Portal:Aviation/Anniversaries/January 13

January 13


 * 2013 – Syrian Air Force jets bomb the suburbs of Damascus and a marketplace in the town of Azaz, killing at least 20 people and injuring 99 in Azaz.


 * 2013 – French Mirage 2000D fighter-bombers hit Islamist targets in northern Mali, including attacks around Léré and Douentza and a strike on an Islamist rear headquarters in Gao, where they inflict dozens of casualties. French military transport aircraft bring several planeloads of French troops into Bamako.


 * 2010 – German airline Blue Wings ceased operations.
 * 2010 – A Yemeni Air Force Aero L-39 Albatros training aircraft crashed in the area of Salah al-Din, west of the port city of Aden due to a technical problem. Pilot survived.


 * 2009 – S9-KAS, an Antonov An-24RV operated by Daallo Airlines, lands at Bender Qassim International Airport, Somalia with the nose landing gear retracted.


 * 2009 – Death of Nancy Bird Walton, AO, OBE, DStJ, pioneering Australian aviatrix, youngest Australian woman to gain a pilot's licence, founder and patron of the Australian Women Pilots' Association.


 * 2008 – Suspended under 600 brightly colored helium-filled party balloons, Brazilian priest Adelir Antonio de Carli lifts off from Ampere, Brazil, and reaches an altitude of 5,300 m (17,390 ft) before landing safely at San Antonio, Argentina, after a four-hour flight.


 * 2006 – OH-58D Kiowa 95-0021 from 1–10th Aviation Regiment shot down outside Forward Operating Base Courage, outside Mosul, killing the two pilots.


 * 2004 – An Uzbekistan Airways plane crashes in Uzbekistan's capital of Tashkent, killing all 37 aboard.


 * 2004 – AH-64 Apache from 4th Squadron, 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment shot down near Habbaniyah, pilots rescued.


 * 1999 – A Washington Air National Guard Boeing KC-135E-BN Stratotanker, 59-1452, c/n 17940, call sign ESSO 77, crashes short of the runway at Geilenkirchen Air Base, Germany, killing all 4 crew members on board. The aircraft was assigned to the 141st Air Refueling Wing, Fairchild AFB, Washington.


 * 1998 – An Ariana Afghan Airlines Antonov An-12 crashed near Tor Kach, Pakistan after it ran out of fuel in poor weather. All 51 people on board died.


 * 1993 – Launch: Space Shuttle Endeavour STS-54 at 8:59.30 am EST. Mission highlights: TDRS-F/IUS deployment.


 * 1982 – Air Florida Flight 90, a Boeing 737, crashes into the frozen Potomac River after takeoff from Washington National Airport; five on board survive; 78 on board and 4 on the ground die, including one initial survivor who dies after ensuring that the other crash survivors are rescued from the frozen river.


 * 1977 – First flight of the Fournier RF-9, a French two-seat motorglider of conventional sailplane configuration.


 * 1977 – Birth of Alex Hofer, German raid paraglider.


 * 1977 – Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-104A crashes near Alma-Ata after it exploded in mid-air due to engine fire which reached the fuel tank killing all on board.


 * 1975 – The F-16 Fighting Falcon is announced as the winner of the LWF (Light Weight Fighter) competition


 * 1969 – Scandinavian Airlines Flight 933, a Douglas DC-8, crashes into Santa Monica Bay due to pilot error, killing 15 of 45 on board.


 * 1964 – The 1964 Savage Mountain B-52 crash: A United States Air Force B-52D Stratofortress carrying two Mark 53 nuclear bombs loses its vertical stabilizer in turbulence during a winter storm and crashes on Savage Mountain near Barton, Maryland. Only two of the five crewmen survive. The bombs are recovered two days later.


 * 1960 – First flight of the Canadair CT-114 Tutor.


 * 1953 – Strategic Air Command Boeing B-50D-125-BO Superfortress, 49-386, c/n 16162, of the 93d Bombardment Wing, Castle AFB, California, one of a flight of four on a routine navigational flight, spins down out of clouds at 1340 hrs. PT and crashes 13 miles (21 km) W of Gridley, California, killing all 12 on board. Witnesses said that the bomber appeared to lose power. "When we first saw the plane it was coming out of the clouds in a steep spin at about 2,000 feet," said John Cowan, manager of Grey Lodge Waterfowl refuge. "The pilot gave it full power several times, but he couldn’t pull it out." Just before they hit the ground, the plane appeared to level out some, but it was too late. "They hit the ground with a tremendous thudding sound." Cowan, a flier himself, and a pilot of Navy planes during the war, could offer no explanation for the crash. "We could hear the pilot hit his engines before he dropped out of the clouds," Cowan said. A special investigations team was dispatched early today (14 January) from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio. Salvage, and additional recovery of bodies, waited on the arrival of a 92-foot (28 m) crane sent from McClellan Air Force Base, Sacramento. Gridley residents said the doomed plane "barely cleared treetops" while passing over the town seconds before the crash, but regained altitude momentarily. Eyewitnesses to the actual crash said the bomber came out of the clouds at 2,000 feet (610 m) in a spin. Many heard the pilot gunning his engines during the fall, and the plane appeared to level out slightly just before the impact half buried it in the mud of an open grain field on the Terrill Sartain property, two miles (3 km) W of the Butte-Colusa county line. Shortly before the crash the flight of four bombers were seen in formation over Oroville. Killed were T/Sgt. Curtis F. Duffy, 27, husband of Ruth A. Duffy, Atwater, California; T/Sgt. Bobby G. Theuret, 29, son of Mr. and Mrs. Harry D. Theuret, Box 413, Costa Mesa, California, and husband of Barbara L. Theuret, Atwater; M/Sgt. William H. Clarke, 32, husband, of Audrey W. Clark, Merced, California; M/Sgt. Wallace N. Schwart, 28, Maywood, Illinois. Those missing and presumed dead include Lt. Col. Gerald W. Fallon, 34, husband of Elaine K. Fallon, Merced; Maj. William P. McMillan, 37, husband of Greta A. McMillan, Atwater; Capt. William S. Raker, 27, husband of Lorraine G. Raker, Atwater; M/Sgt. Joe L. Bradshaw, 37, husband of Jessamine Bradshaw, Atwater; A.J. William B. Crutchfield, 27, husband of Della Ann Crutchfield, Atwater; A1C Charles W. Hesse, 21, Sauk Center, Minnesota; Capt. Edward Y. Williams, 33, Spokane, Washington; and 1st Lt. George D. Griffitts, 23, Hico, Texas.


 * 1949 – Birth of Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma, AC, Indian Air Force test pilot, and Cosmonaut, first Indian to travel in space.


 * 1945 – A kamikaze damages the escort carrier USS Salamaua (CVE-96) in the South China Sea off the mouth of Lingayen Gulf. It is the last successful kamikaze attack in the waters of the Philippine Islands.


 * 1944 – (13–19) Allied air forces attack targets in Italy to seal off the beachhead for the upcoming invasion at Anzio, focusing on airfields around Rome and throughout central Italy.


 * 1943 – Junkers Ju 290V1, (Junkers Ju 90V11), modified from Ju 90B-1, Werknummer 90 0007, D-AFHG, "Oldenberg", crashed on takeoff evacuating load of wounded troops from German 6th Army at Stalingrad. The need for large capacity transports was so dire at this point that the Luftwaffe was taking Ju 290As straight from the assembly line into operation.


 * 1943 – The United States Army Air Forces activate the Thirteenth Air Force in New Caledonia.


 * 1942 – Heinkel test pilot Helmut Schenk becomes the first person to escape from a stricken aircraft with an ejection seat after the control surfaces of the first prototype Heinkel He 280 V1, DL+AS, ice up and become inoperable. The fighter, being used in tests of the Argus As 014 impulse jets for Fieseler Fi 103 missile development, had its regular Heinkel-Hirth HeS 8A turbojets removed, and was towed aloft from Rechlin, Germany by a pair of Bf 110C tugs in a heavy snow-shower. At 7,875 feet (2,400 m), Schenk found he had no control, jettisoned his towline, and ejected.


 * 1940 – First flight of the Yakovlev Yak-1 (I-26), a WWII Soviet fighter aircraft, single-seat monoplane with a composite structure and wooden wings, prototype of the Yakovlev Yak-1.


 * 1939 – Northwest Airlines Flight 1, a Lockheed L14 H Super Electra, crashes on descent to Miles City, Montana, killing all four on board; the aircraft's cross-feed fuel valve leaked fuel into the cockpit and an intense fire broke out.


 * 1936 – (13-14) Howard Hughes makes a record-breaking sprint across the United States from Burbank, California to Newark, New Jersey in 9 hours 26 min 10 seconds at an average speed of 259 mph (417 km/hr). He uses a Northrop Gamma specially fitted with a 1,000-hp (747-kW) Wright SR-1820-G2 radial engine.


 * 1933 – The sole Consolidated Y1P-25, 32-321, crashes during flight testing at Wright Field, Ohio, killing Captain Hugh M. Elmendorf due to a stall/spin.


 * 1930 – First flight of the Farman F.300, French tri-engine High wing monoplane airliner prototype.


 * 1919 – Birth of Alan Eugene Magee, American WWII airman who survived a 22,000-foot (6,700 m) fall without parachute from his damaged B-17 Flying Fortress.


 * 1919 – Death of Hans Christian Friedrich Donhauser, German WWI flying ace, smallest aviator in the German air force, in a crash near Coblenz.


 * 1918 – Birth of Walter Jacobi, German rocket scientist and member of the "von Braun rocket group", at Peenemünde.


 * 1917 – Captain C. F. Collet of the Royal Flying Corps becomes the first British service flyer to make parachute jump when he uses a Calthrop 'Guardian Angel' parachute for an experimental jump from 600 feet.


 * 1916 – The Curtiss Aeroplane Company, Curtiss Motor Company, Curtiss Engineering Company, and Burgess and Curtis merge to form the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company.


 * 1913 – Brazilian naval aviation commences with the foundation of a flying school.


 * 1913 – First regular aerial cargo service begins in the USA with Harry M. Jones as he takes off with a Wright B to fly baked beans from Boston to New York.


 * 1912 – French Jules Védrines was the first person to fly an aircraft at more than 100 mph (160 km/h)


 * 1908 – Aero Club Argentino is founded in Buenos Aires.


 * 1908 – First European to fly one kilometer in a circle is Henri Farman in his Voisin-Farman airplane. Farman's 1 min 28 sond flight wins him the Grand Prix d'Aviation Deutsche-Archdeacon race in France.


 * 1906 – The first air exhibition of the Aero Club of America opens for eight days in the Sixty-ninth Regiment Armory in New York City. The Wrights are asked to send the motor that powered their 1903 flying machine but can only salvage the crankshaft and flywheel.


 * 1899 – Birth of Harold John "Jackie" Walkerdine, British WWI flying ace and WWII pilot.


 * 1897 – Death of David Schwarz, Croatian aviation pioneer. He created the first flyable rigid airship. It was also the first airship with an external hull made entirely of metal.


 * 1896 – Birth of Eugene Seeley Coler, American WWI fighter ace, WWII bomber pilot and Korean war Flying surgeon.


 * 1893 – Birth of Charles Henry Arnison, British WWI flying ace.


 * 1893 – Birth of Alessandro Buzio, Italian WWI flying ace.


 * 1887 – Birth of Jorge Chávez Dartnell, also known as Géo Chávez, Franco – Peruvian aviator.


 * 1885 – Birth of Thomas James Birmingham, Canadian WWI flying ace.