May 5

2011 -- Video: Boeing completes 747-8F max energy brake testing.


2011 -- Venezuela's National Assembly endorsed a new satellite contract program with China, the second such bilateral project between the two countries.   On October 29, 2008, China launched the jointly built telecommunication satellite Venesat-1 -- also dubbed Simon Bolivar -- from Chinese soil, making Venezuela the 4th Latin American country which owns a satellite after Mexico, Brazil and Argentina.


2011 -- Flight tests have started in Russia on the first production model of the Sukhoi Su-35S multi-role fighter.


2011 -- Rolls Royce was presented with  the prestigious 2010 Robert J. Collier Trophy.  The Light Helicopter Turbine Engine Company (LHTEC) CTS800-powered Sikorsky X2 Technology demonstrator won the award given annually to recognize the greatest achievements in aeronautics or astronautics in America. LHTEC is a 50:50 partnership between Rolls-Royce and Honeywell.  The 2010 award is the 100^th Collier Trophy to be awarded since its inception and the eighth for Rolls-Royce. The Rolls-Royce portion of the engine was designed and built in Indianapolis, Indiana.

2011 -- United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) narcotic crop monitoring flight missing in the Plurinational State of Bolivia.

2011 -- New GAO Report:   Commercial Space Transportation: Industry Trends and Key Issues Affecting Federal Oversight and International Competitiveness, GAO-11-629T (pdf)


2011 -- Photographs of the wreckage left behind at Osama bin Laden's Abbottabad compound have people asking what kind of helicopter was that?  The experts are puzzled as well.   "Images of the wreckage of a helicopter that reportedly crashed during the operation, apparently due to an undisclosed technical malfunction, do not conform to any types that are known to be in service with the US military or in development," IHS Jane's reported.  Be patient, the White House is dribbling out the news a bit every day--making it last longer--soon there will be an announcement telling us all about the "stealth, radar evading helicopter" that broke down and crashed.


2011 -- Israel's Ben Gurion International Airport grounded all departing flights today, stranding thousands of passengers, after jet fuel at the airport was found to be tainted.

2011 -- Jetman Yves Rossy hopes to fulfill a dream by flying through the Grand Canyon with his jet-propelled wingsuit.  He's going to try it tomorrow morning.


2011 -- The King of Ivory Coast Tchiffi Zie Jean Gervais wants the International Criminal Court to investigate claims NATO forces in Libya are using depleted uranium in bombing attacks, which the group he represents claims could constitute war crimes.  In particular, the Forum of the King, Sultans, Princes, Sheiks and Traditional Leader in Africa claims the use of depleted uranium in the recent NATO attacks that killed the son and the two grandsons of Muammar Gaddafi. Gaddafi is the president of the Forum, and Tchiffi Zie Jean Gervais is the Secretary General.


2011 -- Where does NATO's boundary lie?  The Warsaw Pact was dissolved in the early 1990s after the Cold War ended, but NATO remained.  Since then, the alliance has constantly broken through its “frontier” and looked for new opponents in the name of “strategic transformation.”

2011 --  Coalition to create fund for Libya rebels.  Countries involved in military campaign pledge money to provide food, medicine and supplies to opponents of Gaddafi.  The Transitional National Council (TNC), based in Benghazi, has appealed for loans of up to $3bn, saying they need around half of that for food, medicine and other basic supplies. 2011 -- The United States is trying to free up part of $30 billion it has frozen in Libyan assets so it can better support opponents of Moammar Gadhafi, Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton told a conference  on Libya. 2011 -- German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, whose country is not taking part in the NATO air strikes, stressed the importance of finding a "political solution" to the conflict in Libya, saying, "The limits of military [intervention] are visible."

2011 -- A first body has been recovered from the wreck of the Rio-Paris Air France jet that crashed into the Atlantic in 2009 with the loss of all 228 on board,  the national gendarmerie (DGGN) said.


2011 -- Indian soldiers recovered the body of the chief minister of Arunachal Pradesh state and four Other victims from the wreckage  of a helicopter that crashed five days ago.

2011 -- Bucharest and Washington have concluded talks on the deployment of US missile interceptors in Romania and will sign the agreement next autumn, Foreign Minister Teodor Baconschi said today.  Last February, Romania was officially invited by U.S. President Barack Obama to be part of a newly designed U.S. missile shield.  The Balkan country will host SM3-type medium-range ballistic missile interceptors, which should be operational by 2015.  NATO and the United States want to set up a missile shield to protect Europe against what they perceive is a growing threat of short- and medium-range missiles possibly launched from the Middle East, especially from Iran.

NATO-related spending is expected to fuel a turnaround in the Romanian defense market, from a 1.5% decline from 2006 to 2010 to 2.8% annual growth through 2015, according to iCD Research.


2011 -- A U.S. drone attack that killed two suspected al-Qaeda fighters in Yemen today was targeting U.S.-Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.  Anwar al-Awlaki was not hit when a missile was fired at a car in southern Yemen.   Today's incident was the first known attempt to get him since Yemeni forces tried to kill him in an air raid in December 2009 in Shabwa, but failed despite killing 34 others.  The U.S. has also accused Awlaki of having links with Major Nidal Hasan who shot and killed13 people at Fort Hood, Texas in November 2009.

2010 -- The CIA received approval to target a wider range of targets in Pakistan's tribal areas, including low-level fighters whose identities may not be known, U.S. officials said today.  The expansion of the covert targeted killing program began under President George W. Bush and have accelerated under President Barack Obama.  Supporters credit the expanded strikes with dealing a serious blow to al -Qaeda and the Taliban, benefiting U.S. forces in neighboring Afghanistan.

2010 -- The Air Line Pilots Association, Internmational (ALPA), on behalf of Spirit Airlines pilots, said they plan to ask the National Mediation Board to release them from contract negotiations, a move which could lead to a strike.  The union said the pilots are currently in their third year of negotiations for a new contract, with little or no progress. They accused Spirit Airlines management of displaying "contempt for the pilots' existing contract and refusal to negotiate a new one." The pilots said Spirit has been "blatantly violating a number of crucial work rules in the current contract," and "claiming it had the universal right to do so whenever it wanted to save money." For example, the union said management has threatened to eliminate or disregard the existing rule about how much time off a pilot gets after a trip.

2010 -- A statue of RAF hero Sir Keith Park has been taken down from the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square.  Sir Keith commanded RAF squadrons that defended London and the South East from WW II Luftwaffe attacks in 1940.

2010 -- The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) plans to assess $572,150 in civil penalties against Atlas Air of Purchase, New York, a scheduled air cargo airline, for alleged violations of the Federal Aviation Regulations.

2007 -- Kenya Airways Flight 507, a Boeing 737 with 114 people on board, crashes near Douala, Cameroon killing everyone on board.  In 2010 accident investigators have identified "spatial disorientation" as the most likely cause of the crash. In their probable-cause finding, investigators say, "The airplane crashed after loss of control by the crew as a result of spatial disorientation (non-recognized or subtle type, transitioning to recognized spatial disorientation), after a long slow roll, during which no instrument scanning was done, and in the absence of external visual references in a dark night."

2006 -- The final two missions in C-141 StarLifter history were conducted in conjunction with the biennial Vietnam Prisoners of War reunion in Dayton, Ohio.  More than sixty former POWs are flown on the two sorties that recreate the POWs' release from captivity in North Vietnam on February 12, 1973 on the same aircraft, 66-0177, that was the first to land in Hanoi. There were forty former POWs on that first flight out, and a number of them were in attendance at the reunion. In late 2002, this aircraft, now a C-141C and known as Hanoi Taxi, was repainted in the same high gloss gray-and-white paint scheme it wore in 1973.

1999 -- A Department of Defense-chartered Tower Air Boeing 747 landed at McGuire AFB, New Jersey, with the first group of refugees from Kosovar, Serbia's southern province in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.  In Operation Provide Refuge, 3,000 Kosovar Albanians were flown to McGuire and temporary quarters at neighboring Fort Dix until arrangements could be made for permanent resettlement with relatives or sponsors In the U.S.

1996 -- Col. Betty L. Mullis became the first woman to command a flying wing when she assumed command of the 940th Air Refueling Wing at McClellan AFB, California.

1994 -- Delta Airlines best ad.

1987 -- The last Titan II missile came off alert at Little Rock AFB, Arkansas, marking the close of a quarter century of uninterrupted service as the vanguard of America's deterrent forces.

1981 -- A B-52H from the 410th Bomb Wing, K.I. Sawyer AFB, Michigan, landed at Royal Australian Air Force Base, Darwin for two days of public display.  This event came after years of negotiating an agreement, signed in March 1981, to let B-52s land in Australia. On June 22, the bomber flew an operational sortie from Darwin on a sea-search mission.

1971 -- The U.S. Air Force's sea-launched ballistic missile detection and warning system, called the Pave Phased Array Warning System or PAWS achieved its initial operating capability.

1970 -- The Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps was expanded to include women after test programs at Ohio State, Drake, East Carolina and Auburn Universities proved successful.

1969 -- The Smithsonian Institute received X-15 No. 1 for display with other aircraft firsts.

1968 -- The first non-stop Atlantic crossing by an executive jet aircraft is made as a Grumman Gulfstream II lands in London, England after completing a 3,500-mile (5,633 km) flight from Teterboro, New Jersey. 

1967 -- First all-British satellite Ariel 3 has been successfully launched into orbit from the United States.

1966 -- U.S. Air Force Douglas A-1 (formerly AD) Skyraider + pilots flew their first strikes against targets in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam also known as North Vietnam.

1961 -- Commander Alan B. Shepard, Jr., U.S. Navy, becomes the second man to explore space when he rides his Mercury Freedom 7 capsule, launched by a Redstone missile, to 115 miles above the Earth, when he was carried into a sub-orbital trajectory in a Mercury capsule on a flight which lasted 15 minutes 22 seconds and reached a height of 116 miles into the atmosphere, was a major triumph for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)..  It is three weeks since Yuri Gagarin's first manned space flight.  NASA was established in 1958 to keep U.S. space efforts abreast of recent Soviet achievements, such as the launching of the world's first artificial satellite--Sputnik 1--in 1957. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the two superpowers raced to become the first country to put a man in space and return him to Earth. On April 12, 1961, the Soviet space program won the race when cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was launched into space, put in orbit around the planet, and safely returned to Earth. One month later, Shepard's suborbital flight restored faith in the U.S. space program.  NASA continued to trail the Soviets closely until the late 1960s and the successes of the Apollo lunar program. In July 1969, the Americans took a giant leap forward with Apollo 11,a three-stage spacecraft that took U.S. astronauts to the surface of the moon and returned them to Earth. On February 5, 1971, Alan Shepard, the first American in space, became the fifth astronaut to walk on the moon as part of the Apollo 14 lunar landing mission.

1954 -- The U.S. Air Force issued a requirement for a turbo-jet tanker to support the refueling needs of jet aircraft.

1952 -- The Grumman XF10F-1 Jaguar first flew. It had a swept-wing variable geometry wing.

1950 -- First flight Scottish Aviation Prestwick Pioneer prototype G-AKBF.  The Pioneer was a STOL aircraft used for casualty evacuation and communications and could accommodate a pilot and up to five passengers.   The RAF used the Pioneer extensively for tasks such as casualty evacuation in the Malayan Emergency, Aden and Cyprus. With its unusually large slats and flaps, it was able to operate out of very short, unprepared strips and could take off in as little as 225 ft. The Pioneer remained operational in small numbers until 1969

1948 -- The first carrier-based jet squadron, USN 17A, was established with 16 Phantoms and operated from the USS Saipan from 5 to 7 May.

1948 -- Cubana de Aviación inaugurates its first transatlantic flight Madrid to Havana on board DC-4 Estrella de Cuba.

1947 -- The H-20 Flying Bike, the world's first ramjet helicopter, completed its first flight.

1945 -- Russian ground forces occupied Peenemünde, Germany.  Little is found. Western intelligence is convinced that the Soviets conduct missile tests from Peenemuende in the late 1940's (the Scandinavian ghost rockets). But Russian historical sources available after the downfall of the Soviet Union do not support this belief.

1943 -- In Lakeview, Oregon, Mrs. Elsie Mitchell and five neighborhood children are killed while attempting to drag a Japanese balloon out the woods. Unbeknownst to Mitchell and the children, the balloon was armed, and it exploded soon after they began tampering with it. They were the first and only known American civilians to be killed in the continental United States during WW II. The U.S. government eventually gave $5,000 in compensation to Mitchell's husband, and $3,000 each to the families of Edward Engen, Sherman Shoemaker, Jay Gifford, and Richard and Ethel Patzke, the five slain children.

The explosive balloon found at Lakeview was a product of one of only a handful of Japanese attacks against the continental United States, which were conducted early in the war by Japanese submarines and later by high-altitude balloons carrying explosives or incendiaries. In comparison, three years earlier, on April 18, 1942, the first squadron of U.S. bombers dropped bombs on the Japanese cities of Tokyo, Kobe, and Nagoyo, surprising the Japanese military command, who believed their home islands to be out of reach of Allied air attacks. 

1930 -- The first solo flight from England to Australia by a woman is made by British Amy Johnson in a de Havilland D.H.60G Moth.  She flies from Croydon, England to Darwin, Australia in 19 days.

1927 -- U.S. Navy aviator Lieutenant Carleton C. Champion took off from Hampton Roads, Virginia, in a Wright Apache, equipped with a Pratt & Whitney Wasp engine and NACA supercharger, and climbed to an altitude of 33,455 feet, breaking the existing world record for Class C seaplanes by better than 3,000 feet.

1921 -- Captain F.E. Guest is appointed British Secretary of State for Air.

1917 -- The first British Ace idolized by the public, Captain Albert Ball, scored his 42nd and 43rd victories.

1917 -- Royal Naval Air Service Major Roderic Stanley Bréguet Dallas scored his 16th victory.

1917 -- Canadian Flying Ace Captain Reginald Theodore Carlos Georgie Hoidge flying a Royal Aircraft Factory SE 5 fighter scored his 1st victory over an Albatros D.III.