Portal:Aviation/Anniversaries/February 17

February 17


 * 2006 – Aloha Airlines emerges from 14 months of bankruptcy protection. They would file for Chapter 11 again a little over two years later and cease passenger operations soon after that.


 * 2005 – Opening of Chūbu Centrair International Airport in Nagoya, Japan.


 * 2005 – Several airlines will have to pay heavy compensation to passengers for flight delays and cancellations under a European regulation.


 * 2002 – A USMC McDonnell-Douglas F/A-18D Hornet from VMFA-533 crash lands at Twentynine Palms, California. Both aircrew eject but the WSO, while hospitalized, dies from his injuries.


 * 1993 – Death of Johann “Hans” Baur, German WWI flying ace, Airliner pilot and Adolf Hitler’s personal pilot.


 * 1988 – Asiana Airlines is established in Seoul, South Korea. Flights begin the following December with flights to Busan.


 * 1974 – Robert K. Preston, a US Army private 1st class, stole a US Army UH-1 Iroquois helicopter from Fort Meade, Maryland, flew it to Washington, D. C., and hovered for six minutes over the White House before descending on the south lawn, about 100 yards from the West Wing.


 * 1972 – Death of Gilbert Stuart Martin Insall VC MC, British WWI pilot.


 * 1970 – 17-18 – US Air Force B-52 Stratofortresses attack Laos.


 * 1969 – Death of Albert Victor Tonkin, Australian WWI flying ace.


 * 1966 – Launch of Diapason, second French artificial satellite.


 * 1965 – Launch of Ranger 8, US spacecraft designed to achieve a lunar impact trajectory and to transmit high-resolution photographs of the lunar surface during the final minutes of flight up to impact.


 * 1959 – In the 1959 Turkish Airlines Gatwick crash, a chartered Vickers Viscount 793 carrying the Turkish prime minister and other government officials crashes in heavy fog during its final approach into London Gatwick Airport; five of the eight crew and nine of the sixteen passengers die in the accident; Prime Minister Adnan Menderes is among the ten survivors.


 * 1959 – Launch of Vanguard II, US earth-orbiting satellite designed to measure cloud-cover distribution over the daylight portion of its orbit.


 * 1956 – Douglas R5D-2 Skymaster, BuNo 39116, 'WC 116', on flight from MCAS El Toro, California to NAS Alameda, in low overcast and drizzle, strikes Sunol Ridge on ranch ~3.5 miles (5.6 km) N of Niles, California at 1345 hrs. Aircraft broke up and burned, killing 35, all but one of them Marines.


 * 1951 – Birth of Rashid Minhas or Rashid Minhas Shaheed, NH, Pilot Officer in the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) during the 1971 Pakistan-Bangladesh War.


 * 1945 – Luftwaffe ace Jürgen Harder (13 June 1918 – 17 February 1945), recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, (64 claimed victories), is killed in the crash of a Messerschmitt Bf 109G-14, Werk.Nr. 784 738, near Strausberg, Germany, following engine failure. Technical experts that analysed the wreckage came to the conclusion that the piston of cylinder 12 had penetrated the engine block. Escaping toxic fumes thus intoxicated Harder who then lost control of the aircraft.


 * 1944 – In Operation Hailstone, carrier aircraft of U. S. Navy Task Force 58 begin two days of strikes against Truk Atoll, Japan’s main base in the South Pacific Ocean; they are the first carrier strikes against Truk. An initial fighter sweep by 72 F6 F Hellcats shoots down 30 Japanese fighters and destroys 45 more aircraft on the ground for the loss of four Hellcats; a follow-up strike by 18 TBF Avengers leaves fewer than 100 of the 365 Japanese aircraft that had been on Truk at daybreak operational. The carriers also launch 30 strikes, each larger than either of the two waves of Japanese aircraft that had attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, against shipping in the harbor during the day. In the evening, a Japanese torpedo bomber damages the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid (CV-11), knocking her out of action for several months.


 * 1944 – In Operation Catchpole, American forces invade Eniwetok. Carrier aircraft from USS Saratoga (CV-3), USS Sangamon (CVE-26), USS Suwannee (CVE-27), and USS Chenango (CVE-28) support the landings.


 * 1943 – U. S. Army Air Forces Seventh Air Force aircraft on a photographic reconnaissance mission discover a large Japanese seaplane base at Butaritari at Tarawa Atoll.


 * 1943 – Consolidated B-24D-53-CO Liberator, 42-40355, c/n 1432, crashes at Tucson Municipal Airport #2, Tucson, Arizona, this date.[183] Six Consolidated Aircraft employees riding as passengers are killed and several others injured, of the 34 on board. The damaged airframe is subsequently modified into the first C-87 Liberator Express.


 * 1939 – Death of Kurt Adolf Monnington, German WWI flying ace.


 * 1939 – Detachment from No. 1(F) Squadron travelled to Vancouver to accept first RCAF Hurricanes.


 * 1934 – The first airmail flight from Australia to New Zealand is flown by Charles T. Ulm in his Avro Ten, a license-built Fokker F. VIIB/3 m registered as VH-UXX.


 * 1932 – Mounties enlisted World War I air ace/bush pilot Wop May to help them track Rat River Yukon – Albert Johnson, ‘the Mad Trapper of Rat River,’ killed by RCMP in shoot-out after 48-day 240 km manhunt in 40 below weather; charged with killing one Mountie, Constable Edgar Millen and wounding two others.


 * 1928 – Capt. William Millican Randolph, a pioneer aviator, a 1916 graduate of Texas A&M University, and adjutant of the Air Corps Flying School at Kelly Field, Texas, is killed in the crash of a Curtiss AT-4 Hawk, 27-220, three miles NW of Gorman, Texas after take off from Gorman Field. In September 1929, the Army Air Corps names its field north of San Antonio, Texas, Randolph Field for the Austin, Texas native.


 * 1926 – Alan Cobham with a de Havilland D. H.50 J complete a 25,749 km flight from Croydon to Cape Town.


 * 1919 – Death of Henry “Hank” Robinson Clay, Jr., American WWI flying ace.


 * 1916 – Birth of Prince Alexander Sergeevich Obolensky, Russian Rurikid prince and an international rugby union footballer who played for England and RAF WWII pilot.


 * 1916 – Zeppelin LZ34 (L3) is stranded and destroyed in a gale at Jutland.


 * 1912 – Death of Douglas Graham Gilmour, British early aviator, While testing a new monoplane in a flight from Brooklands to Richmond.


 * 1911 – At San Diego, California, Glenn Curtiss flies a prototype seaplane out to the US Navy armored cruiser Pennsylvania in the harbor. Pennsylvania hoists the seaplane aboard, then returns it to the water, and Curtiss flies it back to shore. It is the first demonstration that a ship can handle a seaplane.


 * 1909 – Canada’s first African-Canadian pilot, Gerald Bell, was born.


 * 1904 – The Wright brothers inspect the grounds where the St. Louis aeronautical exposition will be held in April.


 * 1898 – Birth of Hugh Fitzgerald Moore, Scottish WWI flying ace.


 * 1898 – Birth of Maxwell Hutcheon Findlay, Scottish WWI fighter ace and air racer.


 * 1897 – Birth of Augustus Henry Orlebar AFC & Bar, British WWI pilot, test pilot and air Racer.


 * 1896 – Birth of Forde Leathley, Irish WWI flying ace.


 * 1893 – Birth of Thomas Cecil Silwood Tuffield, British WWI flying ace.


 * 1893 – Birth of Dieter Collin, German WWI flying ace.


 * 1869 – Birth of Carlos Viegas Gago Coutinho, GCTE, GCC, generally known simply as Gago Coutinho, Portuguese aviation pioneer.


 * 1864 – Birth of Hilda Beatrice Hewlett, first British aviatrix to earn a pilot’s license, successful early aviation entrepreneur. She created and ran the first flying school in the UK.