Portal:Aviation/Anniversaries/July 17

July 17


 * 2014 - A Malaysian airliner, MH 17, scheduled to fly between Amsterdam, Netherlands and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, is shot over the conflict zone of the ongoing Donbass insurgency, in an area controlled by the Donbass People's Militia in Ukraine. All 298 passengers and crew are killed, in the worst airliner shootdown in history.
 * 2011 – About 100 Syrian Air Force intelligence personnel defect to the rebel side in Abu Kamal, Syria.


 * 2009 – A Fuerza Aérea Venezolana Cessna T206H (FAV-2807) flying from Puerto Ayacucho to La Esmeralda, Estado Amazonas, Venezuela crashes into the hillside of El Duida, 20 miles (32 km) from its destination at La Esmeralda airport killing the 3 crew.


 * 2009 – An MD-530F contracted to Xe (formerly Blackwater) crashes at Butler Range outside Baghdad. Two pilots died. The cause was not known.


 * 2007 – TAM Airlines Flight 3054 (TAM Linhas Aéreas), an Airbus A320-233, crashes upon landing during rain in São Paulo, killing all 187 people on board and 12 people on the ground, overcoming Gol Transportes Aeroes Flight 1907 as Brazil's worst aviation disaster.


 * 2006 – STS-121 space shuttle 'Discovery' mission to the International Space Station (ISS) is back on earth


 * 2002 – Midway Airlines (1993–2003) suspends operations.


 * 2001 – At ~0700 hrs., pilot Maj. Aaron George of the 416th Flight Test Squadron at Edwards Air Force Base, California, and Judson Brohmer of Tehachapi, California, an aerial photographer under contract to the Air Force Flight Test Center, are killed in the crash of an Edwards based Lockheed Martin F-16B Block 5 Fighting Falcon, 78-0100, while on a test sortie to chase and film the launch of the Miniature Air-Launch Decoy (MALD) from a second F-16, also from the 416th Flight Test Squadron.


 * 2000 – Alliance Air Flight 7412, a Boeing 737-200, crashes into government housing in Patna, India as it approaches the airport, killing 55 of the 58 on board and five people on the ground.


 * 1997 – STS-94, Space Shuttle Columbia mission, is back on earth.


 * 1996 – TWA Flight 800, a Boeing 747, explodes in mid-air above the ocean off East Moriches, New York, killing all 230 people on board.


 * 1991 – Death of Arthur Raymond "Ray" Brooks, American WWI flying ace, pioneer in the development of radio navigational aids (NAVAIDs) and one of the earliest commercial pilots involved with carrying mail (air mail) for the US Post Office Department.


 * 1991 – Launch of ERS-1, European remote sensing satellite (ERS), European Space Agency's first Earth-observing satellite.


 * 1989 – First flight of the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit


 * 1984 – Two airships are seen over London for the first time since the WWI when British Airship Industries fly their Skyship 600 and Skyship 500 models on a round trip between Cardington in Bedfordshire and Tower Bridge.


 * 1984 – Launch of Soyuz T-12 (also known as Salyut 7 EP-4), 7 th manned spaceflight to the Soviet space station Salyut 7.


 * 1981 – The Israeli Air Force attacks Beirut in retribution for Palestinian terror attacks.


 * 1980 – A Vickers Viscount plane of charter airline Alidair lands safely in Devon after suffering damage to all four engines.


 * 1980 – Cathay Pacific begins a Hong Kong-London service.


 * 1978 – First flight of the Soko G-4 Super Galeb, Yugoslav single engine, advanced jet trainer/light strike aircraft.


 * 1975 – American Apollo capsule links up to a Russian Soyuz capsule in orbit, marking the first space collaboration between the two nations. It would also be the last Apollo mission, as well as the last manned mission for six years until the launch of the first Space Shuttle in 1981.


 * 1970 – Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport commences passenger screening to help prevent hijackings; the first airport to do so.


 * 1970 – Retired: Northrop HL-10


 * 1962 – Maj Robert M. White (USAF), pilots the North American X-15 to a record altitude of 314 750 feet (59 miles, 96 km).


 * 1959 – Birth of Janet Lynn Kavandi, American scientist and NASA astronaut.


 * 1953 – Lieutenant Guy P. Bordelon scores his fifth aerial victory, becoming the United States Navy’s only ace of the Korean War. He had scored all five victories since June 29, using an F4U-5 N Corsair night fighter to shoot down North Korean light aircraft making night harassment raids.


 * 1953 – US Marine Corps Fairchild R4Q-2 Packet, BuNo 131663, c/n 10830, crashes in a wooded area N of Milton, Florida, shortly after take off from NAS Whiting Field, Florida, where it had made a refueling stop. Five of six crew, and 39 of 40 passengers are killed. The transport was one of 20 being used to take Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps midshipmen, college students, in their sophomore and junior years and from many states, from NAS Corpus Christi, Texas, to Chambers Field, NAS Norfolk, Virginia. All 46 passengers were ROTC members. "As part of their reserve work they are required to take six weeks summer training at naval installations in Corpus Christi and Norfolk. Altogether, 1,600 ROTC men are taking part in this summer's program, half of them at Corpus Christi and half at Norfolk. At the end of three weeks, the 800 at Norfolk and 800 at Corpus Christi swap bases for the final three weeks. The group which had stopped at Whiting was half of the 800 being flown to Norfolk. Rear Adm. J. P. Whitney, chief of Naval Air Basic Training, appointed a special board to investigate the crash." Most of the dead were students at the University of Oklahoma and Rice University, with one victim from the Georgia Institute of Technology.


 * 1952 – 58 Republic F84 Thunderjets complete a trans-ocean flight of 10,895 miles, with seven stops, from Georgia in the USA to Yokota in Japan.


 * 1949 – First flight of the Vickers Varsity, a British twin-engine crew trainer.


 * 1948 – Miss Macao, a Catalina seaplane operated by a Cathay Pacific subsidiary, over the Pearl River delta from Macau to Hong Kong, is hijacked with 23 passengers and three crew on board by a group attempting to rob the passengers; following a struggle in the cockpit, a crash kills all on board except one passenger, later identified as the lead hijacker; this is the earliest known airliner hijacking.


 * 1947 – First flight of the Sud-Ouest Corse II, French mail and passenger transport aircraft


 * 1946 – Birth of Toktar Ongarbayuly Aubakirov, Kazakh Air Force test pilot and cosmonaut.


 * 1944 – In Operation Mascot, the British aircraft carriers HMS Formidable, HMS Furious, and HMS Indefatigable launch a raid by 44 Fairey Barracuda bombers escorted by 48 fighters against the German battleship Tirpitz at her anchorage in Norway, but a highly effective German smoke screen allows them to achieve only one near-miss.


 * 1943 – 223 U. S. Air Solomons (AirSols) aircraft strike Bougainville Island, bombing Kahili Airfield and Tonolei harbor. They sink one Japanese destroyer.


 * 1943 – Death of Jean Tulasne, French WWII flying ace, shot down in his Yak-1 M by a FW-190 near Orel in Russia.


 * 1943 – Axis air attacks damage Allied shipping off Sicily.


 * 1941 – Death of Armand Dufaux, Swiss Aviation pioneer and aircraft designer.


 * 1939 – First flight of the Bristol Beaufighter prototype R2052


 * 1938 – (17-18) After filing a flight plan to fly nonstop from Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, New York, west to California, Douglas Corrigan instead heads east after takeoff and makes a 28-hour 13-minute solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean to Ireland, claiming to have made a gross navigational error. He goes down in history as “Wrong Way” Corrigan.


 * 1936 – The Spanish Civil War breaks out, and the Republican (loyalist) and Nationalist (rebel) factions seize portions of the Spanish Air Force and of the aviation force of the Spanish Navy. The Republicans end up with about 200 serviceable aircraft – Including all the fighters – And 150 pilots, which form the basis of their Spanish Republican Air Force, while the Nationalists control less than 100 serviceable aircraft and 90 pilots, which form the basis for their National Aviation.


 * 1936 – French Bloch MB.150.01 fighter prototype suffers damage to tailwheel as it taxies from the hangar at Villacoublay to inaugurate its flight test program. Returned to the factory at Courbevoie for repairs which, inexplicably, take ten months to accomplish. Poor ground handling of design, as well as unsuitability for mass-production, forces total reworking of the type, the new version being designated the Bloch MB.151, and developmentally, the Bloch MB.152.


 * 1933 – Lituanica was an Bellanca CH-300 Pacemaker airplane flown from the United States across the Atlantic Ocean by Lithuanian-American pilots Steponas Darius and Stasys Girėnas in 1933. After successfully flying 6,411 km, it crashed, due to undetermined circumstances, 650 km from its destination, Kaunas, Lithuania.


 * 1929 – Robert Hutchings Goddard successfully launches a camera equipped rocket.


 * 1928 – Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean.


 * 1927 – USMC de Havilland DH.4s are used to attack bandits in Nicaragua threatening the garrison at Ocotal.


 * 1927 – Hudson Strait Expedition sailed from Halifax to conduct navigation studies in conjunction with plans to open a deep-sea harbour at Churchill, Manitoba. The equipment included seven RCAF aircraft.


 * 1926 – Death of Augustus Moore Herring, American aviation pioneer, who flew a compressed-air powered aircraft in 1898, five years before the Wright Brothers made their own powered flight. It has been claimed that he was the first aviator of a motorized heavier-than-air aircraft


 * 1924 – Pelletier d'Oisy completes a flight from Paris to Tokyo. The journey takes 120 hours in the air.


 * 1918 – Death of Edward Harper Sayers, British WWI flying ace, Killed in a crash.


 * 1918 – Death of Auguste Baux, French WWI flying ace, Killed in action in his SPAD XIII.


 * 1918 – Death of Claud Robert James Thompson, Australian WWI flying ace, Killed in a crash.


 * 1917 – The United States Navy establishes the Naval Aircraft Factory at League Island Navy Yard in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.


 * 1917 – Death of Luigi Olivi, Italian WWI flying ace, killed in action in his SPAD VII.


 * 1917 – Ground is broken for the first building of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) Langley Field laboratory.


 * 1914 – First flight of the Vickers F.B.5 (Fighting Biplane 5) (known as the "Gunbus"), British two-seat pusher WWI military biplane, first aircraft purpose-built for air-to-air combat to see service, making it the world's first operational fighter aircraft


 * 1913 – The Royal Navy introduces the term “seaplane; ” previously, seaplanes had been known as “hydro-aeroplanes. ”


 * 1912 – The first flight by a seaplane in Canada was at Port Stanley Ontario this date. It was also the occasion of the first passenger ride in a seaplane in Canada.


 * 1910 – Mile-High altitude record. Walter Brookins climbed 6,234′ (>6,175′) into the sky over Atlantic City, NJ in his new Wright Model A, for which he was awarded a $5,000 prize.


 * 1908 – The first aviation legislation of the United States is passed: a municipal ordinance requiring an annual license and regulating aircraft within the city limits of Kissimmee, Florida.


 * 1896 – Birth of Reed Gresham Landis, American WWI flying ace and USAAC officer during WWII.


 * 1896 – Birth of Rupert Norman Gould Atkinson, British WWI flying ace


 * 1894 – Birth of Lloyd Samuel Breadner, Canadian WWI flying ace and senior RCAF commander during WWII


 * 1894 – Birth of George Cox, Australian WWI flying ace


 * 1892 – Birth of Edwin Harris Dunning, British Royal Naval Air Service, first pilot to land an aircraft on a moving ship.