Milestones of Flight: 1/17

2007 - No-Fly List Being Checked and Cut.

2007 - Airline Security 'EZ Pass' A Reality At JFK.

2007 - Man who sued airline, claimed racism gets $400K.

John Cerqueira, a 39-year-old computer consultant sued American Airlines Inc. claiming racial discrimination after he was removed from a flight before departure from Logan International Airport in Boston.

2007 - Muslim group to receive apology, reimbursement from Northwest Airlines.

NWA will reimburse and apologize to a group of Muslims from metro Detroit who said they were denied entry onto a connecting flight from Germany to Detroit. But the airline continues to maintain that it did nothing wrong.

2007 - Eurocopter signed contract with the French Gendarmerie for the acquisition of 37 EC135 (12 firm orders and 25 options) valued at EUR 233 million.

2004 - A Cessna 208 regional plane carrying hunters went down in Lake Erie about one mile west of Pelee Island, Canada. All 9 aboard were killed.

2002 - Two USAF A-10 Thunderbolt II attack jets from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base collided and crashed over Arizona in a desert area just north of the U.S.-Mexico border, and one pilot was killed.

2002 - An Ecuadoran oil-company plane crashed in Colombia and all 26 aboard were feared dead. The plane was found Jan 24 with no survivors.

1997 - A $40 million navigation satellite for the US Air Force blew up on takeoff at Cape Canaveral.

1996 - Ibrahim Abacha, the eldest son of Nigeria's military ruler, and 14 others were killed when their HS-125 jet crashed in Nigeria.

1995 - Vietnam veterans who were harmed by Agent Orange were given an extended period of time to file compensation claims.

The original deadline for claims was 31 December 1994, but was extended amid a flood of last minute appeals from veterans. The Agent Orange Payment Program was established in 1985 to distribute $184 million in proceeds from a class-action lawsuit against the makers of Agent Orange, a defoliant used extensively during the Vietnam War.

1991 - The Desert Storm air campaign began when AH-64s, led by MH-53s, delivered its first ordnance against two Iraqi early warning sites, located about 50 nautical miles north and north-northeast of Ar'Ar.

1991 - B-52G Stratofortress crews from the 2d Bomb Wing of the Eighth Air Force fly from Barksdale AFB, La., to the Iraq, launch 35 cruise missiles and return to Barksdale. This event marks the longest bombing mission in history.

1991 - Captain Kelk of the 58th Tactical Fighter Squadron, Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., flying an F-15C, was credited with the first coalition air-to-air kill³ during Desert Storm.

1979 - World time-to-climb record set in a Yak-50 of 3,000 m in 4 minutes 21.4 seconds (Category C-1-b, S.E. Savitskaya).

1966 - A B-52 bomber collides with KC-135 jet tanker over Spain's Mediterranean coast, dropping three 70-kiloton hydrogen bombs near the town of Palomares and one in the sea.

It was not the first or last accident involving American nuclear bombs. As a means of maintaining first-strike capability during the Cold War, U.S. bombers laden with nuclear weapons circled the earth ceaselessly for decades. In a military operation of this magnitude, it was inevitable that accidents would occur. The Pentagon admits to more than three-dozen accidents in which bombers either crashed or caught fire on the runway, resulting in nuclear contamination from a damaged or destroyed bomb and/or the loss of a nuclear weapon. One of the only Broken Arrows to receive widespread publicity occurred on January 17, 1966, when a B-52 bomber crashed into a KC-135 jet tanker over Spain. The bomber was returning to its North Carolina base following a routine airborne alert mission along the southern route of the Strategic Air Command when it attempted to refuel with a jet tanker. The B-52 collided with the fueling boom of the tanker, ripping the bomber open and igniting the fuel. The KC-135 exploded, killing all four of its crew members, but four members of the seven-man B-52 crew managed to parachute to safety. None of the bombs were armed, but explosive material in two of the bombs that fell to earth exploded upon impact, forming craters and scattering radioactive plutonium over the fields of Palomares. A third bomb landed in a dry riverbed and was recovered relatively intact. The fourth bomb fell into the sea at an unknown location. Palomares, a remote fishing and farming community, was soon filled with nearly 2,000 U.S. military personnel and Spanish civil guards who rushed to clean up the debris and decontaminate the area. The U.S. personnel took precautions to prevent overexposure to the radiation, but the Spanish workers, who lived in a country that lacked experience with nuclear technology, did not. Eventually some 1,400 tons of radioactive soil and vegetation were shipped to the United States for disposal. Meanwhile, at sea, 33 U.S. Navy vessels were involved in the search for the lost hydrogen bomb. Using an IBM computer, experts tried to calculate where the bomb might have landed, but the impact area was still too large for an effective search. Finally, an eyewitness account by a Spanish fisherman led the investigators to a one-mile area. On March 15, a submarine spotted the bomb, and on April 7 it was recovered. It was damaged but intact. Studies on the effects of the nuclear accident on the people of Palomares was limited, but the United States eventually settled some 500 claims by residents whose health was adversely affected. Because the accident happened in a foreign country, it received far more publicity than did the dozen or so similar crashes that occurred within U.S. borders. As a security measure, U.S. authorities do not announce nuclear weapons accidents, and some American citizens may have unknowingly been exposed to radiation that resulted from aircraft crashes and emergency bomb jettisons. Today, two hydrogen bombs and a uranium core lie in yet undetermined locations in the Wassaw Sound off Georgia, in the Puget Sound off Washington, and in swamplands near Goldsboro, North Carolina.

1961 - First flight of the Yak-32 jet sports aircraft, V.P. Smirnov.

1952 - Two MiG-15s were destroyed after accidentally colliding with each other during air combat with F-86s.

1951 - A 4th FIG detachment began operating from Taegu, restoring F-86 operations in Korea.

For the first time, the Sabres flew in the air-to-ground role as fighter-bombers, conducting armed reconnaissance and close air support missions. Far East Air Forces temporarily suspended Tarzon bombing missions because of a shortage of the radio-guided bombs. Only three, earmarked for emergencies, remained in the theater.

1906 - The second Zeppelin LZ-2 (LZ for "Luftschiff ('Airship') Zeppelin") built makes its first first and only flight over Lake Constance, Germany, achieving a speed of 25 mph. After both motors failed, it made a forced landing in the Allgäu mountains, where the anchored ship was subsequently damaged beyond repair by a storm.

Its successor LZ3, which incorporated all parts of LZ2 which were still usable, became the first truly successful Zeppelin, which by 1908 had travelled 4398 km in total in the course of 45 flights. Now the technology interested the German military, who bought LZ3 and renamed it Z I. It served as a school ship until 1913, when it was decommissioned as technologically outdated. Airships would become the first commercial aircraft, conveying paying passengers across the German countryside for years before airplanes carried anyone but a pilot and crew. They delivered the first major wartime aerial bombardment, dropping their explosives on London, Paris and several other European cities in WWI. An airship crossed the Atlantic Ocean a few weeks afer the first airplane and was the first aircraft of any kind to cross from east to west, against the prevailing winds. Airships carried explorers across the frigid wastes of the Arctic, in 1929, in luxurious fashion, one of them circumnavigated the world in 21 days; the first globe-girdling airplanes, a few years earlier, had required eight times as long. The performance of the airship as compared to the airplanes of the period was no surprise to Rudyard Kipling, who commented that he had "always fancied the dirigible against he aeroplane for the overhead haulage in years to come." In his novella, With the Night Mail (1904), Kipling had prophesied that lighter-than-air craft would completely supercede the airplane by the year 2000. Like so many airship enthusiasts over the years, he was wrong. The dirigible was a transitional technology, filling an important commercial niche in a less-than-perfect way while a more practical technology matured.

1902 - Gustave Whitehead reportedly flies a flying boat rebuilt from his Whitehead Aeroplane No. 21 of the previous year on an 11 km (7 mile) flight and lands safely.

According to Gustave and the single eyewitness to the event, the monoplane's longest flight was 60 meters (200 feet) above ground for 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles). However, these claims are contested. Gustave failed to keep a log book and planned for the bulk of his flights to occur at night, or "early dawn", thus limiting witnesses.

An article in the August 18, 1901 issue of The Bridgeport Herald states that the author states he witnessed a night test of the plane, at first unpiloted but loaded with sand bags, and later with Whitehead at the controls.

Number 21 was a monoplane powered by a 20 hp engine, fueled by acetylene. It achieved takeoff speed by using the engine to power the wheels, as in an automobile; upon takeoff, power was switched to the propeller.

1886 - Glenn Luther Martin, American airplane inventor, is born.

Martin's bombers and flying boats played important roles in WW II. His first planes were built in collaboration with mechanics from his auto shop, working in a disused church building that Martin rented. In 1909, Martin made his first successful flight; by 1911 he numbered among the most famous of the "pioneer birdmen." He incorporated the Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Company in 1912 as aan aircraft manufacturer. "Martin Bombers" pioneered the doctrine of airpower in the 1920's and '30's and served in all theaters in World War II. Glenn Martin would remain at the helm of a major aircraft firm longer than anybody else, and he would nurture a great many other future leaders of American aviation such as Donald Douglas, James H. "Dutch" Kindelberger,¹ C.A. Van Deusen, ²and Leroy Randle Drumman. The company built more than 11,000 planes before it ceased producing aircraft in 1960............................................................................................................................
¹ Headed North American Aviation during World War II.

² Headed the Brewster Aircraft Company.

³ Some say the first conventional air-to-air kill was achieved an F-15C pilot, Captain Steve Tate of the 1st Tactical Fighter Wing. Alerted by AWACS to the presence of a bogey approaching his flight, Tate confirmed it as not friendly and loosed off an AIM-7 Sparrow at 12 miles range. The weapon struck an Iraqi Mirage, which disappeared in a huge fireball.

Actually, the first Iraqi aircraft destroyed during Desert Storm air combat was an Iraqi Mirage chasing an EF-111 Raven. The Raven's tight diving turn behind a screen of chaff and infared decoys finsihed just above the desert, but the chasing Mirage didn't pull out and smeared into the ground behind the Raven.