1897 – Birth of Johann “Hans” Baur, a German World War I flying ace who flew airliners and later became Adolf Hitler’s personal pilot.

1912 – Capt. Marcel Dubois and Lt. Albert Peignan of the French Army are killed near Douai in northern France when their planes struck each other; it is the first fatal mid-air collision.

1944 – Death of Ichiro Yamamoto, Japanese Navy World War II flying ace, killed in action during the Battle of the Philippine Sea.

1947 – The Lockheed P-80B Shooting Star prototype, modified as a racer and designated XP-80R, piloted by U.S. Air Force Col. Albert Boyd sets a world air speed record of 623.73 mph.

1962 – Two U.S.A.F. Republic F-105 Thunderchiefs out of Nellis AFB, Nevada, are lost in separate accidents near Indian Springs, Nev., this date. Both pilots survive; all Thunderchief B and D variants are later grounded to rectify flight control problems.

2010 – Air Service Berlin Douglas C-47 Skytrain “Rosinenbomber” (shown above) crashes shortly after take-off from Berlin Schönefeld Airport to a sightseeing flight over Berlin after the left engine failed. There were no fatalities, but seven of the 28 passengers and crew were injured.

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You can find the new Wright Brothers at the Dayton (Ohio)-Wright Brothers Airport, a dozen miles south of Dayton in Miami Twp., from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. No, Wilbur and Orville have not come back to life, but they have found some very deserving replacements.

Volunteers at the Wright “B” Flyer museum-hangar know all things Wright, and spend their time educating the area on its rich aviation heritage. Although some may think these volunteers have passed their prime, many members are into their 90s and still going strong.

Wright “B” Flyer Inc., a nonprofit organization, has two airplanes modeled after the Wright Brothers’ Model “B,” the Brown Bird and the Yellow Bird. The Brown Bird is actively used, and after donating the $100 membership fee, members can take a short flight down the runway in it.

For the complete story by Tara Spacy of the Dayton Daily News, click here.

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Does it come with cabin crew? A bidding-war is stirring among high flying millionaires in a desperate move to snap up the world’s first aeroplane car, which is up for sale for £600,000 (that’s nearly $1 million).

With cars and congestion becoming too much for commuters in the 1940s, pioneering inventor Moulton Taylor developed a way to soar above the rest. The American designer built the first-ever Aerocar in 1949 and successfully proved that the roadster — complete with foldable wings to keep a street-worthy size — could be done.

The Aerocar was set to take the world by storm but after almost 25 years of campaigning Taylor still could still not strike a deal – he even lost a deal with auto giant Ford.

For the complete story by the Caters News Agency via the (New York) Daily News, click here.

Photo via Caters News Agency

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A NASA Douglas DC-8 flying laboratory conducting low-altitude research flights over California this week startled residents when it swooped low over Torrance Municipal Airport.

The Monday afternoon flight over Zamperini Field was just 348 feet above sea level, said John Bailey, a Torrance resident who tracked the flight on the Internet and is a member of the Los Angeles International Airport Community Noise Roundtable. The airport itself is at an elevation of 103 feet.

NASA has said its research flights would fly at altitudes “as low as 1,000 feet.” Monday’s unusually low pass by a more than 150-foot-long aircraft — with a wingspan almost as wide — and four noisy engines spooked some Torrance residents as it roared overhead about 2 p.m. Monday.

For the complete story by Nick Green of DailyBreeze.com, click here.

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The Paris Air Show, which opened yesterday at Paris-Le Bourget Airport, is usually a stage for U.S. pilots to demonstrate their amazing flying machines to a world audience. Thanks to the sequester, that’s not the case this year. Instead, Russian aviators and hardware is taking the spotlight and they have not disappointed. Just witness this demonstration, shot on Monday by PlanesTV, of the Sukhoi Su-35 multi-role fighter as it uses its thrust-vectoring capability to impressive effect.

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1887 – Birth of Georges Pierre Blanc, French World War I flying ace.

1916 – First American pilot to be shot down, Horace Clyde Balsley of the Lafayette Escadrille, is wounded and survives the engagement.

1928 – A Latham 47 – a French twin-engine biplane flying boat piloted by René Cyprien Guilbaud – carrying Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen and five others on a flight to search for survivors of the Italian airship “Italia” disappears. No bodies are recovered.

1953 – René Paul Fonck, a French aviator who ended World War I as the top Allied fighter ace, dies; when all succeeding conflicts also are considered, Fonck still holds the title of “all-time Allied Ace of Aces.”

1981 – First flight of the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk (shown above), best known as the world’s first stealth fighter.

2011 –The first transatlantic biofuel flight is made by a Gulfstream G-450 from Morristown N.J. to Le Bourget (France).

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A ceremony scheduled for this morning in Le Bourget’s static park at the Paris Air Show marks delivery of the first example of a Sukhoi SSJ100 built to operate in the Western world to Mexican airline Interjet.

The airplane, marketed by SuperJet International–the Venice, Italy-based Western sales and worldwide support provider for the Sukhoi SSJ100–arrived here in Interjet colors on Saturday evening. It now occupies a prominent spot on the static display line, giving show goers a preview of what passengers will experience once service starts next month.

Still under Italian registration, the airplane must return to Venice for final delivery preparations before its ultimate ferry flight to Mexico. Plans call for delivery of Interjet’s second airplane, also undergoing final provisioning for delivery, to arrive a few days later. SuperJet expects to deliver both airplanes by the end of the month.

For the complete story by Gregory Polek of AINonline, click here.

Photo by AINonline

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NASA has picked eight Americans, a mix of scientists and military pilots, to begin training for future space missions that may one day launch them all the way to Mars. The new class consists of four men and four women who will join the 49 active astronauts at the agency’s astronaut corps at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The new U.S. space travelers, which NASA unveiled Monday, could be part of the first crews to visit an asteroid or Mars, deep-space goals that NASA aims to explore. They could also be the first people to launch to space on a U.S.-built rocket since the era of the space shuttle, which ended in 2011.

In the nearer term, the new recruits could launch on Russian rockets to serve long-duration missions on the International Space Station, which is expected to operate until at least 2020.

For the complete story by Clara Moskowitz of Space.com, click here.

Photo by NASA

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Editor’s note: This story was written by Col. Maria Cecilia Silva Velasquez of the Fuerza Aérea Colombiana (Colombian Air Force) and provides a fascinating look at how one South American county participated in a military training exercise thousands of miles away.

For the first time ever, the Colombian Air Force is participating in one of the greatest international operational training exercises, Exercise Maple Flag, which ends June 21 at Royal Canadian Air Force 4 Wing Cold Lake in Alberta.

Altogether, we brought six Embraer EMB A-29 Super Tucano combat aircraft, a Lockheed C-130 Hercules transport aircraft and a Boeing KC-767 refuelling aircraft to the exercise. This journey began on May 12 when the Super Tucanos and the Hercules, with support personnel on board, took off from Barranquilla, Colombia, for a three-day, 20-hour, 4,163-mile journey from Colombia through Kingston, Jamaica; Homestead, Fla.; Maxwell, Ala.; Scott, Ill.; Sioux Falls and Regina, Canada, to finally arrive in Cold Lake.

The FAC was invited to attend Exercise Maple Flag as an observer nation in 2012. With commitment and responsibility, FAC Commander Gen. Tito Saul Pinilla Pinilla accepted the invitation to underscore the FAC’s interest in developing a strategic vision, supported by increased levels of training related to combined operations, and with the goal of standardizing our procedures in accordance with NATO doctrine.

To achieve that goal, Colombian crews have performed three large force employment exercises during the last eights months, involving most of the fighter squadrons in Colombia, supported by air-air refuelling aircraft such as the KC-767 and Boeing KC-137 and transport aircraft such as the C-130 and EADS CASA C-295. The entire exercises were conducted in English so that the crews would be better prepared for success in Maple Flag 46, thus maintaining the good will and outstanding performance demonstrated previously at the U.S. Air Force’s Exercise Red Flag, which we participated in last year.

The Colombian Air Force was created in 1919 and it is characterized as a 24/7 operating force due to the constant internal conflict in the country. That is why the Colombian crews have reached [generally speaking] the highest levels of training and experience in counter-insurgency operations to fulfill its mission statement: “To exercise and maintain airspace control, to conduct operations and defend the sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity, national constitutional order and the state’s purpose achievement.”

For example, knowing the growing trend in precision attacks and night combat missions using night vision goggles (NVG), the FAC commander decided to increase the attack capabilities of the force by choosing the A-29 Super Tucano as a completely new NVG-compatible player in the conflict.

This turbo-propeller, single-engine, two-seater aircraft is designed to accomplish attack, air patrol, combat, close air support and air interdiction missions with a range of up to 534 miles with the use of external tanks. Simultaneously, the Super Tucano is employed for advanced training at its home base, the 2nd Air Combat Command (CACOM-2), which is one of 15 air bases spread all over the country.

CACOM 2 is located near by Villavicencio City, in the eastern part of Colombia, where the A-29 has been responsible of several of the most important strikes to narco-terrorist structures, making this base the most operationally busy one in Latin America.

The Colombian team would not be complete without the tanker; ours is a modified Boeing 767-200ER as a multi-mission tanker transport which, among its multiple capabilities, performs air-to-air refueling with the IAI Kfir [a fighter aircraft] and Cessna A-37B [light attack] aircraft. This kind of procedure allows aircraft to considerably extend their range and/or endurance requirement for a given situation to support any allied country with one objective: to protect friendly forces and get the mission accomplished.

In 2012, NATO unanimously voted for Colombia to be included in the NATO doctrine publication, ATP-56 AAR, as an allied nation, making the Colombian Air Force eligible to participate in air refueling interoperability agreements with any NATO members and its allies.

During the first week of Maple Flag at 4 Wing, the tanker was able to perform its first connection with a NATO McDonnell Douglas CF-18 Hornet as part of the RCAF fighter pilot training, in accordance with all the protocol, rules and safety procedures required to confirm the Colombian Air Force interoperability in order to become the first Latin American force to execute this kind of operation with the RCAF.

The C-130 Hercules aircraft, belonging to 811 Squadron from the Military Heavy Air Transport Command (CATAM), is responsible for all military tactics airlift operations and special transport operations such as troop infiltration and parachute cargo drop under enemy threat environment, most of the time using NVG.

To get as much training experience as they could during the exercise, the Colombian Air Force brought a select group named ACOEA’s Special Forces (a Spanish acronym for Aerial Special Officers Team). These officers and enlisted members will participate in GPS-guided cargo deployment, static line paratrooper insertion, high altitude jump-low altitude parachute opening (HILO) and high altitude jump-high altitude parachute opening (HIHO) missions over the Cold Lake Weapons Range.

The 120-person Colombian team is composed of military pilots, navigators, ground crew, air defence officers, maintenance officers, logistic personnel, security and base defense personnel who have been chosen to participate in this exercise for knowing what they are doing and most important, for being the best at it, all of them led by the CACOM-2 commander, Brigadier-General Pedro Ignacio Lozano Quinche.

Thanks to their joint effort, all of the Colombian aircraft and their crews are having this great opportunity to share interoperability scenarios with allied countries and to show the world Colombian professionalism and high capacities that have led them to become a regional and global benchmark.

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1905 – Inaugural flight of the first Italian airship “Italia.”

1912 – Death of Julia Clark, third woman to receive a pilot’s license from the Aero Club of America (though British) and first female pilot to die in an air crash in the U.S.

1922 – To mark the centennial of Brazil’s independence, Portuguese naval aviators Gago Coutinho and Sacadura Cabral land their Fairey III-D MkII seaplane, specifically fitted  with an artificial horizon for aeronautical use, in Rio de Janeiro after a 5,209-mile flight; it is the first aerial crossing of the South Atlantic.

1943 – Birth of Elbert Leander “Burt” Rutan, American aerospace engineer noted for his originality in designing light, strong and energy-efficient aircraft.

1986 – Last flight ever by a Boeing B-47E Stratojet (shown above), restored to flight status for a one-time-only ferry move from Naval Weapons Center China Lake, Calif., to Castle Air Force Base, east of San Francisco, for museum display.

1998 – Russian Chief of Army Aviation Maj.-Gen. Boris Vorobyov, is killed when the Kamov Ka-50 attack helicopter he’s flying crashes in Torzhok, home of a military flight training center. Reportedly, blades of the Ka-50′s coaxial rotors overlapped during sharp manuvering, causing the crash.

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