The U.S. Air Force’s last four Lockheed MC-130E Combat Talon I’s spread their wings for a final mission from their home at Duke Field near Crestview, Fla., on April 15. The Talons will be officially retired in a ceremony at Duke Field April 25 and the aircraft will then be flown to the “boneyard” at Davis-Monthan [...]
Amid slow sales and an $8 million first-quarter loss, Cessna will pause production of several entry-level business jet models and seek to trim its workforce, the company said Wednesday. Cessna delivered 32 jets in the quarter, down from 38 in the same period last year. Cessna parent Textron’s CEO, Scott Donnelly, noted that light jet [...]
1893 – Birth of Dr. Wolfgang Benjamin Klemperer, prominent German aviation and aerospace scientist and engineer, who ranks among the pioneers of early aviation. 1911 – Eugene B. Ely makes the first landing by an aircraft on a ship when he flies his Curtiss Model D pusher biplane from Selfridge Field near San Francisco to a specially prepared [...]
General Electric’s new Boeing 747-400 flying testbed has been delivered to Evergreen Aviation Technologies (EGAT) in Taiwan for installation of data racks, instrumentation wiring and instrumentation equipment. The aircraft is also scheduled to undergo wing structural modifications during the second half of the year in readiness for its first test flights in 2014. The 747 [...]
1886 – Birth of Glenn L. Martin, American aviation pioneer and founder of the Glenn L. Martin Co. 1920 – The Venezuelan Air Force is formed, with a flying school at Maracay. 1934 – First flight of the Fairey Swordfish, later used by the Royal Navy to help cripple the German battleship Bismarck. 1973 –Federal Express, later known as FedEx, delivers its first [...]
Those big, old airplanes with the mighty round engines will be flying again this weekend at West Houston Airport’s Hangar B-5 as the Houston Wing of The Commemorative Air Force presents its 2013 Open House on Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. You can get an up-close view and hear the noise [...]
Two of the top five military museums recently ranked by Maxim (you know, that well-known historical journal that only looks like a men’s magazine?) will interest aviation buffs: England’s Imperial War Museum and the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force (whose Republic P-47D Thunderbolt “Five by Five” is shown above), located in Dayton, Ohio. [...]
This week marks the 71st anniversary of the Doolittle Raid on Japan. Of the 80 men who took off in their North American B-25 Mitchell bombers from an aircraft carrier far off the coast of Japan, only four now remain. Three of the four are meeting this week in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., not far [...]
