Milestones of Flight: 9/17

2007 - Muslim militants may resort to kites to attack military choppers.
2007 - Investigators searched Monday through charred remains of a plane that crashed and killed 89 people--mostly foreigners--on Thailand's resort island of Phuket, while an airline official said wind shear may have doomed the flight.

2007 - Germany's defense minister Franz Josef Jung said he might order the shooting down of hijacked airlines to avert a Sept. 11-style attack, despite the country's highest court throwng out a law permitting such action.

In its ruling, the court said the government had no right to kill innocent civilians. It also found that allowing the military to shoot down civilian airliners would violate a constitutional bar on the military being deployed for domestic security. Jung argued that shooting down a plane would be possible "in cases of common danger or danger to free and democratic basic order."

2007 - NASA Administrator Michael Griffin kicked off a lecture series honoring the agency's 50th anniversary with an address Monday describing the critical role that space exploration plays in the global economy.

The "space economy" was estimated at about $180 billion in 2005, according to a report by the Space Foundation released in 2006. More than 60 percent of space-related economic activity came from commercial goods and services.

For the complete text of Griffin's speech, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/189537main_mg_space_economy_20070917.pdf

2007 - U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary E. Peters today announced that Captain Henry P. Krakowski has been selected to serve as Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) air traffic organization. [Press Release]

2007 - El Al plans to convert 747-400s to cargo as it expands 777 fleet.

Last month the Israeli airline introduced two new 777-200ERs, boosting its fleet of the twinjet to six aircraft.

2007 - The Air Force Times reports the number of UAVs in combat has risen from 1,000 a year ago, to 1,350 today -- a 35 percent increase in 12 months.

2006 - The man who invented James Bond's Little Nellie autogyro¹ walked away unhurt after crashing her sister mini-copter - at the age of 90-years-old.

2006 - Ten Nigerian generals were among 12 people and three other military personnel were killed when a small Nigerian air force plane crashed in central Benue state in Nigeria.

2004 - A Mirage 50 fighter jet (FAV6732) of the Fuerza Aérea Venezolana (FAV)was on final approach when there was a flameout of the engine. The pilot ejected safely before the aircraft crashed into the approach lights in front of the runway.

The Mirage 50 belongs to 33 Squadron which is part of Grupo Aéreo de Caza 11 Diablos. The aircraft are operated alongside the F-16s at El LIbertador AB. The Mirage 50DV and 50EV are upgraded Mirage IIIE and V aircraft which were purchased in the 1970s.

2003 - First flight Sikorsky UH-60M Black Hawk with test pilots pilots Kevin Bredenbeck and Chris Geanacopoulos.

The U.S. Army's aviation modernization plan calls for improvements to the UH-60 Black Hawk that will position it as the service's primary utility helicopter for decades to come. The Army could decide to upgrade up to 1,200 existing UH-60A and UH-60L aircraft and purchase 300 new production Black Hawks that together will provide greater capabilities, a larger payload and lower maintenance costs than current UH-60A and UH-60L models. The overhaul is expected to span 25 years. Sikorsky has delivered more than 2,500 Hawk family helicopters since 1978 and the aircraft have logged more than five million flying hours. More than 2,000 H-60 Black Hawk and H-60 variants are flown by all five U.S. military services. More than 600 international S-70 variants, including Seahawk naval derivatives, are serving 25 international customers.

2002 - The last B-1B left the 116th Bomb Wing, Georgia Air National Guard, at Robins AFB, Georgia, to the bone yard at Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona. Later the 116th merged with the U.S Air Force's 93rd Air Control Wing to form the 116th Air Control Wing, the Air Force's first blended wing, and fly the E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint STARS).

2002 - The U.S. Air Force changed the Raptor's official designation from F-22 to F/A 22 to highlight its ground attack capabilities.

2001 - The USAF Air Staff accelerated a program to field the Conventional Air-Launched Cruise Missile on the B-52H. Subsequently, the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards AFB, California, trimmed the testing plan from five months to six weeks. After that first accelerated program, AFFTC sped up several test programs for Operation Enduring Freedom.

1997 - First flight of the An-140 passenger airplane, A.K. Khrustitskiy test pilot.

1990 - Defense Secretary Dick Cheney sacked Air Force chief of staff General Mike Dugan for after service of only 79 days for "poor judgment at a sensitive time."

Dugan had made imprudent remarks on secret and diplomatically sensitive issues relating to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, openly discussing contingency plans to launch massive air strikes against Baghdad and target Iraqi President Saddam Hussein personally. He retired from the Air Force on December 31, 1990.

1987 - In a five-hour flight from Rockwell's Palmdale, California facility, Maj. H. Brent Hedgpeth and Lt. Col. Robert A. Chamberlain flew the 70th production B-1B 2,700 miles to 18 world speed and payload records in the unlimited weight class.

1985 - Soyuz T-14 docked with Salyut 7. Transported a crew comprising ship's commander V V Vasyutin, flight engineer G. M. Grechko and cosmonaut-researcher A. A. Volkov to the Salyut-7 orbital station to conduct scientific and technical studies and experiments. Grechko returned in Soyuz on September 25, 1985.

1976 - NASA publicly unveils its first space shuttle, the Enterprise, during a ceremony in Palmdale, California. Development of the aircraft-like spacecraft cost almost $10 billion and took nearly a decade.

In 1977, the Enterprise became the first space shuttle to fly freely when it was lifted to a height of 25,000 feet by a Boeing 747 airplane and then released, gliding back to Edwards Air Force Base on its own accord.

1972 - Three U.S. pilots are released by Hanoi. They were the first POWs released since 1969.

North Vietnamese officials cautioned the United States not to force the freed men to "slander" Hanoi, claiming that "distortions" about Hanoi's treatment of POWs from a previous release of prisoners in 1969 caused Hanoi to temporarily suspend the release of POWs. The conditions for their release stipulated that they would not do anything to further the U.S. war effort in Indochina. The rest of the POWs were released in March 1973 as part of the agreement that led to the Paris Peace Accords.

1970 - Gunship developer, pilot and program director, Maj. Ronald W. Terry, received the 1969 Harold Brown Award for achievement in research and development.

Maj. Terry worked for the Gunship program office at Aeronautical Systems Division, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio.

1964 - President Lyndon B. Johnson announced that the U.S. had an over-the-horizon radar that could see around the earth's curvature to detect missiles shortly after their launch.

1962 - First flight of the twin-engine variant of the Mi-8 medium helicopter, designed at the M.L. Mil' OKB.

1961 - Pamela Ann Melroy, American astronaut, NASA Group 15--1995, is born in Palo Alto, California, U.S.A.

Two flights in space for a total time of 23.74 days.

1959 - The North American X-15 rocket plane makes its first powered flight at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Maximum Speed - 2,241 kph. Maximum Altitude - 15,954 m. Turbopump case failure resulted in fire in engine compartment.

1958 - Capt. Charles E. Gibbs flew a 92nd Air Refueling Squadron KC-135 from Fairchild AFB, Washington, to four closed-circuit FAI records distance without refueling, 3,125.56 miles; speed for 2,000 kilometers, 589.3 mph with payloads of 2,204.6, 4,409.2, 11,023 and 22,046 pounds; speed for 5,000 kilometers, 587.1 mph and speed for 5,000 kilometers, 587.136 mph, with the same payloads.

1951 - The 62nd Troop Carrier Wing's activation at McChord AFB, Washington, U.S.A., made it the first Tactical Air Command unit with C-124s assigned.

1950 - The U.S. Marine Corps captured Kimpo Airfield. To support the Eighth Army offensive, Fifth Air Force F-51s and F-80s flew napalm attacks, killing an estimated 1,200 enemy soldiers in Tabu-dong, Yongchon, and other strongholds near the Naktong River.

1950 - Far East Air Forces began a week of dropping four million psychological warfare leaflets.

1950 - North Korean Air Force aircraft slightly damaged the USS Rochester at Inchon during the first enemy air attack of the war on a U.S. ship.

1945 - Mary Helen Johnston, American astronaut, Payload Specialist, is born West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S.A.

1944 - During Operation Market Garden, 1,546 allied planes and 478 gliders carried 35,000 troops for an airborne assault between Eindhoven and Arnhem in Holland to secure the Rhine.

1943 - Dr. Samuel Thornton Durrance, Ph.D., American astronaut, Payload Specialist, is born in Tallahassee, Florida, U.S.A.

1941 - During an Army tactical exercise in Louisiana, DC-3s dropped U.S. parachute troops for the first time.

1935 - Len Koenecke, who played baseball for the Giants and Dodgers, died after being hit on the head by a fire extinguisher during a drunken brawl aboard an airplane.

1930 - Thomas Patten Stafford, American astronaut, NASA Group 2--1962, is born in Weatherford, Oklahoma, U.S.A.

1930 - Edgar Dean Mitchell, American astronaut, NASA Group 5--1966, is born in Herford, Texas, U.S.A.

Sixth person to walk on the moon.

1916 - Oswald Garrison Mike Villard Jr., American electronics engineer, is born.

Villard developed over-the-horizon radar (a way to detect objects out of direct sight by bouncing radar off the ionosphere, an electrically charged layer in the upper atmosphere) so radar could peer around the Earth's curvature to detect aircraft and missiles thousands of miles away. During WW II, he researched countermeasures to protect Allied forces against enemy radio and radar devices. He made pioneering studies of radar jamming. In 1947, he designed a simplified voice transmitter permitting two-way communication on a single radio channel.

1916 - German air ace Manfred von Richthofen—-known to history as the Red Baron-—shoots down his first enemy plane over the Western Front during WW I.

Richthofen, the son of a Prussian nobleman, switched from the German army to the Imperial Air Service in 1915. He became the protégé of Oswald Boelcke, one of Germany’s most successful fighter pilots. After seeing action over the Eastern Front, Richthoften began his legendary career in the west. In his first trip in a combat patrol commanded by Boelcke, Richthofen found himself and his Albatross biplane engaged in aerial combat by a plane piloted by British Second Lieutenant Lionel Morris. Richthoften shot down the plane. Morris and the observer that accompanied him, Lieutenant T. Rees, were mortally wounded.

By the end of 1916, Richthofen had downed 15 enemy planes. The following year, he surpassed all flying-ace records on both sides of the Western Front and began using a Fokker triplane, painted entirely red in tribute to his old cavalry regiment. Although only used during the last eight months of his career, it was this aircraft with which Richthofen was most commonly associated and that led to an enduring English nickname for the German pilot—the Red Baron. By the time he was shot down and killed over the Somme River on April 21, 1918, the 25-year-old Richthofen had downed 80 enemy aircraft, securing his status as one of the greatest air aces to emerge from WW I on either side of the conflict.

1911 - Cal Calbraith Perry Rogers (1879-1912) took off from Long Island, NY, on the first coast to coast airplane flight.

When William Randolph Hearst offered a $50,000 prize for the first 30-day transcontinental flight, Cal Rodgers took up the challenge. He was a slender motorcycle racer with only limited flying experience (some of it gained at the Wright School,) using a 35 h.p.Wright EX biplane, named the Vin Fiz after his commercial sponsor's soft drink. He made thirty stops, including nineteen crashes, virtually rebuilding the Vin Fiz by the time he reached Pasadena, California, on November 5. During 49 days, he flew for 82 hours, becoming the first person to complete a transcontinental flight; although 19 days too late to win the prize.

1908 - The first fatality in a powered airplane occurs when Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge is killed while flying with Orville Wright at Fort Meyer, Arlington Heights, Virginia.

Thomas Etholen Selfridge was a passenger with Orville Wright while demonstrating to the army the Wright Flier airplane when the machine fell 75-ft and crashed into the ground. Wright had installed new, longer, but not flight-tested propellers only the day before. One of the propellers had struck one of the wings' vibrating guy wires and disintegrated. Lieutenant Selfridge, 26-years-old, was an army artillery officer on special duty with the Balloon Corps. He was taken unconscious to Fort Myers hospital, where he died that night after an operation for a fractured skull. An official said that Orville Wright sustained a thigh fracture and multiple rib fractures.

1857 - Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky, Russian pioneer space theorist, is born.

While a provincial Russian schoolteacher, Tsiolkovsky worked out many of the principles of space travel. In 1883, he noted that vehicle in space would travel in the opposite direction to gas that it emitted, and was the first to seriously propose this method propulsion in space travel. He wrote various papers, including the 1903 article "Exploration of Space with Reactive Devices." The engineering equations he derived included parameters such as specific impulse, thrust coefficient and area ratio. He established that the most efficient chemical combination would be that of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. He was later recognized by the Soviet Union as the "father of cosmonautics."
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¹ Brian Johnson (Classic Aircraft Channel 4 Books/Macmillan Publishers. 156 pp., 1998)reports that during the filming of the well-known helicopter chase sequence in the James Bond thriller You Only Live Twice ), in which a flock of evil Bell 47s pursue 007 aboard his Wallis autogyro Little Nellie, the aerial action got so thick that one of the 47s collided with a camera helicopter!