Portal:Aviation/Anniversaries/June 15

June 15


 * 2013 – Google reveals its previously secret Project Loon with the first public launch of a maneuverable unmanned balloon designed to operate in the stratosphere at an altitude of about 12 miles (19.3 km) and bring broadband wireless Internet access to remote regions and areas affected by natural disasters. Google has launched 30 such balloons during the week from a field near Lake Tekapo on New Zealand's South Island to test the system over the cities of Christchurch and Canterbury.


 * 2013 – Escorted by Royal Air Force Eurofighter Typhoon fighters, Egyptair Flight 985, a Boeing 777 with 326 people on board bound from Cairo, Egypt, to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, makes an emergency landing at Glasgow Prestwick Airport in Prestwick, Scotland, after a passenger finds a note in one of its lavatories making a threat to set the aircraft on fire.


 * 2011 – A NATO commander confirms that NATO warplanes have bombed an ammunition store at Waddan, Libya.


 * 2007 – A US F-16, serial 89-2031, from the Ohio ANG crashed on takeoff at night. The pilot, Maj. Kevin Sonnenberg, was killed. The cause was not hostile fire and is believed to be pilot spatial disorientation.


 * 1992 – Ghana Airways inaugurates flights to JFK Airport (NYC).


 * 1992 – First Berlin Air Show in 60 years.


 * 1985 – Amal Party gunmen hijack a TWA Flight 847 en route from Rome to Athens. The plane, which includes some Jewish passengers, is then re-routed and taken to Algiers, Beirut, and Algiers again before setting in Beirut. The 39 passengers and crew are freed on July 1 after Israel agrees to free 700 Shiite prisoners.


 * 1984 – Entered Service: Saab 340 with Crossair.


 * 1978 – The third prototype Mikoyan MiG-29, '03 Blue/903', utilized for powerplant testing, crashes on its ninth flight when one of the engines suffers an uncontained compressor failure and fragments sever the control runs. The fighter flicks into an irrecoverable spin. Test pilot Valeriy Menitskiy ejects safely.


 * 1972 – A carry-on suitcase bomb explodes on Cathay Pacific Flight 700Z, a Convair 880, at 29000 ft over Vietnam; all 81 on board perish.


 * 1971 – Lockheed NF-104A Starfighter, 56-0756, c/n 183-1044, assigned to Aerospace Research Pilot School, Edwards AFB, California, suffers second rocket explosion this date, blowing the whole rocket motor and part of rudder off in flight at 35.000 ft and Mach 1.15. Pilot Capt. Howard C. Thompson lands safely but as the NF-104 project is due to end soon aircraft is written off and portions of it used to create the composite "760" sitting on a pole at the Air Force Flight Test Center, Edwards AFB.


 * 1970 – The Soviet MVD arrests a group of 12 Soviet “refuseniks” at Smolny Airport outside of Leningrad before they can board a 12-seater Aeroflot Antonov An-2 for a flight to Priozersk. Pretending to be a wedding party, they had purchased all 12 tickets available for the flight and intended to hijack the plane as a means of escaping to the West.


 * 1965 – Two U. S. Army UH-1D Iroquois helicopters collide in mid-air over Fort Benning, Georgia, in the United States, killing 18 people.


 * 1959 – A monument was unveiled at Alexander Graham Bell Museum in Baddeck, N. S. commemorating the flight of the Silver Dart in 1909.


 * 1953 – The Royal Navy aircraft carriers HMS Eagle, HMS Illustrious, HMS Implacable, HMS Indefatigable, HMS Indomitable, HMS Perseus, and HMS Theseus, the Royal Canadian Navy aircraft carrier HMCS Magnificent, and the Royal Australian Navy aircraft carrier HMAS Sydney and 37 squadrons of Fleet Air Arm and Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve aircraft – Including Fireflies, Sea Furies, Seafires, Attackers, Vampires, Skyraiders, Sea Hornets, Meteors, Avengers, Gannets, Wyverns, Sea Venoms, Sea Hawks, and Dragonflies – Take part in the Coronation Review of the Fleet for Queen Elizabeth II. The ceremonies include a fly-past by 300 naval aircraft.


 * 1949 – Sole prototype reconnaissance Gloster Meteor FR Mk. 5, VT347, breaks up in the air during its first flight, killing pilot Rodney Dryland on either 13 or 15 July 1949. This version is not proceeded with.


 * 1946 – No. 437 Squadron was disbanded.


 * 1946 – The Navy's new Flight Demonstration Squadron, the Blue Angels, gives its first public performance at Craig Field in Jacksonville, Florida.


 * 1945 – First flight of the North American F-82 Twin Mustang was on 26 June 1945.


 * 1944 – The United States Army Air Forces’ Twentieth Air Force begins the strategic bombing offensive against Japan, with China-based B-29 Superfortresses attacking Yawata (now Kitakyūshū) on Kyūshū. It is the second air raid against Japan proper in history, and the first since the Doolittle Raid of April 1942.


 * 1944 – U. S. forces land on Saipan.


 * 1944 – Carrier aircraft of U. S. Navy Task Groups 58.1 and 58.4 strike Chichi Jima, Haha Jima, and Iwo Jima, shooting down 10 Japanese aircraft, destroying seven on the ground and 21 seaplanes on the water, and setting fire to three small cargo ships and a hangar. Three U. S. aircraft are lost.


 * 1944 – Japanese torpedo bombers attack Task Force 58, inflicting no damage and suffering heavy losses.


 * 1944 – Royal Air Force Bomber Command strikes the harbor at Boulogne, France, at dusk, sinking 25 German R-boats and small craft and damaging 10 others, completing the destruction of the German naval surface forces threatening the Allied landings at Normandy.


 * 1943 – First flight of the Arado Ar 234 but sources disagree, with dates as late as 30 July 1943.


 * 1943 – No. 434 (Bomber) Squadron was formed in England.


 * 1942 – No. 135 (Fighter) Squadron was formed at Patricia Bay, BC.


 * 1942 – No. 147 (BR) Squadron was formed at Sea Island, Vancouver, BC


 * 1940 – (15-18) Royal Air Force fighter cover allows the evacuation by sea from France to the United Kingdom of 52,104 troops from Cherbourg and St. Malo, France, without loss.


 * 1938 – Nationalist aircraft sink the Republican gunboat Laya at Valencia, Spain.


 * 1936 – First flight of the Vickers Wellington


 * 1936 – First flight of the Westland Lysander


 * 1934 – First flight of the Short Singapore (III)


 * 1931 – Canadian Airways pilot E. W. Stull in a Fokker F.14 A, flew the first radio beam from Winnipeg to Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.


 * 1928 – Mail is successfully transferred from an airplane in flight to a train as Lt. Karl S. Axtater flies directly over an Illinois Central train and transfers a mail bag to a railway clerk.


 * 1928 – An Imperial Airways AW Argosy piloted by Gordon Olley races the London and North Eastern Railway’s Flying Scotsman train the 390 miles from London to Edinburgh; the Argosy takes 84 min to refuel twice en route and beats the train by only 15 min.


 * 1927 – US businessman Van Lear Black charters a KLM Fokker F.VIIa for a flight from the Netherlands to Batavia, the first international charter flight.


 * 1921 – The First U. S. Black female pilot, Bessie Coleman, received her license.


 * 1919 – First flight across the Atlantic (Alcock and Brown).


 * 1916 – First flight of the Boeing Model 1, William Boeing’s first aircraft.


 * 1910 – The world’s youngest flyer, 15-year-old Frenchman Marcel Hanriot, gets his pilot’s brevet, no. 15.


 * 1785 – Pilâtre de Rozier and Jules Romain become the first known aeronautical fatalities when their balloon crashes during an attempt to cross the English Channel.