is commissioned into the U. S. Navy at Norfolk, Virginia under the command of Comdr. Kenneth Whiting.

1920 - Two South African pilots complete the first flight from Britain to South Africa after a flying time of four days, 13 hours, 30 minutes.

Current Flight Buzz: 03/19/2006

* Boeing C-17 Globemaster III Reaches Million Flight Hour Milestone.

Women's History MonthMilestones of Flight -- K. Stinson

Katherine Stinson (1893-1977) entered aviation almost accidentally. When Katherine was 16-years-old she won a balloon trip in a raffle and hit on the idea of financing her music studies by becoming a stunt pilot. This teenager had been assured that earning $1,000 a week was possible doing stunt flying. She sold the piano she had won in a talent contest for $200 and borrowed another $300 from here father to pay for flying lessons. During her first lesson she was convinced the aircraft was out of control when the pilot banked and that pilot refused to continue her lessons.


She persuaded the Swedish pilot Maximilian Theodore Liljestrand, known as Max Lillie, to take her on as a pupil at his new flying school at Cicero Field, Chicago.

Katherine was given license, Number 148, from the Aero Club of America, the fourth pilot's license awarded to an American woman. Her training had gave a a hint of her later career where she was known as the most daring female stunt flier of her generation. She and her instructor, Max Lillie had been arrested for landing for a yacht club luncheon in a public park, and on her first solo flight she had to make an emergency landing when her engine failed. Because she was so young, she decided to wait a year before starting her exhibition career, and delayed her debut until July 1913 before touring to flying meetings all over the country.

She qualified in a Wright B. From the beginning she had a reputation for fussiness about aircraft maintenance. She blamed the death of her instructor, Max Lillie, on inattention to maintenance. In April 1913, Katherine Stinson and her mother Emma formed the Stinson Aviation Company "to manufacture, sell, rent, and otherwise engage in the aircraft trade." In 1915 they started a flying school at San Antonio, TX, on 750 acres of land where they built the Stinson Municipal Airport.

In September 1933 she was flying at the fairground at Helena, Montana, when an airmail route from the fairground to the center of Helena was sanctioned, and for four days she carried mail by air, the first woman to do so. In succeeding years she set successively longer endurance and distance records and toured England, China and Japan,¹ giving exhibitions to admiring crowds.
Katherine Stinson was credited as the first woman to loop the loop ², and had developed a dippy twist loop in which at the top of a vertical bank the aircraft rolled wing over wing. In November 1915 she made eighty consecutive loops flying upside down for thirty seconds and executing a series of spins. In December, determined to out-do a male pilot, Art Smith, who had looped the loop at night, she added magnesium flares to her aircraft and traced the letters CAL in the night sky, then looped, flew upside down, and spiralled to 100 feet of the ground, trailing showers of sparks. For the first six months of 1917, she toured China and Japan, where no woman had flown before.

When America entered the war in Europe she volunteered for army flying service, but when she was turned downed she made a 640 mile fund raising flight from Albany to Washington, D.C., in a Curtiss military trainer. Unable to fly for the army She served as a Red Cross ambulance driver in France, where she contracted tuberculosis and influenza. Resulting health problems forced her to retire from flying in the early 1920s. She moved to Santa Fe, NM, where she married Miguel Otero, a judge. She never returned to her musical career. She died in 1977 after a long illness. Stinson Aviation Company became part of Vultee Corporation and ultimately General Dynamics. Several Army liaison planes of World War II were made by the Stinson Division of Vultee.

¹ In 1916, at 25-years-old, Katherine Stinson was very small. ("I weigh only about 101 pounds," she was fond of noting. "I'm very particular about that one pound.") However, during an exhibition tour of Japan and China that year, her small size only increased her impact on her Japanese and Chinese audiences. Her first appearance at Tokyo's Aoyama Parade Ground drew 25,000 people. They were thrilled by the fearless aerobatics, but the real sensation in a society whose cus;toms severely restricted the activities of women, was her sex.

"The women have simply overwhelmed me with attention and seem to regard me as their emancipator," she wrote. Describing tie mob scene around her plane after the first Tokyo flight she said, "The women were wild with enthusiasm and the men were not far behind.

She also elicited the sincerest form of flattery -- imitation. After wathcing Katherine fly loops over okyo, a young woman named Komatsu Imai learned to fly and managed a seven-year flying career. Would-be women pilots flooded on Tokyo flying school with applications, but only one was accepted, and she failed to get license.

In Peking she performed for Chinese dignitaries on the sacred ground in front of the Temple of Agriculture. During a spiral descent after three successive loops, the rudder bar dropped off. She kept directional control only by bending over to manipulate the stub by hand, flying blind as she did so.

Her tour was cut short when America entered the war in Europe. She left behind a heightened interest in flight among the Chinese and Japanese people and a dawning awareness among the women there of her often expressed philosophy: If other people can fly, she said, "I don't see why I can't.

² Some attribute the first woman to loop the loop to Ruth Law.