Once it was called the “Limousine of the Air,” the private plane of choice for the likes of Wallace Beery, whose acting career bridged the silent and sound movie era. But the Travel Air 6000 became the bread and butter of flying in these mountains of Montana and Idaho for Johnson Flying Service. Now Missoula has [...]
1916 – French World War I ace Jean Navarre score his first kill, a German Aviatik north of Fismes, France. As one of the pioneer flying aces, he would be credited with twelve confirmed aerial victories. 1924 – The Royal Canadian Air Force is formed. 1935 – First flight of the North American T-6 Texan (shown above); more than 15,000 of these trainers are later built. 1954 – Last [...]
An estimated 30,000 people will be ironing out the kinks in their necks after spending the weekend gazing at the sky at the Omaka Classic Fighters Airshow near Blenheim, New Zealand. Airshow organiser Graham Orphan said that despite rain on Saturday, the crowd was out in force for the seventh biennial airshow at the Omaka [...]
The U.S. sent Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptors to South Korea on Sunday to join military drills aimed at underscoring the U.S. commitment to defend Seoul in the face of an intensifying campaign of threats from North Korea. The advanced, radar-evading F-22s were deployed to Osan Air Base, the main U.S. Air Force base in South Korea, from Japan to support ongoing [...]
Two Airbus A380s made a dramatic tandem flight over the famous Australian landmark Sydney Harbour Bridge today to launch the new Qantas-Emirates partnership, hailed by the Australian carrier as a “seismic shift” in aviation. The tie-up, approved last week by Australia’s competition watchdog, allows the two airlines to combine operations for an initial period of five years, [...]
Thomas Hinderks felt like a kid at Christmas when two shipping containers delivered pieces of a Canadair CF-104D Starfighter aircraft to the Alberta Aviation Museum in Edmonton, Canada, Friday morning. After waiting almost 18 months to acquire the Cold War-era plane from the Netherlands, the museum’s executive director didn’t hesitate to sling himself up six feet [...]
1912 – Hanna Reitsch, German test pilot, was born; she was a test pilot on the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka and Dornier Do 17 as well as one of the few pilots to fly the Focke-Achgelis Fa 61, the first fully controllable helicopter. 1939 – The Curtiss YP-37 (shown above), a single-engined fighter based on the company’s [...]
Frank Montgomery doesn’t fit the image of the typical Vietnam veteran. First of all, he’s 89 years old, and Vietnam wasn’t his first taste of a combat zone. A World War II veteran who also served during the Korean War, Montgomery was flying North American P-51 Mustang fighter planes before most of his fellow Vietnam [...]
