Milestones of Flight: 1/17

2009 - NTSB:Pilot landed in Hudson to avoid catastrophe.

2009 - Japan's military will for the first time buy helicopters from Eurocopter, ordering training choppers from the unit of European aerospace giant EADS for the Maritime Self-Defence Forces.

Eurocopter, part of the the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) which includes Airbus, was bidding for the contract against British-Italian firm AgustaWestland.

2008 - The U.S. Air Forces has issued significantly altered nuclear weapons handling procedures in the aftermath of an unauthorized transfer of nuclear weapons between air bases last August.

The revisions were spurred by the discovery that air crews at Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, had inadvertently attached six nuclear-armed cruise missiles to a B-52 bomber. The aircraft then flew to Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, where ground personnel later discovered the weapons which had been under minimal security for about 36 hours. About 65 Minot airmen were reprimanded and lost their certifications to handle nuclear weapons after the mishap and four Air Force colonels lost their commands after the Air Force’s own internal investigation.

2008 - Israel tested a missile, prompting Iran to vow retaliation if the Jewish state carried out recent veiled threats to launch strikes, possibly atomic, against Tehran's nuclear facilities.

2008 - A British Airways Boeing 777 Flight 38 arriving from Beijing, China crash-landed short of the runway at London's Heathrow Airport.

13 people had been injured, one passenger seriously. The south runway was closed and some flights were delayed and more than 50 flights were cancelled . Among the planes delayed was a flight Prime Minister Gordon Brown was taking on an official trip to India and China.

2008 - Prince William AKA Flying Officer William Wales has flown solo just a week into his flight training at RAF Cranwell.

The Prince, a Second Lieutenant with the Household Cavalry’s Blues and Royals, is on attachment to the RAF, stationed with 1 Squadron of 1 Elementary Flying Training School. He is fulfilling a long held ambition by following in the footsteps of his father, the Prince of Wales, who earned his wings more than 35 years ago. The Duke of York, his uncle, is also a trained pilot who flew in combat in the Falklands War.

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 - In 42 days of combat, 16 U.S. Air Force Reserve C-130s fly more than 3,200 combat sorties against Iraq. Air Force Reserve A-10s fly more than 1,000 combat sorties against enemy targets

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 Ecuadorean state oil company Petroecuador plane crashed in Colombia, killing all 26 people on board. The plane was found Jan 24 with no survivors.

1997 - A $40 million navigation satellite for the U.S. 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 - Air Mobility Command declares the 17th Airlift Squadron the first operational C-17 Globemaster III squadron.

Simultaneously, Gen. Robert L. Rutherford, commander of AMC, approves use of the new C-17 Globemaster III for routine missions.

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.

1994 - A massive earthquake devastated Los Angeles. Six C-5 Galaxies and C-141 Starlifters flew 270 disaster specialists and 340,000 pounds of cargo to Southern California through January 25.

1993 - The United States, accusing Iraq of a series of military provocations, unleashed Tomahawk missiles against a military complex eight miles from downtown Baghdad.

1993 - An F-16 Fighting Falcon shot down an Iraqi MiG-29 over the northern no-fly zone by USAF F-16C 86-0262/SP.

1992 - In a move to modernize its fleet of training aircraft, the Air Force accepts the first production model T-1A Jayhawk.

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 - Constituting less than 2.5 percent of all coalition aircraft, F-117A Stealth fighter-bomber crews attack more than 31 percent of Iraqi strategic targets during the first day of the Gulf War.

1991 - Captain Jon K. J.B. 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 shooting down a MiG-29 with an AIM-7 missile at 0310L in the vicinity of Mudaysis, Iraq.

Capt Kelk was a 58 Tactical Fighter Squadron F-15C pilot assigned to the 33d Tactical Fighter Wing (Provisional).

1987 - Two U.S. Marine Corps officers were killed in the crash of an A-6E Intruder into the western Mediterranean Sea.

The jet was attached to Marine All-Weather Attack Squadron 533 at Marine Corps Air Station, Cherry Point, North Carolina. It was operating off the Norfolk-based aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy at the time of the accident. As an outgrowth of the recent crashes, the Marine Corps' five all-weather attack squadrons temporarily grounded all older aircraft for a series of inspections.

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).

1970 - V.S. Il'yushin makes first flight of T-6-2i combat airplane from Sukhoy design bureau.

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.

1965 - Capt. Joe H. Engle honored by the U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce as one of American's Top Ten Young Men of 1964 for his X-15 flights.

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

1956 - N.E. Zhukovskiy Science and Memorial Museum opens in Moscow.

1953 - The 98th BW attacked the Pyongyang radio installation, which was forty-two feet underground and only a thousand feet from a possible POW camp.

The eleven B-29s scored eight to ten hits with 2,000-pound general-purpose bombs, but these did not penetrate deeply enough to destroy the radio station.

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.

1948 - BOAC begins to replace flying boat routes with the Lockheed Constellation.

1943 - The only Dutch ace in WW II Hugh Godefroy damaged two Fw 190s over Fecamp, France.

1942 - Carole Lombard dies in a plane crash.

Millions of movie fans are stunned when actress Carole Lombard dies in a plane crash at the age of 34. Lombard, married to Clark Gable since 1939, was one of Hollywood's most glamorous stars of the 1930s. Best loved for her comedies, Lombard starred in screwball comedies, including My Man Godfrey and To Be or Not to Be.

Her film To Be or Not to Be (1942) was in post-production when she died in a plane crash, and the producers decided to leave out a part that had her character ironically saying, "What can happen in a plane?"

1932 - Lt. Charles H. Howard, 11th Bomb Squadron, received the MacKay Trophy for the delivery of supplies to Navajo Indians near Winslow, Arizona.

1921 - Council of National Commissars decree "On Aerial Movements" in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) is signed.

1915 - Birth of Russian test pilot N.V. Adamovich.

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.

1900 - The United States of America takes formal possession of Wake Island, actually an atoll with three islets (Wake, Wilkes, and Peale), 3 sq mi (7.8 sq km), central Pacific, between Hawaii and Guam.

It is a U.S. commercial and military base under the jurisdiction of the Federal Aviation Agency. There is no indigenous population. Wake Island was discovered by the Spanish in 1568, visited by the British in 1796 and named after Capt. William Wake, and annexed by the United States in 1898. The island became (1935) a commercial air base on the route to Asia and later served as a U.S. military base. In Dec., 1941, Wake Island was seized by the Japanese. U.S. forces bombed the island from 1942 until Japan's surrender in 1945.

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

1847 - Birth of N.E. Zhukovskiy, the Father of Russian Aviation.

In 1909 N.E.Zhukovskiy started giving lectures on "Aeronautics" and teaching in students’ aeronautical study group at Emperor Technical School. Among them there was a student of great inellectual capabilites and huge interest in anything new in aviation--it was A.N.Tupolev. ........................................................................................................................................................................
¹ Headed North American Aviation during WW 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.