2012 -- Nashville airport releases security footage of Sen. Rand Paul in TSA encounter (watch video)
2012 -- Two decades after American forces were evicted from their biggest base in the Pacific, the Philippines may ask the United States back to counter China's growing military power.
The United States and the Philippines are in talks to increase the American military presence in Southeast Asia. According to a report in The Washington Post newspaper, the Philippines has indicated a willingness to host American ships, surveillance aircraft, and joint military exercises.
2012 -- Air China, the country's national flag carrier, announced today that it has been granted Transit without Visa (TWOV) and China Transit Trial (CTT) status from the Canadian government authorities.
Effective from February 1, 2012, citizens of China and other certain Asian countries who are Air China flight passengers in direct transit through Canada's Vancouver (YVR) on their way to or from the United States will not be required to obtain a Canadian Temporary Residence Permit.
2012 -- Boeing and AirBridgeCargo Airlines, part of Volga-Dnepr Group, celebrated today the delivery of the first of five new Boeing 747-8 Freighters to the airline.
2012 -- An Iranian-U.S. Manufactured fighter F-14 jet crashed near the village of Kereband in the coastal province of Bushehr three minutes after its takeoff at 4:30 a.m. local time today, killing both crew members, the Fars news agency reported.
The first and only country to receive F-14 Tomcat was, The Nirouyeh Havaiyeh Shahanshahiye Iran, or Imperial Iranian Air Force. The initial order signed in January of 1974 covered 30 Tomcats, but in June 50 more were added to the contract. At the same time, the Iranian government-owned Bank-e-Melli loaned Grumman $75 million to partially make up for a U.S. government loan of $200 million to Grumman, that had just been cancelled. This loan saved the F-14 program and enabled Grumman to secure a further loan of $125 million from a consortium of American banks, ensuring at least for the moment that the F-14 program would continue. Thanks to Bank-e-Melli.
The Iranian Tomcats were virtually identical to the U.S. Navy version, with only a few classified avionics items being omitted. The base site for Iranian Tomcat operations was at Isfahan’s (Khatami Air Force Base) and 1 Squadron at Shiraz Tactical Fighter Base. Imperial Iranian Air Force aircrews began to arrive in the U.S. for training in 1974. Toward the end of the 1970s most suppliers were cancelled by the new government, including an order for 400 AIM-54A Phoenix missiles.
Imposition of a strict arms embargo against Iran by the West caused a severe spare parts and maintenance problem, with many pilots and maintenance personnel following the Shah into exile. By 1980 the Iranian Air Force was only a shadow of its former self. This embargo was to have an especially severe long-term effect on the Tomcat fleet, since the embargo prevented the delivery of any spares. In spite of the Western arms embargo, Iran been able to maintain a more-or-less steady supply of spare parts for its fleet of Tomcats, from Iranian aircraft industries based at 1st tactical air base in Tehran. [2006 Video]
2012 -- Takeoff to Bollywood! A Dance Crew surprises passengers after boarding of a Finnair flight to Delhi to celebrate India's Republic Day on January 26th 20.
2012 -- Abu Dhabi-owned carrier Etihad Airways today said it ordered two more Airbus A330-200Fs in a deal worth $ 423 million at list prices.
2010 -- First flight Kawasaki's prototype C-X airlifter from Giful Air Base in Japan, earning the designation XC-2.
The aircraft, powered by a pair of General Electric CF6-80C2 turbofans, was rolled out alongside Kawasaki's XP-1 maritime patrol aircraft in July 2007. The XP-1 first flew in September of that year, but problems with the structural integrity of the XC-2's airframe delayed its flight debut by more than two years.
2009 -- The F-35 program office issued a lightening rebuttal to the charge that the stealth fighter project has incurred a significant cost overrun.
A spokeswoman for the F-35 program said the Aviation Week Ares blog entry ostensibly revealing a new Joint Strike Fighter Nunn-McCurdy breach was "biased" and unfounded. Since the F-35 program’s actual Nunn-McCurdy breach of three years ago, costs have remained "relatively stable," she said. F-35 costs did increase by 38 percent in the 2006 case, but mainly due to external factors, not management, she explained. "About 90 percent of the growth," the program office wrote, "has been due to cost of materials, labor rates, increased amounts of materiel required to begin manufacturing, and reductions in total quantities"
2008 -- German engineer, V-2 test leader Klaus Eduard Scheufelen died.
At end of war headed development of Taifun unguided antiaircraft rocket, characterised as a 'desperation project'.
2007 -- U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates is directing military service leaders to develop "plans to minimize the use" of stop loss for both active and reserve forces by the end of February.
Gates could be reacting to a letter he received last week from four Republican Congressmen, expressing concern that the Administration’s planned 20,000-troop surge would require an expanded stop-loss program. Rep. Randy Kuhl (R-N.Y.) called the policy a hidden draft.
2006 -- Air Force leaders have instructed public affairs personnel to use the phrase "force shaping," rather than terms such as "downsizing" or "layoffs" when they are discussing the upcoming personnel cuts.
Leaders have deemed as strictly taboo the obvious, logical, and traditional term "reduction in force." Senior leadership wants to emphasize that the service is deliberately moving toward a new and smaller organization, rather than admit the cuts are a money-saving effort.
2006 -- Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen has said he would fight a DOD proposal to draw down the Guard’s end strength.
Bredesen is joining a growing list of lawmakers, governors, and Guardsmen that do not believe the Pentagon is taking the right approach to solve its budget dilemma. He also is still fighting to save the Volunteer State’s Air National Guard unit at Nashville, the 118th Airlift Wing, which stands to lose its aircraft under BRAC 2005.
2000 -- Air Combat Command Commander Gen. Ralph E. Eberhart dedicated the first Block D upgraded B-1s at Dyess AFB, Texas.
1995 -- Outbreak of the Cenepa War between Peru and Ecuador. Peruvian Mil Mi-8 and Mil Mi-25, as well as Ecuadorian Aérospatiale Gazelle helicopters begin ground attack operations.
1992 -- Boris Yeltsin announces that Russia will stop targeting United States cities with nuclear weapons.
1991 -- Iraq sends aircraft to Iran for sanctuary (by war's end, 122 had fled).
1976 -- The Concorde supersonic passenger jet airplane (SST) began commercial flights on the London-Bahrain and Paris-Rio routes. Because of its great cost, it was developed as a project between Britain and France, under an international treaty rather than a commercial agreement between companies.
Concorde had a cruise speed of Mach 2.04 and a cruise altitude of 60,000 feet (17,700 metres). It had a delta wing configuration, and was the first civil airliner to be equipped with an analogue fly-by-wire flight control system.
1975 -- Strategic Air Command completed its Force Modernization Program by installing the last flight of Minuteman IIIs in 90th SMW at F. E. Warren AFB, Wyoming. The nine-year program replaced all Minuteman I missiles with either Minuteman IIs or IIIs.
1972 -- There an explosion in the front baggage compartment McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32 JAT Flight 367 over Srbská Kamenice in Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic), and made it break apart.
Fight attendant Vesna Vulović was the only survivor. Vulović fell approximately 10,000 meters (~30,000 feet). She suffered a fractured skull, three broken vertebrae (one crushed completely) that left her temporarily paralyzed from the waist down and two broken legs. She was in a coma for 27 days. Vulović continued working for JAT at a desk job following a full recovery from her injuries. She regained the use of her legs after surgery and continued to fly sporadically. She claims she has no fear of flying, which she attributes to the loss of memory of the crash, and she even enjoys watching movies with plane crashes. She is considered a national heroine throughout the former Yugoslavia.
1952 -- Birth of astronaut Mario Trooper Runco, Jr.1951 -- First flight of Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket supersonic research aircraft is made. It is launched from underneath its B-29 mother-ship and exceeds Mach 1 (the speed of sound) in a dive.
The D-558 series of aircraft was developed by Douglas under the direction of Edward H. Heinemann for the U.S. Navy to explore transonic and supersonic flight. The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA, the predecessor to NASA), used this Skyrocket, the second one built, to explore the flight characteristics of swept-wing aircraft. It set several speed and altitude records before the program ended in 1956, i.e., Piloted by A. Scott Crossfield, on November 20, 1953, the Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket became the first aircraft to fly faster than Mach 2, twice the speed of sound. Air-launched from a U.S. Navy Boeing P2B-1S (B-29) the swept-wing, rocket-powered D-558-2 reached Mach 2.005 in a shallow dive at 18,898 meters (62,000 feet).
1946 -- Colonel William H. Council, piloting a Lockheed P80 Shooting Star, makes a record breaking flight from Long Beach, California to La Guardia in New York.
It is the fastest crossing of the United States to date - 2,470 miles in 4 hours 13 minutes, and 26 seconds at an average speed of 584mph. Also the longest non-stop flight by a jet aircraft.
1946 -- U.S. Naval Aviation Ordnance Test Station was established at NAAS Chincoteague, Virginia to develop aviation ordnance and guided missiles.
1946 -- The U.S. Army announced creation by Army Air Forces (AAF) of the First Experimental Guided Missiles Group to develop and test rocket missiles at Eglin Field, Florida.
1921 -- U.S Post Office Department operated regular daily airmail routes over a distance of 3,460 miles
1911 -- The first practical seaplane is flown. Built and flown by American Glenn Curtiss,¹ it lands and takes off in the waters off San Diego, California.
The airplane Flying Fish had pontoons in place of wheels. The rear pontoon was 6-ft wide and 5-ft long. The front one was narrower. He had made his first flight on his 30th birthday, May 21, 1908, in White Wing, a design of the Aerial Experiment Association, the group led by Alexander Graham Bell. Curtiss began building his own aircraft. He pioneered the design of the floatplane and the flying boat. Curtiss established an aviation school on North Island in San Diego Bay, Dececember 1910. On February 17, 1911, He demonstrated the first hydroplane flight to a ship, the USS Pennsylvania.
1902 -- The first American to fly a jet airplane Laurence C. Craigie is born in Concord, New Hampshire, U.S.A.Craigie's career in military aviation began when the Army had a fleet of propeller-driven biplanes and there was no separate Air Force; it ended in the age of supersonic jets.For much of his career, he headed the military's development of new aircraft, and on October 2, 1942, he flew the Bell XP-59, the first American jet, from a dry lake in Southern California. He was the second person to pilot the craft, after a civilian pilot. General Craigie graduated from West Point in 1923 and went directly into the Army Air Corps, serving as a pilot and flight instructor. He joined the Air Corps' Experimental Engineering Section in 1939, and served as chief of the Aircraft Projects Branch from 1941 to 1943. In the last two years of WW II, he led fighter wings in New York City, North Africa and Corsica. After WW II, he directed the Air Force's research and development programs and became one of the service's most visible proponents of greater financing and experimentation. In 1948 he said, "We have a yacht, and like the man who asked J. P. Morgan how much it cost to run a yacht, we cannot keep a yacht if we have to worry about the cost." He was Vice Commander of the Far East Air Forces in the first year of the Korean War, and a member of the Allied negotiating team in peace talks to end that war. In 1951, he became the Air Force deputy chief of staff for development. In 1954, he became commander of the Allied Air Force in Southern Europe, a post he held until retiring the next year for health reasons.
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Obama in his State of the Union Address last night, said that "this is our generation's Sputnik moment." He was trying to make his calls for pouring tax money down the drain of "renewable energy" and "high-speed rail" sound like inspiring ambitions rather than boondoggles.
(On high-speed rail, by the way, the president promised: "For some trips, it will be faster than flying--without the pat-down." At the risk of overestimating the competence of the federal bureaucracy, could it be that the Transportation Security Administration insists on touching everyone's junk because the president wants us to get excited about trains?)
Pearl Harbor: 24 Hours After
Saturday, January 28th at 8/7c
Although December 7 will forever be remembered as the day Pearl Harbor was attacked, little has been revealed about President Franklin D. Roosevelt's first responses to the news of Japan's attack on U.S. soil on that day in 1941. HISTORY® marks the 70th anniversary of that pivotal moment in world history with this 2-hour special spotlighting secrets and little-known details about FDR's reactions in the earliest hours of the attack. Pearl Harbor: 24 Hours After offers a rare glimpse at the man behind the Presidency and how he confronted the enormous challenge of transitioning the United States from peacetime to war.
Leading historians, including Steve Gillon (author of the recently released book Pearl Harbor: FDR Leads the Nation Into War) provide insights into the costs and consequences of these events in which thousands of Americans lost their lives. This dramatic 2-hour program also discusses the treatment of Japanese Americans in the wake of the attack. Students will learn about the context in which the U.S. entered World War II, and will be able to explore FDR's Presidency and leadership during this tumultuous era in world history.
SOURCE: Chronicle of Higher Ed(1-22-12)
Built 20 miles north of Saigon, Long Binh Post was the largest U.S. base in Vietnam. Among its features was the Nature of the War Museum, a replica of a Viet Cong-controlled village complete with tunnels, booby traps, and weapons. It served "as a reminder to personnel that there was indeed a war going on somewhere nearby," writes Meredith H. Lair.
That was not always easy to remember, she suggests, in Long Binh, a Cleveland-size enclave of American opulence that rarely saw any danger. The joke was that if the Viet Cong ever really attacked the base, with its 180 miles of roads, they would have to use the scheduled bus system for the incursion.
The huge base is emblematic of Lair's fluid and engrossing new book, Armed With Abundance: Consumerism and Soldiering in the Vietnam War (University of North Carolina Press).
The typical experience of the American soldier in Vietnam was not "the infantryman humping the boonies on ambush patrol that Platoon and other popular treatments have enshrined in public memory," says the author, an assistant professor of history at George Mason University. While 2.5 million Americans served in Vietnam, a much smaller portion saw combat....
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