Growing up around small planes, it’s no surprise that 23-year-old U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Ben Ayivorh, a dedicated crew chief assigned to the USAF Air Demonstration Squadron at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, developed an interest in aviation at an early age. However, aside from his day-to-day job of maintaining aircraft, this Burke, Va., [...]
Warren H. Rice flew “every airplane in the book, or at least every airplane that mattered,” in a career that began during World War II and continued through the Korean War and Vietnam, collecting two Distinguished Flying Crosses (DFC) along the way. Rice was awarded his wings at Williams Army Airfield in Mesa, Ariz., when [...]
The remains of a U.S. Navy helicopter pilot from Huntington Park who was shot down and killed in Vietnam nearly 46 years ago have been identified, the U.S. Defense Department announced Tuesday. Lt. Dennis W. Peterson will be buried Thursday in Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C., along with the remains of three crew members who were [...]
It was lunchtime yesterday, a warm and sleepy autumn afternoon, when a museum piece from the Historical Aircraft Restoration Society hurtled unexpectedly down the runway at Albion Park Rail in New South Wales, Australia, and launched its ageing 8,000-kg. mass into the sky. As it climbed skyward, the sunshine caught a spider’s web over an [...]
1875 – Birth of Harriet Quimby, early American aviator and movie screenwriter, first woman to gain a pilot’s license in the U.S. 1912 – First flight of the Avro Type F, a single-seat British aircraft and the first in the world to feature a completely enclosed cabin. 1927 – Imperial Airways, a British Airways predecessor, introduces its luxury “Silver Wing” service [...]
There was a World War II reunion of sorts this week in Santa Maria, Calif., as three Army veterans came together. Frank Goins, a flight officer with the U.S. Army Air Corps, Bindo Grasso of Guadalupe, a paratrooper with the U.S. Army who served in France in the months following D-Day, and a Douglas C-47B [...]
1896 – Birth of Edgar Charles Johnston, Australian World War I fighter ace and leading member in civil aviation in Australia. 1924 – One of the four Douglas World Cruiser aircraft, the “Seattle”, attempting an around-the-globe flight in stages, crashes into a mountain in Alaska. The crew survives and makes it way to safety. The wreckage of the “Seattle” is later recovered [...]
George Laszlo, 91, of Ellwood City, Pa., is one of the World War II veterans who served our country in combat and never talked about it. About 12 years ago, Laszlo was attending an air show in Pittsburgh with Sam Pawlowski of Ellport. Pawlowski told a television reporter that Laszlo had flown the famous aircraft [...]
