Portal:Aviation/Anniversaries/February 18

February 18


 * 2013 – After cutting a hole in a perimeter fence at Brussels Airport outside Brussels, Belgium, eight armed and masked men dressed as police officers drive in two vehicles displaying flashing blue lights onto the tarmac and confront guards loading a cargo of diamonds onto Helvetic Airways Flight LX789, a Fokker 100 passenger jet packed with passengers and preparing for departure for a flight to Zurich, Switzerland. They steal 120 small packages containing a combined $50,000,000 (£32,000,000) worth of diamonds in a three-minute robbery and escape via the same hole in the fence without firing a shot.


 * 2011 – A United States Air Force Pilatus U-28A crashed six mile from Djibouti airport, killing all four crew members.


 * 2010 – 2010 Austin suicide attack: After setting fire to his house and leaving behind a suicide note expressing displeasure with government and taxation, Andrew Joseph Stack III crashes his Piper Dakota into an office building housing an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) field office in Austin, Texas, killing himself and an IRS manager and injuring 13 others, two of them seriously.


 * 2010 – An Indian Air Force Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 fighter jet (8th Squadron, 20th Wing) crashed soon after take-off from Bagdora in West Bengal but the pilot ejected to safety.


 * 2010 – A Sikorsky MH-60S Seahawk helicopter of the United States Navy crashed in West Virginia outside of Lewisburg. Passengers and crew sustained unspecified injuries, none of which were life-threatening.


 * 2009- N652UA, a Boeing 767-322ER operated by United Airlines, is damaged significantly by the automatic discharge of a sprinkler system in the hangar it is parked in while undergoing maintenance at O’Hare International Airport, Chicago. Eleven cabin windows are knocked out by the force of the discharge, damaging the aircraft's avionics systems.


 * 2009 – A Fuerza Aérea Colombiana Douglas AC-47 Spooky intelligence-gathering plane of the Escuadrón de Combate Táctico 113 Avion Fantasma (ghost planes) crashed near the Comando Aéreo de Combate No 1 Airbase at Puerto Salgar, Cundinamarca, Colombia. The aircraft was on a training flight resulting in 5 crew fatalities.


 * 2009 – A Eurocopter EC225 Super Puma Helicopter (G-REDU) flying from the heliport at Aberdeen Airport to a BP ETAP Oil Platform located 120 nautical miles (195 km) east of Aberdeen, Scotland is forced to ditch into the North Sea 500m short of its destination. A major maritime rescue operation for the ditched Super Puma owned by Bond Offshore Helicopters was coordinated by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency at the Aberdeen HM Coastguard Rescue Centre involving a RAF Sea King from No. 202 Squadron RAF Lossiemouth and a Nimrod from RAF Kinloss. Three of the passengers were rescued by one of a pair of Bond Helicopters involved in the rescue and the remaining 15 passengers successfully rescued by an oil-rig support vessel. A further Super Puma owned by Bond Helicopters is involved in a second North Sea ditching on 1 April 2009.


 * 2007 – A United States Army Boeing-Vertol MH-47E Chinook, 92-00472, of 2-160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, crashes in southeastern Afghanistan due to a sudden, unexplained loss of power and control killing eight and wounding 14.


 * 1996 – A Grumman F-14A-110-GR Tomcat, converted to Grumman F-14D(R), BuNo 161158, of VF-11, suffers engine failure, disintegration of airframe, crashes into the Pacific Ocean at ~1230 hrs., ~120 miles off the coast of southern California during routine flight exercises, killing two crew. The fighter was part of a squadron that was taking part in a two-week operation with the USS Carl Vinson, said Doug Sayers, spokesman for NAS Miramar, California.[338] Kenneth Bacon, chief spokesman for Secretary of Defense William Perry, said Perry met Tuesday, 20 February, with Adm. Mike Boorda, the chief of naval operations, to hear how the Navy is approaching its investigation of the latest crash, the Associated Press reported on 21 February. The Navy sees no accident pattern in two fatal crashes of F-14 fighter jets in the past month that would call for special safety measures, officials said Tuesday. The pilot was Lt. Terence Lee Clark, 27, of Hemet, California.


 * 1991 – A U. S. Air Force F-16 goes down in Kuwait 40 miles (64 km) north of the Saudi border.


 * 1981 – Aircraft industrialist Jack Northrop, co-founder of Lockheed Corporation and, later, founder of Northrop Corporation, dies at the age of 85.


 * 1979 – The CG-1432 Crash was an aviation accident which involved five crewmembers responding to a distress call from the Japanese fishing vessel Kaisei Maru #18. The weather that morning was stormy and conditions were not ideal for flight. On the way there, the helicopter was forced to ditch into the sea after losing power. It remained stable for a brief time before it was flipped by the heavy seas. This most likely caused the death of fellow crew members: Canadian Forces Captain G. Richard Burge, Lieutenant Commander James Stiles, Petty Officer 2nd Class John Tait, and Petty Officer 2nd Class Bruce Kaehler. Lone survivor Petty Officer 2nd Class Mark Torr remembers the flipping of the helicopter and swimming out, holding onto the nose wheel to stay near the aircraft.


 * 1977 – First flight of Space Shuttle Enterprise atop a Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) to measure structural loads and ground handling and braking characteristics of the mated system.


 * 1973 – Daniel Bouchart and Didier Potelle land 19,568 feet up on the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania in an SA 319 B Alouette II helicopter.


 * 1969 – El Al Flight 432 attack: Four members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine attack a Boeing 720-058 B with 28 people on board, with AK-47 assault rifles and hand grenades while it is preparing for takeoff at Zurich Airport in Zurich, Switzerland, mortally wounding the first officer and injuring six other people. An Israeli undercover security guard on the plane opens fire on the attackers from a cockpit window, then gets off the plane and continues to fire on them, killing their leader before Swiss police arrive and arrest him and the three surviving attackers. The incident reveals for the first time that armed security personnel ride aboard Israeli airliners.


 * 1969 – Hawthorne Nevada Airlines Flight 708, a Douglas DC-3, crashes near Lone Pine, California, killing all 35 people on board.


 * 1968 – Douglas C-47D, 43-48471, of the USAF crashes on take-off from Tan Song Nhut Air Base, Vietnam. All three people on board survive.


 * 1967 – Second crash of a Blue Angels demonstration team jet in three weeks kills the newest team member, U.S. Marine Corps Capt. Ronald F. Thomsen, 28, when his Grumman F-11A Tiger impacts just 250 yards from the site of the accident on 1 February 1967. The Navy opened a crash investigation on 19 February into the crash ~16 miles NW of NAS El Centro, California, which killed the pilot only four days after he joined the demonstration team.


 * 1966 – Death of Grigori Grigoyevich Nelyubov, Soviet cosmonaut.


 * 1964 – Death of Joseph-Armand Bombardier, Canadian inventor and businessman, and founder of Bombardier.


 * 1963 – Death of Cosimo Rizzotto, Italian WWI flying ace.


 * 1959 – Death of Carlos Viegas Gago Coutinho, GCTE, GCC, generally known simply as Gago Coutinho, Portuguese aviation pioneer.


 * 1958 – A Martin RB-57 A Canberra operated by the Republic of China Air Force is shot down over Shandong by a Chinese Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-17.


 * 1957 – After 12 years of production, Douglas delivers the last of 3,180 AD Skyraiders to the Navy.


 * 1956 – The 1956 Scottish Airlines Malta air disaster: a Scottish Airlines Avro York crashes near Żurrieq, Malta due to pilot error, killing all 50 on board.


 * 1947 – The USS Cusk becomes the world's first submarine to launch a guided missile when it fires a Republic-Ford JB-2 Loon, which then crashes after flying only 6,000 yards, due to an apparent control malfunction.


 * 1945 – Luftwaffe pilot Leutnant Erwin Ziller runs into problems 45 minutes into the third flight of Horten H.IX V2 when he suffers a failure of one of the jet engines, aircraft spins to starboard and crashes just outside the airfield perimeter. The pilot dies in hospital a fortnight later. This second prototype was the only powered Horten IX to fly. The incomplete V3 prototype was shipped to the U.S. and is now in the collection of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.


 * 1944 – Task Force 58 aircraft complete their two days of strikes against Truk, starting in the early morning hours with the first carrier-based night bombing attack in U. S. Navy history, a raid by 12 TBF-1 C Avengers, which demonstrates the value of such raids by scoring 13 direct bomb hits and seven near misses on Japanese ships in the harbor. During the rest of the morning, U. S. Navy aircraft work over Japanese shore facilities on Truk; no Japanese aircraft rise to oppose the attacks. By the time Task Force 58 retires, its aircraft have flown a total of 1,250 combat sorties over the two days of strikes, dropping 400 tons (164,600 kg) of bombs and torpedoes against shipping and 94 tons (85,276 kg) of bombs against airfields and shore facilities, sinking two auxiliary cruisers, two destroyers, two submarine tenders, an aircraft ferry, and 23 merchant ships including six tankers and 17 cargo ships totalling 200,000 gross register tons of shipping, and destroying or damaging 250 to 275 Japanese aircraft, in exchange for the loss of 17 American aircraft in combat and eight to other causes.


 * 1944 – Operation Jericho: de Havilland Mosquitos of No. 487 Squadron, Royal New Zealand Air Force and No. 464 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force, breach the prison walls at Amiens, France, allowing captured members of the French Resistance to escape.


 * 1944 – Curtiss C-46A-10-CU Commando, 41-12339, c/n 26466, of the 3d OTU, Henry F. Harvey piloting,[247] departs McClellan Field, California, at 0045 hrs. on a flight to homebase at Reno Army Air Base, Nevada. Some 15 minutes after takeoff arcing wiring ignites hydraulic fluid. The fire burns though oxygen lines and de-icer lines, airframe impacting in American River Canyon, California. Five crew members bailed out, ~0100 hrs., but two died when exiting the plane.


 * 1944 – Douglas SBD-2 Dauntless, BuNo 2173, of the Carrier Qualification Training Unit, NAS Glenview, Illinois, piloted by LTJG. John Lendo, suffers engine failure, probably due to caburetor icing, while on approach to a Type IX training carrier on Lake Michigan. Pilot ditches dive bomber and is rescued. On 19 June 2009, the airframe was retrieved from the lake bottom and will go to the Pacific Aviation Museum on Ford Island, Oahu, Hawaii.


 * 1943 – The North Western African Air Force (NAAF) is formed.


 * 1943 – The second completed Boeing B-29 Superfortress heavy bomber catches fire in the air and crashes into a building just north of Boeing Field in Seattle, Washington, killing all ten aboard the plane – Including famed Boeing test pilot Edmund “Eddie” Allen – and 19 or 20 people on the ground. The following year the company will invest $750,000 in the largest and fastest wind tunnel ever built and will name it after Eddie Allen.


 * 1943 – Japanese aircraft raid Amchitka in the Aleutian Islands for the last time.


 * 1941 – First flight of the Grumman XP-50, an American twin engine fighter prototype, land-based development of the shipboard F5 F-1 Skyrocket fighter.


 * 1939 – First flight of the Martin PBM Mariner


 * 1937 – Nationalist ace Joaquín García Morato plays a major role in an air-to-air engagement in which a Nationalist force of Fiat CR.32 fighters defeats a Republican (loyalist) one of Polikarpov I-15 s, shooting down eight I-15 s. The battle gives the Nationalists temporary air superiority during the Battle of Jarama and demonstrates that the CR.32 s could defeat the I-15 s – which previously had dominated the CR.32 s over Spain – If handled courageously and imaginatively.


 * 1936 – First flight of the Caudron C.690 M, a single-seat training aircraft developed in France to train fighter pilots to handle high-performance aircraft. It was a conventional low-wing cantilever monoplane that bore a strong resemblance to designer Marcel Riffard's racer


 * 1934 – The American World War I ace Eddie Rickenbacker and a Transcontinental & Western Air team including Jack Frye, “Tommy” Tomlinson, Larry Fritz, Paul E. Richter, Si Morehouse, Harlan Hull, John Collings, and Andy Andrews, set a new record for a transcontinental flight across the United States, flying the Douglas DC-1 from Burbank, California, to Newark, New Jersey, in 13 hours 4 min.


 * 1931 – Birth of Marat Nikolayevich Tishchenko, Russian Helicopter designer for MIL.


 * 1930 – Birth of Theodore Cordy Freeman, NASA astronaut and captain in the USAF.


 * 1930 – Elm Farm Ollie (“Nellie Jay” and post-flight as “Sky Queen”) becomes the first cow to fly in a fixed-wing aircraft and also the first cow to be milked in an aircraft.


 * 1923 – The Canadian Air Force is granted the prefix ‘Royal’.


 * 1923 – First flight of the Graz VL-1 Maulwurf I


 * 1921 – First successful flight with a helicopter by Étienne Oehmichen.


 * 1920 – Formation of a Canadian Air Force was authorized by Order-in-Council as a non-professional, non-permanent force under the Air Board.


 * 1919 – Death of Leonard Allen Payne, South African WWI flying ace, killed in a plane crash while serving in the Army of Occupation in Germany.


 * 1919 – Death of Herbert Andrew Patey, British WWI flying ace.


 * 1918 – Death of Guy William Price, Irish WWI flying ace, killed in his Sopwith Camel by German ace Theodor Rumpel.


 * 1916 – Death of Alfredo Barbieri, Italian WWI pilot, killed in action.


 * 1914 – Birth of Mario D’Agostini, Italian WWII Pilot.


 * 1911 – The first airmail is carried by an aeroplane. Henri Pequet carries mail across the Jumna River, from Allahabad to Naini Junction, India.


 * 1896 – Birth of Edmond Eugene Henri Caillaux, French WWI flying ace.


 * 1895 – Birth of William Howard “Hank” Stovall, American WWI flying ace, Businessman and High Ranking officer in WWII.


 * 1895 – Birth of Jean-Paul Jacques Favre de Thierrens, French WWI flying ace.


 * 1891 – Birth of Julius Busa, Austro Hungarian WWI flying ace.


 * 1889 – Birth of Kurt-Bertram von Döring, German WWI flying ace, advisor with the Argentinian Air Force and the Peruvian Air Force between the Wars and Officer in WWII.


 * 1882 – Birth of Adolf Heyrowsky, Austro Hungarian WWI flying ace who also served in WWII Luftwaffe.


 * 1838 – Birth of Ernst Mach, Austrian physicist and philosopher, noted for his contributions to physics such as the Mach number and the study of shock waves.


 * 1832 – Birth of Octave Chanute, French-born American railway engineer and aviation pioneer. He provided the Wright brothers with help and advice, and helped to publicize their flying experiments. At his death he was hailed as the father of aviation and the heavier-than-air flying machine.