Portal:Aviation/Anniversaries/December 5

December 5


 * 2008 – A MiG-29 crash at Chita in the district of Zabaykalsky Krai, Siberia at 0612 hrs. Moscow time, kills the pilot.


 * 2006 – Lufthansa becomes the first airline to order the Boeing 747-8 passenger jet with an order for 20 planes and options for an additional 20 planes.


 * 2005 – Southwest Airlines Flight 1248, a Boeing 737-7 H4 with 103 people on board, slides off a runway while landing in a snowstorm at Chicago Midway International Airport in Chicago, Illinois; 11 people on the aircraft are injured. The plane strikes at least three cars in a busy intersection; a six-year-old boy is killed and several people are injured in the cars.


 * 2001 – Launch: Space Shuttle Endeavour STS-108 at 22:19:28 UTC. Mission highlights: ISS supply, crew rotation.


 * 1997 – Russian Air Force Antonov An-124 Ruslan, RA-82005, delivering two Sukhoi Su-27 Flankers to Vietnam, loses both port engines at 200 feet (60 m) on take-off from Irkutsk, crashing into residential area, killing eight crew, 15 passengers, and 45 on the ground (some accounts list higher ground casualties). Cause was thought to be either contaminated fuel or wrong grade of fuel, taken on at Irkutsk.


 * 1994 – A U.S. Navy pilot from Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida, is killed when he loses control of his Beechcraft T-34C Turbo Mentor near Robertsdale, Alabama.


 * 1988 – A U.S. Navy Grumman EA-6B Prowler, BuNo 163044, 'NG', of VAQ-139, goes missing over the Pacific Ocean during training exercise 900 miles off San Diego. Search fails to find any sign of the four crew.


 * 1972 – During an Aerospace Defense Command night training mission, Convair F-102A-80-CO Delta Dagger, 56-1517, of the 157th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron, South Carolina Air National Guard, McEntire Air National Guard Base, South Carolina, collided with Lockheed C-130E Hercules, 64-0558, of the 318th Special Operations Squadron, out of Pope AFB, North Carolina, during a simulated interception, over the Bayboro area of Horry County, east of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. One killed in the Delta Dagger, Capt. Thomas C. Hagood, Jr. of Lexington, South Carolina, and all twelve aboard the Hercules perish. They were Lt. Col. Donald E. Martin, of White Oak, Texas; Maj. Keith L. Van Note, of Mason City, Iowa; Capt. John R. Cole, of Tulsa, Oklahoma; Capt. Louis R. Sert, of St. Louis, Missouri; Capt. Marshall K. Dickerson, of Chicago; Lt. Douglas L. Theirer, address unavailable; T.Sgt. Robert E. Doyle, of South Hill, Virginia; T.Sgt. Claude L. Abbot, of Adel, Georgia; S.Sgt. Gilmore A. Minkley, Jr., of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania; Sgt. Billy M. Warr, Sr., of Sylmar, California; Sgt. Gerald K. Faust, of Oregon, Wisconsin; and Capt. Douglas S. Peterson, of Harvard, Illinois. Some press reports list Conway, South Carolina, west of the crash site, as the location.


 * 1965 – Douglas A-4E Skyhawk, BuNo 151022, of VA-56 on nuclear alert status, armed with one Mark 43 TN nuclear weapon, rolls off of elevator of aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga (CVA-14), in the Pacific Ocean. The Skyhawk was being rolled from the number 2 hangar bay to the number 2 elevator when it was lost. Airframe, pilot Lt. D.M. Webster, and bomb are lost in 16,000 feet of water 80 miles from one of the Ryukyu Islands in Okinawa.] Webster, from Warren, Ohio, was a 1964 graduate of the Ohio State University. No public mention was made of the incident at the time and it would not come to light until a 1981 Pentagon report revealed that a one-megaton bomb had been lost. Japan then asks for details of the incident.


 * 1964 – An LGM-30B Minuteman I missile is on strategic alert at Launch Facility (LF) L-02, Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota, when two airmen are dispatched to the LF to repair the inner zone (IZ) security system. In the midst of their checkout of the IZ system, one retrorocket in the spacer below the Reentry Vehicle (RV) fires, causing the RV to fall about 75 feet to the floor of the silo. When the RV strikes bottom, the arming and fusing/attitude control subsystem containing the batteries are torn loose, thus removing all sources of power from the RV. The RV structure receives considerable damage. All safety devices operate properly in that they do not sense the proper sequence of events to allow arming the warhead. There is no detonation or radioactive contamination.


 * 1956 – An Northrop XSM-62 Snark, 53-8172, N-69D test model, fitted with new 24 hour stellar inertial guidance system, launches from Cape Canaveral Missile Test Annex, Florida, wanders off-course, ignores destruct command, disappears over Brazil. It is found by a farmer in January 1983.


 * 1961 – A U. S. Navy McDonnell F4H-1 Phantom II sets a sustained altitude record of 66443.8 ft.


 * 1945 – Flight 19 was the designation of five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers that disappeared during a United States Navy-authorized overwater navigation training flight from Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale, Florida. All 14 airmen on the flight were lost, as were all 13 crew members of a PBM Mariner flying boat assumed to have exploded in mid-air while searching for the flight. Navy investigators could not determine the cause for the loss of Flight 19 but said the aircraft may have become disoriented and ditched in rough seas after running out of fuel.


 * 1944 – British Douglas Dakota III aircraft, serial number FL588, of the Royal Air Force crashed on the Pic de la Camisette, a mountain close to the commune of Mijanès, Ariège, in the French Pyrenees. The Dakota was piloted by three RAF pilots. In total twenty-three airmen were on board, including twenty members of the Glider Pilot Regiment. Only six airmen survived the incident; sixteen died in the crash, another died within hours from his injuries. In spite of serious wounds, two of the survivors managed to reach the village of Mijanès to get help for the other survivors. The bodies of eleven men were recovered from the crash site between 10 and 19 December, and buried in Mijanès. The search was suspended due to adverse weather conditions, but in the spring of 1945 a further six bodies were brought down from the crash site after the snow had melted. All of the airmen who died in the crash were later reburied in the Mazargues War Cemetery, Marseilles. Remains of Dakota FL 588 have been preserved and today are on display at the Château d'Usson, a ruined medieval Castle noted for its association with the Cathars.


 * 1942 – Canadian Vickers prototype of the Consolidated Canso was test flown at St Hubert Quebec, by ECW Dobbin and crew.


 * 1941 – First flight of the Kawanishi E15K Shiun (“Violet Cloud”), Allied reporting name “Norm”


 * 1931 – Lowell Bayles, winner of the 1931 Thompson Trophy, dies when the Gee Bee Model Z racer he is piloting crashes during a speed run at Wayne County Airport in Detroit, Michigan.


 * 1921 – The first regular air services in Australia commence, with West Australian Airways.


 * 1919 – Avianca is founded as the Sociedad Colombo-Alemana de Transporte Aéreo in Barranquilla.


 * 1909 – George Taylor becomes the first person to fly a heavier-than-air craft in Australia, in a glider he designed. On the same day Florence Taylor becomes the first woman in Australia to fly a heavier-than-air craft, in the glider designed by her husband.