Military Archives - Page 15 of 180

WWII Air Museum Reenactment

For the second year, the Yorkshire Air Museum let visitors experience what life was like at an RAF air base in 1944. After you read what they had to say about the event you (like me!) may be tempted to plan a vacation to the UK next May! From the Yorkshire Air Museum: 2018 Against […]

May 14th in Aviation History

1884 – Birth of Claude (Claudius) Honoré Desiré Dornier, German airplane builder and founder of Dornier. 1940 – First flight of the Yermolayev Yer-2, a Soviet long-range medium bomber. 1944 – The German Luftwaffe employs circling torpedoes in a predawn attack on Allied ships at Naples, Italy, but scores no hits. 1972 – Two Bell UH-1 attack helicopters of the U.S. Army, using TOW missiles, blunt a […]

May 12th in Aviation History

1893 – Birth of Tenente Silvio Scaroni, Italian World War I fighter pilot. Credited with 26 victories, he becomes the second-ranking Italian ace of the war. 1940 – The first bombing raid over Germany by the Royal Air Force takes place. 1941 – First flight of the Platt-LePage XR-1, also known by the company designation PL-3, early American twin-rotor helicopter. 1959 – Capital Airlines Flight 75, a […]

May 11th in Aviation History

1875 – Birth of Harriet Quimby, early American aviator and movie screenwriter. She is the first woman to gain a pilot’s license in the U.S. and the first woman to fly across the English Channel. 1936 – First flight of the Bristol Type 138 High Altitude Monoplane, a British research aircraft. 1996 – ValuJet Flight 592, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9, crashes […]

On This Day in Aviation History

1899 – Birth of Zeus Soucek, U.S. Navy aviator and record setter. 1915 – Curtiss Aviation School commences operation from Toronto Island using Curtiss Model F flying boats. 1933 – Death of Robert Heibert, German World War I flying ace. 1945 – The sixth Japanese kamikaze attack off Okinawa, which includes 150 aircraft, begins. They damage two destroyers and the aircraft carrier USS Bunker Hill, which suffers 353 killed, 43 missing, and 264 wounded. […]

On This Day in Aviation History

1896 – Birth of Viktor von Pressentin von Rautter, German World War I fighter ace. 1919 – A U.S. Navy flying boat, NC-4, begins an Atlantic crossing, flying by short stages from Long Island, N.Y., to Lisbon, Portugal; it will arrive 19 days later on May 28. 1935 – American aviatrix Amelia Earhart makes a non-stop flight from Mexico City to Newark, N.J., in 14 […]

On This Day in Aviation History

1915 – Birth of Hidaka Hatsuo, Japanese Russo-Japanese War and World War II flying ace. 1918 – Canadian World War I fighter ace Alfred Clayburn Atkey and his observer, British fighter ace Charles George Gass, score five victories on a single mission with their Bristol F.2b. 1940 – A Bristol Beaufort torpedo bomber of the […]

On This Day in Aviation History

1918 – Death of Jean Chaput, French World War I fighter ace, killed in action in his SPAD S.XIII. 1926 – Flying a Blackburn Dart, Royal Navy Flight Lt. Gerald Boyce makes the first night deck landing in history, landing aboard the British aircraft carrier HMS Furious off the south coast of England. 1944 – First flight of the Mitsubishi […]

On This Day in Aviation History

1887 – Birth of Charles Richard Fairey, English aircraft manufacturer. 1941 – Death of George Putnam Moody, early American air force pioneer; he is killed in the crash of a Beechcraft AT-10 Wichita, an advanced two-engine training aircraft, during testing. 1993 – Jet Airways, India’s second-largest airline, begin operations. 2005 – First flight of the Dassault Falcon 7X (shown), […]

C-47 Restoration Reunites WWII Vets

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 […]