Milestones of Flight: 12/29

2005 - Online training from the FAA became available to help general aviation pilots understand the complexities of today's stricter airspace rules and reduce violations of restricted airspace.

The training is meant for any pilots who fly in or near restricted areas, especially around Washington, D.C. The course provides detailed information on the requirements and procedures required to operate in the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Area Flight Restricted Zone (FRZ), the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Area Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) and other restricted airspace. Pilots who complete the Web-based course and pass a 25-question multiple-choice test will receive a certificate of completion.

Now, if the FAA only gave a course on how to navigate their many Web sites to find the course. . . .

2003 - The Bush administration said it will require international air carriers in certain cases to place armed law enforcement officers on cargo and passenger flights to, from, and over the United States.

The Homeland Security Act of 2002 (P.L. 107-296, H.R. 5005) contains provisions to arm pilots of passenger aircraft and gives deputized pilots the authority to use force, including lethal force, to defend the flight deck against criminal and terrorist threats. Participation in the Federal Flight Deck Officer Program, established under the Arming Pilots Against Terrorism Act contained in P.L. 107-296, is limited to pilots of air carriers providing passenger air transportation or intrastate passenger air transportation. Pilots of cargo air carriers may not participate in the program. However, legislation (H.R. 765; S. 516; amendment to S. 165 by Sen. Boxer) seeks to include all-cargo air carrier pilots in the program.

1994 - U.S. officials confirmed the release in North Korea of Army helicopter pilot Bobby Hall, 12 days after he was captured in a shootdown in which co-pilot David Hilemon was killed.

1992 - Cosmos 2229 satellite carrying monkeys, Drema and Erosha, was launched from Plesetsk.

This was an international study of the adaptation of living organisms to conditions of space flight. After 12 days in Earth orbit, the capsule was recovered about 100 kilometers north of the city of Karaganda.

The Cosmos 2229 mission was also referred to as Bion 10, because it was the tenth in a series of Soviet/Russian unmanned satellites carrying biological experiments.

1989 - First vertical takeoff of the Yak-141 vertical takeoff and landing airplane designed by the A.S. Yakovlev OKB.

1989 - Hermann (Julius) Oberth, a German scientist who was one of three founders of space flight (with Tsiolkovsky and Goddard), died this date.

After injury in WWI, he drafted a proposal for a long-range, liquid-propellant rocket, which the War Ministry dismissed as fanciful. Even his Ph.D. dissertation on his rocket design was rejected by the University of Heidelberg. When he published it as Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (1923; The Rocket into Interplanetary Space) he gained recognition for its mathematical analysis of the rocket speed that would allow it to escape Earth's gravitational pull. He received a Romanian patent in 1931 for a liquid-propellant rocket design. His first such rocket was launched May 7, 1931, near Berlin.

1988 - The Federal Aviation Administration, responding to the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, announced tightened security measures for U.S. air carriers at 103 airports in the Middle East and Western Europe.

1987 -SPACE MILESTONE: Cosmonaut Yuri Romanenko ended his record 326-day space flight orbiting Earth in the Mir space station, landing in a Soyuz TM-3 spacecraft at a snow-covered site near Arkalyk in Kazakhstan.

His stay in space broke the previous Soviet record of 237 days. For comparison, the U.S. space endurance record was 87 days. Romanenko rocketed into orbit (Soyuz TM-2) February 6, 1987 with flight engineer Alexander Laveikin who suffered heart problems five months later and was replaced with Alexander Alexandrov. They conducted 1,000 experiments in biology, medicine, materials processing and geology. Romanenko and Alexandrov used the giant Kvant (Quantum) astrophysics laboratory attached to the Mir to collect data from remote parts of the solar system.

1974 - Yevgeni Igorevich Tarelkin, cosmonaut, Air Force Group 13--2003, is born in Pervomaysky, Russia.

1972 - An Eastern Air Lines Lockheed L-1011 crashed 7 miles west-northwest of Miami International Airport, Miami, Florida. The aircraft was destroyed.

Of he 163 passengers and 13 crewmembers aboard, 94 passengers and 5 crewmembers received fatal injuries. Two survivors died later as a result of their injuries.

Following a missed approach because of a suspected nose gear malfunction, the aircraft climbed to 2,000 feet mean sea level and proceeded on a westerly heading. The three flight crewmembers and a jumpseat occupant became engrossed in the malfunction.

The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was the failure of the flight crew to monitor the flight instrument during the final 4 minutes of flight, and to detect an unexpected descent soon enough to prevent impact with the ground. Preoccupation with a malfunction of the nose landing gear position indicating system distracted the crew's attention from the instruments
and allowed the descent to go unnoticed.

1970 - Dr. Yaroslav Ihorovych Pustovyi, Ph.D., Payload Specialist cosmonaut, is born in Kostroma, Russia, but considers Kyiv, Ukraine, to be his hometown.

1966 - Liftoff of a Thrust-Augmented-Thor/Agena D space booster combination marked the 123rd major launch operation from Vandenberg AFB, California, since January.

This annual launch record remains unbroken.

1966 - U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs) Arthur Sylvester¹ admits that the North Vietnamese city of Nam Dinh has been hit by U.S. planes 64 times since mid-1965.

He denounced New York Times correspondent Harrison Salisbury's reports on the results of the air raids in North Vietnam as "misstatements of fact." Salisbury, an assistant managing editor of the Times, filed a report on December 25 from Hanoi describing U.S. bombing destruction in several North Vietnamese cities. Salisbury stated that Nam Dinh, about 50 miles southeast of Hanoi, had been bombed repeatedly by U.S. planes since June 28, 1965. Sylvester said that the air strikes were directed only against military targets: railroad yards, a warehouse, petroleum storage depots, and a thermal power plant.

1962 - Barry E. Wilmore, astronaut, NASA Group 18--2000, is born in Murfreesboro, Tennesse, U.S.A.

1961 - M.Golub, specialist in a science of space materials, director general of joint-stock company NPO Kompozit, is born in Russia.

1961 - Anton Flettner, German inventor who produced a practical helicopter for the German navy (1940), died this date.

He also developed a device that allowed airplane pilots to raise or lower a plane's nose for better control. It evolved into a mechanism called the Flettner trim-tab control which is still used on all airplanes. He designed a rotor ship (1924) on which he replaced sails with unique propulsion - two 50-ft cylinders, electrically rotated, mounted vertically on the deck. A transatlantic voyage was accomplished using the aerodynamic power of the Magnus Effect which builds pressure behind a rotating cylinder. After WW II, he went to the U.S., and conducted helicopter research for the U.S. Army. He also invented a windmill and the Flettner marine rudder.

1959 - The first domestic bypass turbojet engine, the D-50P, completes state tests. It was used on the Tu-124 and others.

1958 - Nancy Jane Currie née Sherlock, astronaut, NASA Group 13--1990, is born in Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.A.

She flew in space four times for a total of 41.65 days.

1950 - From Taegu, RF-51² aircraft began flying tactical reconnaissance missions in Korea for the first time. They had longer ranges than their RF-80³predecessors.

1948 - The first report of the Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal, reported that the United States had been engaged in research on an earth satellite.

1947 - First flight of the Tu-14 ("73") bomber, F.F. Opadchiy.

Three-engine jet bomber (with a tail-mounted third engine). The basic version had two engines and a gunner cabin in the aft fuselage. Entered low-rate production. Was employed in the role of a torpedo bomber in the Soviet Navy.

1940 - London suffers its most devastating air raid when Germans firebomb the city. Hundreds of fires caused by the exploding bombs engulfed areas of London, but firefighters showed a valiant indifference to the bombs falling around them and saved much of the city from destruction. The next day, a newspaper photo of St. Paul's Cathedral standing undamaged amid the smoke and flames seemed to symbolize the capital's unconquerable spirit during the Battle of Britain.

By denying the Germans a quick victory, depriving them of forces to be used in their invasion of the USSR, and proving to America that increased arms support for Britain was not in vain, the outcome of the Battle of Britain greatly changed the course of World War II. As Churchill said of the RAF fliers during the Battle of Britain, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

1939 - First flight B-24 Liberator.

YouTube VideoB-24 walk around.
YouTube Video B-24 Liberator.
YouTube VideoFlight in B-24Witchcraft.
YouTube VideoB-24 landing.




Until the appearance, in the last year of the war, of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress, the strategic bombing component of the American air force was based on two types of aircraft: the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress and the Consolidated B-24 Liberator.

The total production of the Liberator was the highest of any bomber aircraft produced by the United States industry: as many as 18,188 models left the assembly lines under a massive production program which was carried out by a series of factories belonging not only to the parent company, Consolidated, but also to other industrial giants such as Ford, Douglas, and North American.

This immense production was delivered to all operational theatres from 1942 on for duties which went far beyond those of the conventional bomber. The B-24s were also used for naval reconnaissance, antisubmarine warfare and as transports.

B-24s were not always as popular with the crews. In contrast to the B-17, the Liberator was not able to take as much punishment. This was due to its very complex construction. In particular, the wing was relatively weak. Photographs of WWII show B-24s plummeting from the sky with their two wings folded upwards like those of a butterfly. In contrast, the sturdiness of the B-17 was the stuff of legends, sometimes returning to base with major components such as tailplanes, engines, even wings very badly damaged, and even on occasion partly missing. In spite of the Liberator's defects, Eighth Air Force records show that B-17 operational losses were 15.2 percent as compared with 13.3 percent for the B-24,which meant that a crew had statistically a better chance of surviving the war in a Liberator than in a Fortress.

YouTube Video B-24 flak hit.
YouTube Video Luftwaffe Gun Camera footage.

The B-24's design was from 1939 and was based on a specification from the technical branch of the USAAC who wanted a more modern bomber with better performance than the Boeing B-17, which was in production at the time. The requirements placed special emphasis on speed, range, and operational altitude. From feasibility studies assigned to Consolidated Aircraft Corporation's chief designer, Isaac M. Laddon, a high-wing monoplane emerged with twin fin, tricycle landing gear, and deep fuselage with roomy bomb-bays fitted with bomb-door actuation track and rollers. The wing design was in advance of its time, with the introduction of laminated leading edges and high aerodynamic efficiency, the wings being very elongated; in such a way that carrying capacity and performance at high altitude were improved.

1921 - Edward Stinson and Lloyd Bertaud set a world endurance record of 26 hours, 18 minutes and 35 seconds flying a Junkers-Larsen BMW 185 (imported German Junkers J-13) over Roosevelt Field.

1912 - Aircraft and rocket designer Bereznyak Alexander Yakovlevich is born.

Participated with A.Isayev, in the development of the first experimental jet fighter powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine (BI-1).

1911 - Igor Sikorsky establishes world speed record of 111 km/hour with three passengers on board an S-6 airplane. Sikorsky had received his F.A.I. Pilots License, number 64, in the S-5 just three months previous.

1892 - Aircraft Designer A.A. Arkhangel’skiy is born.

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¹ "I think the inherent right of the Government to lie to save itself when faced with nuclear disaster is basic" -- Arthur Sylvester, assistant secretary of defense, speech at a meeting of the New York chapter of Sigma Delta Chi, New York City, December 6, 1962, as reported by The Washington Post, December 7, 1962, p. A–2.

"Look, if you think any American official is going to tell you the truth, then you're stupid. Did you hear that? - stupid." -- Arthur Sylvester, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs

From 1947 until 1957, the ranking Department of Defense public affairs officer was accorded little power, status, or prestige. Although Murray Snyder became the nation's first assistant secretary of defense solely with public affairs responsibilities, evidence suggests that it was not until 1961 that Arthur Sylvester, Snyder's successor, prompted significant changes within public affairs activities of the Pentagon.

² In 1948, the "P" for pursuit designation was changed to "F" for fighter. During the Korean War, the F-51 Mustang was in action once again. It was better suited to the small airstrips of Korea. The aircraft were based at Kimpo, Pusan and Pohang, flying out of one field then another in close support operations against the advancing North Koreans since the jet aircraft of the day did not have enough range to permit sufficient loiter time over the target. The "RF" version flew photo-reconnaissance missions. The aircraft were withdrawn from combat in 1953.

³ The importance of tactical fighter reconnaissance had grown enormously during WW II and it was obvious that the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star could be easily modified to carry out this role. One early airframe was modified by removing the guns and fitting an elongated nose which hinged upwards to house a set of cameras – this version was known as the XFP-80A and proved that the concept would work. A further 38 aircraft were then constructed as FP-80A-5-LO photographic reconnaissance aircraft, followed by a second batch of 13 aircraft. All aircraft were powered by the 3850 lb.s.t General Electric J-33-GE-11 engine and were fitted with one K-17 camera and two K-22 split-vertical cameras. An additional batch of 66 production P-80A fighters were converted by Lockheed into reconnaissance aircraft and given the designation RF-80A-15-LO. The RF-80A proved itself in combat during the Korean War and took part in numerous sorties over North Korea as well as sorties along the border with North Korea and China, near the Yalu River. Equipped with a forward –looking 40in focal length camera with a telescopic lens, the RF-80A photographed the various airfields in China where the MiG-15s were based, allowing accurate assessments to be made of the potential threat facing UN forces.