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On This Day in Aviation History

1910 – Birth of Dan Vizanti, Romanian World War II fighter ace. 1914 – Death of U.S. Army Lt. Henry Burnet Post, American pioneer aviator; he is killed when the right wing of his Wright Model C has an in-flight structural failure and crashes in San Diego Bay off the California coast. 1937 – First flight of the Blackburn […]

Defiant Replica Leaves RAF Cosford

A replica of the Boulton Paul Defiant bomber-destroyer aircraft has been loaded on two trucks as it leaves England’s RAF Cosford for a new home. The craft, which took eight years and 50,000 man hours to construct, is the latest in a collection of planes and aircraft parts to be shipped out of Cosford to museums […]

The A-10 Warthog vs. Politics: Aviation Insider

You cannot participate in any tactical aviation forum these days without getting caught in the controversy over the monthly on again-off again retirement and resurrection of the A-10 Warthog. No new arguments are being forwarded on either side. All has been said over and over since the early 1970s, and the fight is not so much in the military arena but rather in the political arena; so what else is new? The two basic arguments seem to be whether the A-10 is the “only” viable close air support platform and whether the USAF really wants to do the CAS mission. I’d like to explore that controversy from the point of view of someone whose 1,800 hours in type qualifies as having “been there.”

On This Day in Aviation History

1903 – Birth of Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, Scottish nobleman and pioneering aviator. 1918 – Death of Rupert Randolph Winter, British World War I flying ace, killed in action. 1959 – A Beechcraft Bonanza carrying musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson, crashes near Clear Lake, Iowa, in what has become known as “The Day the Music Died.” 1964 – The […]

On This Day in Aviation History

1898 – Birth of Richard Pearman Minifie, Australian World War I fighter ace who also served as a squadron leader in the Air Training Corps of the Royal Australian Air Force during World War II. 1919 – Death of Leslie Jacob “Rummy” Rummell, American World War I flying ace. 1941 – Eight Fairey Swordfish from the British […]

Sikorsky Readies Raider for First Flight

Sikorsky is days away from firing the engines of its S-97 Raider, marking the first time the prototype’s coaxial rigid rotor blades will spin in preparation for first flight. “We just burned our first fuel” on 28 January, when the auxiliary power unit (APU) was ignited for the first time, Steve Engebretson, Sikorsky’s director of […]

On This Day in Aviation History

1895 – Birth of George Robert Howsam, Canadian World War I fighter ace; he also would become director of training for the Royal Canadian Air Force during WWII. 1932 – First flight of the de Havilland Fox Moth, a British passenger biplane. 1944 – German raids of more than 70 fighter-bombers attack Allied ships off Anzio with guided bombs, sinking […]

Army Combines Helos, Drones for Success

The drone revolution, it appears, came along just in time for the U.S. Army. The service’s leaders have decided they can afford neither a new armed scout helicopter nor even the old ones they already own, but there’s always MUM-T — aka Manned Unmanned Teaming, in which manned aircraft work with unmanned aerial systems (UAS), […]

On This Day in Aviation History

1920 – Birth of Hiroyoshi Nishizawa, Japanese World War II fighter ace. 1927 – First flight of the Douglas T2D (shown), an American twin-engine torpedo bomber; it is the first twin-engined aircraft to operate from an aircraft carrier. 1941 – The first British combined operation between Malta’s reconnaissance and strike aircraft takes place when the German vessel Ingo is […]

Mighty Eighth to Dedicate B-17

After more than six years of painstaking restoration work, “City of Savannah,” a Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress owned by the National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force, will be dedicated on Wednesday. The achievement was accomplished by museum volunteers following the bomber’s acquisition from the Smithsonian’s National Air & Space Museum in 2009. The January 28th […]