Portal:Aviation/Anniversaries/August 17

August 17


 * 2008 – 2008 Coventry Airport collision, mid-air collision of two light aircraft on final approach to Coventry Airport. All 5 crew and passengers killed.


 * 1988 – Death of Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq: President of Pakistan Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq dies in the crash of a C-130 Hercules transport near Bahawalpur, Pakistan.


 * 1988 – 50 people set a world record for flying in a single hot air balloon (Lelystad, Netherlands)


 * 1988 – A PAF Lockheed C-130B Hercules, 23494, 'R' (ex-USAF 62-3494), c/n 3708, crashes near the Pakistani town of Bahawalpur, killing everyone aboard, including the President of Pakistan General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, American Ambassador to Pakistan Arnold Lewis Raphel, Head of Pakistan's military intelligence General Akther Abdul Rehman and nearly all of the top military brass of the Pakistan Army.
 * 1986 - First flight of Tsunami, an experimental purpose-built racing aircraft.


 * 1979 – Two Soviet Aeroflot jetliners collide in mid-air over Ukraine, killing 156


 * 1978 – The U. S. balloon, Double Eagle II, becomes the first balloon to cross the Atlantic. The trip begins in Maine and ends almost 6 days later in France.


 * 1978 – Introduction: General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon


 * 1965 – Sikorsky HSS-1N Seabat, BuNo 149841, c/n 58-1430, coded '136', of the Koninklijke Marine, crashes near Noordwijk, Netherlands.


 * 1961 – First flight of the Handley Page HP.115


 * 1956 – First flight of the Boeing C-135 Stratolifter


 * 1946 – The first person in the U. S. to be ejected from an airplane by means of its emergency escape equipment is Sergeant Lambert at Wright Field in Ohio.


 * 1945 – Two Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers collide over Weatherford, Texas during a bomber training exercise. Eight crew members were killed, 2 managed to escape from the falling wreckage and parachute to safety. Boeing B-29A Superfortress, 42-93895, of the 234th Combat Crew Training Squadron, Clovis Army Air Field, New Mexico, and Boeing B-29 Superfortress, 44-86276, of the 231st CCTS, Alamagordo Army Air Field, New Mexico, involved.


 * 1945 – During Operation Dodge, the RAF airlift of troops home from Italian deployment, Avro Lancaster, ME834, coded 'K-OG', of 115 Squadron, based at RAF Graveley, struck HK798, coded 'K-OH', of the same squadron, and PB754, coded 'TL-A', of Graveley-based 35 Squadron when it swerves off runway while taking off from Bari, Italy.


 * 1943 – World War II – The U. S. Eighth Air Force suffers the loss of 60 bombers on the Schweinfurt-Regensburg mission.


 * 1943 – 164 U. S. Army Air Forces aircraft of the Fifth Air Force attack Japanese airfields at Wewak, New Guinea, destroying 70 planes while the Japanese are servicing them for another raid on Marilinan.


 * 1943 – 59 USAAF bombers are lost in raids on Regensburg and Schweinfurt.


 * 1943 – The last Axis forces evacuate Sicily, bringing the Sicily campaign to an end. The U. S. Army Air Forces have lost 28 killed, 41 wounded, and 88 missing during the campaign.


 * 1943 – First operational use of the radio-controlled Henschel Hs 293 anti-ship missile


 * 1943 – (17-18) The German Luftwaffe makes two 80-plane raids by Junkers Ju 88 s against Bizerte, Tunisia, where Allied ships are assembling for the invasion of mainland Italy. They sink an infantry landing craft, damage three other vessels, destroy oil installations, kill 22 men, and wound 215.


 * 1943 – 17-18 – RAF bombers attack the German missile research station at Peenemünde.


 * 1942 – Heavy bombers of the United States Army Air Forces’ Eighth Air Force carry out their first raid, attacking a railroad marshalling yard at Rouen, France.


 * 1942 – First crash of a Messerschmitt Me 262 occurs when pilot Heinrich Beauvais, of the Rechlin test center, fails to achieve flying speed on his first take-off in the type from Leipheim air field, overruns runway, wipes out in adjacent potato field. Both engines of the Me 262 V3 prototype are torn from the nacelles, both wings damaged, starboard wheel shorn off, but airframe is deemed repairable. Pilot uninjured.


 * 1942 – Grumman XF6F-3 Hellcat, BuNo 02982, first flown 30 July 1942, suffers engine failure of Pratt & Whitney R-2800-10 on test flight out of Bethpage, New York, Grumman test pilot Bob Hall dead-sticks into a farmer's field on Long Island, survives unpowered landing but airframe heavily damaged.


 * 1940 – Billy Fiske – American aviator and Olympic athlete, died as the first American pilot casualty of World War II during the Battle of Britain. (b. 1911).


 * 1940 – No. 1 (Fighter) Squadron became operational and commenced patrols from its base at Northholt, England.


 * 1929 – Francis Gary Powers, American U-2 pilot whose U-2 spy plane was shot down while over the Soviet Union, thus causing the U-2 Crisis of 1960, was born. (d. 1977).


 * 1927 – The Dole Derby Air Race, also known as the Dole Derby, was a tragic air race to cross the Pacific Ocean from northern California to the Territory of Hawaii in August 1927. Of the 15-18 entrant airplanes, 11 were certified to compete but three crashed before the race, resulting in three deaths. Eight eventually participated in the race, with two crashing on takeoff and two going missing during the race. A third, forced to return for repairs, took off again to search for the missing and was itself never seen again. In all, before, during, and after the race, ten lives were lost and six airplanes were total losses. Two of the eight planes successfully landed in Hawaii. 1925 – Entered Service: Curtiss P-1 Hawk with 1st Pursuit Group, United States Army Air Service


 * 1918 – First flight of the Martin MB-1


 * 1917 – Tasked to study how the United Kingdom’s air forces could be best organized for the war with Germany and to consider whether or not they should remain subordinate to the British Army and Royal Navy, General Jan Smuts completes the Smuts Report. In it, he observes that an air service could be used as “an independent means of war operations, ” that “there is absolutely no limit to the scale of its future independent war service, ” that soon “aerial operations with their devastation of enemy lands and destruction of industrial and populous centres on a vast scale may be the principal operations of war, to which older forms of military and naval operations may become secondary and subordinate. ” He projects that by the summer of 1918 “the air battle front will be far behind the Rhine” while the ground front is still bogged down in Belgium and France and that air attacks on German industry and lines of communication could be an “important factor in bringing about peace. ” The report is the foundation of a new theory of warfare advocated by British bomber advocates and will inspire the creation of the independent Royal Air Force in 1918.


 * 1914 – The Imperial Japanese Navy’s first aviation ship, Wakamiya, is recommissioned as a seaplane carrier.


 * 1910 – The first English Channel crossing by an airplane with a passenger is made by John Moisant who takes his mechanic in his two-seater Blariot on the flight from Calais, France to Dover, England.


 * 1890 – Stefan Bastyr, Polish aviation pioneer and pilot of the first military flight in the history of the Polish Air Force, was born. (d. 1920)