Portal:Aviation/Anniversaries/July 2

July 2


 * 2013 – When its pilot loses control in high winds, a Polar Airlines Mil Mi-8 helicopter crashes at Yakutsk, Russia, killing 24 of the 28 people on board and injuring all four survivors.


 * 2011 – NATO confirms that in recent days it has increased its airstrikes against military targets in western Libya, bombing Tripoli and Gharyan and armored vehicles in Bir al-Ghanam.


 * 2009 – A Royal Air Force Panavia Tornado F.3 crashes near the Rest and Be Thankful beauty spot in Glen Kinglass, Arrochar, Scotland. The aircraft was on a routine training flight from No. 43 Squadron RAF Leuchars in Fife resulting in 2 crew killed in the accident. The crew were pilot Kenneth Thompson and weapons systems officer Nigel Morton.


 * 2007 – OH-58D Kiowa 91-0560 from 3–17 Cavalry Regiment is shot down along a canal south of Baghdad in Babil province with small arms, both pilots were rescued by strapping themselves onto the stub wings of an AH-64 Apache. Helicopter was later destroyed.


 * 2005 – First Trans-Atlantic flight re-enactment: Steve Fossett and co-pilot Mark Rebholz recreated the Firstdirect crossing of the Atlantic by the British team of John Alcock and Arthur Whitten-Brown. Their flight from St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada to Clifden, Ireland in the open cockpit Vickers Vimy replica took 18 hours 25 min with 13 hours flown in instrument flight conditions. Because there was no airport in Clifden, Fossett and Rebholz landed on the 8th fairway of the Connemarra Golf Course.


 * 2005 – A CH-47D Chinook 85-24335 from C Company/159th Aviation Brigade destroyed in a fire on the ground at Ramadi Camp.


 * 2004 – Cassini – Huygens makes its First distant flyby of Saturn's largest moon, Titan.


 * 2001 – Liverpool Airport is renamed Liverpool John Lennon Airport.


 * 2000 – Philippine Air Force General Santiago Madrid and Palawan Governor Salvador Socrates were among those killed when a Philippine air force Fokker 50 GAF Nomad N.22 C crashed into the sea off the western province of Palawan.


 * 1997 – Death of James Maitland "Jimmy" Stewart, American film and stage actor, and also instructor pilot in single and twin-engine aircraft during WWII.


 * 1994 – US Airways Flight 1016, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9, crashes while attempting to land at Charlotte, North Carolina during a thunderstorm. 37 of the 51 people on board are killed.


 * 1992 – Braniff Airlines (Braniff III) goes out of business.


 * 1987 – Per Lindstrand and Richard Branson lift off their balloon 'Virgin Atlantic' (at the time, the largest ever flown at 2.3 million cubic feet of capacity) from Sugarloaf Mountain for the Firsttransatlantic flight in a hot air balloon.


 * 1985 – Launch of Giotto, European robotic spacecraft mission from the European Space Agency, intended to fly by and study Halley's Comet.


 * 1985 – Death of David Charles Purley, GM, British racing driver in the crash of his Pitts Special aerobatic biplane. Purley is perhaps best known for his actions at the 1973 Dutch Grand Prix, where he abandoned his own race and attempted to save the life of fellow British driver Roger Williamson, whose car was upside down on fire following a horrific accident.


 * 1984 – Entered Service: Mirage 2000 with Escadron de Chasse 1/2.


 * 1982 – Death of Tow Jewett, co-founder of the Quickie Aircraft Corporation, builder of the successful Quickie tandem-winged kitplane, Killed in the crash of the sole Quickie Aircraft Corporation Free Enterprise (Big Bird) prototype during a test flight.


 * 1982 – Soyuz T-6, soviet spaceflight to Earth orbit to the Salyut 7 space station, is back on earth.


 * 1982 – In the homemade Inspiration I, consisting of a patio chair attached to 45 eight-foot (2.4-m) helium-filled weather balloons, American truck driver Larry Walters lifts off from the back yard of a home in San Pedro, California, planning to drift at an altitude of about 30 feet (9.1 m) for a few hours before using a pellet gun to shoot out some balloons and descend gradually. Instead, Inspiration 1 quickly ascends to an altitude of 15,000 feet (4,572 m). After drifting into controlled airspace near Long Beach Airport, he uses the pellet gun to shoot out several of his balloons before accidentally dropping the pellet gun overboard. He gradually descends, becomes entangled in power lines, climbs down safely, and is arrested.


 * 1967 – First flight of the Sukhoi Su-24 T-6:2


 * 1963 – Mohawk Airlines Flight 121, a Martin 4-0-4, crashes near Rochester, New York while attempting takeoff, killing seven of the 43 people on board.


 * 1960 – Textron Inc. purchases Bell Aircraft Corporation.


 * 1959 – First flight of the Kaman SH-2 Seasprite, American ship-based helicopter with anti-submarine, anti-surface threat capability, including over-the-horizon targeting.


 * 1959 – Birth of Wendy Barrien Lawrence, USN Captain, helicopter pilot, engineer, and NASA astronaut, First female graduate of the US Naval Academy to fly in space.


 * 1954 – Death of Erich Rüdiger von Wedel, German WWI flying ace


 * 1952 – Birth of Linda Maxine Godwin, American scientist and NASA astronaut.


 * 1949 – MacRobertson Miller Airlines Douglas DC-3 airliner Fitzroy, registration VH-MME, crashes on takeoff during a driving rain from Perth, Australia, killing all 18 people onboard.


 * 1945 – 532 B-29 Superfortresses drop 3,709 tons (3,364,783 kg) of bombs on Kure, Kumamoto, and other cities in Japan.


 * 1944 – Death of Julius Schmidt, German WWI fighter ace.


 * 1945 – The Okinawa campaign is officially declared over with the complete defeat of Japanese forces there. During the campaign, the Allies have lost 32 ships and naval craft sunk and 368 damaged and over 4,900 naval personnel killed and 4,824 wounded. Most of the ships sunk were victims of kamikazes. The Allies also have lost 763 aircraft during the campaign.


 * 1943 – Lt Charles Hall, becomes First black pilot to shoot down Nazi plane.


 * 1943 – An airstrike on American forces on Rendova Island by 24 Japanese bombers escorted by 48 fighters achieves complete surprise, killing 55 and wounding 77.


 * 1943 – (Overnight) The Allied Northwest African Air Force begins heavy day-and-night attacks against Axis airfields in Sicily, Sardinia, and Italy in preparation for the upcoming invasion of Sicily. Italy claims to fly 650 fighter sorties and Germany 500 between July 1 and 9 in defending against the Allied bombing campaign, but almost all Axis airfields on Sicily are knocked out by the time of the invasion.


 * 1941 – Death of George Valentin, Prince Bibescu, Romanian early aviation pioneer, instrumental in founding the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI).


 * 1941 – The formation of the Canadian Women’s Auxiliary Air Force was authorized by Order-in-Council.


 * 1940 – Birth of Georgi Ivanov Kakalov, Bulgarian pilot, First Bulgarian cosmonaut and politician.


 * 1938 – Curtiss YC-30 Condor, 33-321, c/n 27, of Headquarters Squadron, Maxwell Field, Alabama, collides with another aircraft at Maxwell Field, and is SOC on 20 September 1938.


 * 1938 – A Heinkel He-116R, German 4 engine long-range mail plane, sets an endurance record, covering 9,942 km (6,178 mi) un-refueled, at an average speed of 214 km/h (133 mph) after a 48 hours 18 min flight.


 * 1937 – Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the central Pacific Ocean en route in their Lockheed Electra 10E to Howland Island during an attempt to circumnavigate the world.


 * 1937 – Russian pilot Paulina Osipenka sets a women's non-stop flight record of 2416 km between Novgorod and Archangelsk with a Beriev MP-1bis, Variant of the Beriev MBR-2, Soviet reconnaissance flying boat.


 * 1934 – Brothers Benjamin and Joseph Adamowicz lands finally their Bellanca J300 'City of Warsaw' in Warsaw, Poland.


 * 1934 – The Armée de l’Air is separated from the French Army to become the independent French Air Force, although retaining the name Armée de l’Air.


 * 1928 – Birth of Iven Carl "Kinch" Kincheloe, Jr., American test pilot, recipient of the Silver Star and Distinguished Flying Cross (United States), Korean War fighter ace.


 * 1926 – Distinguish Flying Cross authorized.


 * 1926 – The United States Army Air Service becomes the United States Army Air Corps.


 * 1919 – U.S. Navy blimp C-8 explodes while landing at Camp Holabird, Maryland, injuring ~80 adults and children who were watching it. Windows in homes a mile away are shattered by the blast.


 * 1919 – The British airship R34 begins the first airship crossing of the Atlantic Ocean and the first east-to-west Atlantic flight, leaving East Fortune, Scotland, to arrive in New York on July 6. The journey becomes a successful two-way crossing when the airship arrives back in the United Kingdom on July 13.


 * 1918 – Death of Percy Griffith Jones, Welsh WWI flying ace, killed in action in his Bristol F.2b.


 * 1918 – Death of Joseph Creuss Callaghan (the mad major), Irish/American WWI flying ace, killed in his Sopwith Dolphin.


 * 1916 – Birth of Hans-Ulrich Rudel, Famous German dive-bomber pilot and The most highly decorated German serviceman of WWII.


 * 1912 – Death of Chester Melvin Vaniman, American acrobatic photographer, adventurer, businessman, famous aviator and balloonist, killed when his airship, the 'Akron', exploded off the New Jersey shore during his 2nd attempt at a trans-Atlantic airship crossing.


 * 1912 – The Danish Air Force is established as an army air corps.


 * 1910 – French Jacques Benjamin de Lesseps is the Firstpilot to fly over Montreal.


 * 1910 – Claude Grahame-White, in his Farman biplane, won the £1,000 first prize for Aggregate Duration in Flight (1 hr 23 min 20 secs) at the Midlands Aviation Meeting at Wolverhampton


 * 1909 – The first Canadian-built powered heavier-than-air craft, the Baddeck No. 1, nearing completion, in Canada’s first aircraft factory.


 * 1900 – Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin flies the first rigid airship, the LZ1 Zeppelin from Lake Constance, Friedrichshafen. It carries five passengers on a 20-minute flight.


 * 1899 – Birth of Cyril Richard Smythe, British WWI flying ace


 * 1898 – Birth of Hugh Latimer Dryden, American aeronautical scientist and civil servant.


 * 1897 – Birth of Clifford MacKay "Black Mike" McEwen, Canadian WWI fighter ace and senior commander in the RCAF during WWII.


 * 1894 – Birth of John Edmund Greene, Canadian WWI fighter ace


 * 1894 – Birth of David McKelvey Peterson, American WWI flying ace.


 * 1885 – Birth of Ugolino Vivaldi Pasqua, Italian aviation pioneer and the First Italian aviation fatality.


 * 1859 – Two American balloonists, John Wise and John La Mountain, fly in their balloon from St. Louis, Missouri to Henderson, New York. The 809-mile trip takes 20 hours.