Portal:Aviation/Anniversaries/June 20

June 20


 * 2012 – A Sudanese Air Force PT-6A crashed at Port Sudan city airport, two crew killed.


 * 2011 – On final approach to Petrozavodsk Airport near Petrozavodsk, Russia, after a flight from Moscow's Domodedovo International Airport, RusAir Flight 243, the Tupolev Tu-134A-3 RA-65691, lands short of the runway due to poor visibility and weather, killing 47 passengers and crew members and leaving all five survivors injured. The aircraft is written off.


 * 2010 – The 2010 Cameroon Aéro Service CASA C-212 Aviocar crash near Djoum, Cameroon, kills all 11 on board, including the entire board of Sundance Resources, an Australian mining conglomerate.


 * 2009 – Deceased: American aviator Kenneth L. Reusser, 89.


 * 2004 – Frontier Airlines begins service to Nashville, Tennessee.


 * 1996 – Launch: Space Shuttle Columbia STS-78 at 10:49:00.0075 a.m. EDT. Mission highlights: Spacelab mission.


 * 1983 – First flight of the Bombardier Dash 8


 * 1980 – Test pilot and barnstormer Herman "Fish" Salmon dies in the crash of a Lockheed Constellation he is ferrying to Alaska.


 * 1979 – Nikola Kavaja, a Serbian nationalist and anti-communist, hijacks American Airlines Flight 293, a Boeing 727, shortly before it lands in Chicago, Illinois, intending to gain control of an aircraft that he can crash into Yugoslav Communist Party headquarters in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. He allows the passengers and most of the crew to debark, then orders the crew to fly the 727 to LaGuardia Airport in New York City. There he demands and receives a Boeing 707, which he orders to be flown to Shannon, Ireland, where he intends to take control of the 707 for the suicide flight to Belgrade, but the hijacking ends when he surrenders to authorities in Shannon.


 * 1973 – Aeroméxico Flight 229, a Douglas DC-9, crashes into the side of Las Minas Mountain while on approach to Lic. Gustavo Díaz Ordaz International Airport; all 27 on board die.


 * 1972 – Airline pilots hold a worldwide strike, calling for tighter security


 * 1966 – Sheila Scott completes a solo round-the-world flight


 * 1964 – Civil Air Transport Flight B-908, a Curtiss C-46, crashes near Shenkang, Taiwan, killing all 57 on board.


 * 1958 – First flight of the Westland Wessex


 * 1956 – Linea Aeropostal Flight 253, a Lockheed L-749 Constellation, crashes into the Atlantic Ocean off Asbury Park, New Jersey. All 74 passengers and crew on board are killed.


 * 1956 – The US Navy commissions its first helicopter carrier, USS Thetis Bay


 * 1955 – Exercise Carte Blanche. It was the largest NATO air defence exercise, involving all 12 RCAF Air Division squadrons. Some 300 aircraft took part, nearly 2500 RCAF sorties.


 * 1951 – First flight of the Bell X-5, first aircraft with swing wings flies for 30 min at Edwards, California.


 * 1951 – The first aircraft completely designed and built in Canada, the first example of the Orenda-powered Avro Canada CF-100 Mk 2 Canuck, flies for the first time at Malton, Ontario.


 * 1950 First flight of the Blackburn Beverley


 * 1944 – TWA Flight 277, a Douglas C-54 Skymaster, crashes into Fort Mountain, Maine, in severe weather, killing all 7 passengers and crew on board.


 * 1944 – On the second and final day of the Battle of the Philippine Sea, 216 Task Force 58 aircraft make the only raid of the battle against the Japanese fleet at extremely long range at sunset, sinking the aircraft carrier Hiyo and damaging the aircraft carriers Zuikaku and Chiyoda, battleship Haruna, and heavy cruiser Maya. In addition to 20 aircraft missing and presumed shot down, Task Force 58 loses 80 planes, which ditch due to fuel exhaustion or crash while attempting night landings on U. S. carriers. During the day, the Japanese lose another 65 carrier aircraft, leaving them with only 35; during the two days of battle, they have lost 476 carrier- and land-based aircraft and battleship- and cruiser-based floatplanes.


 * 1944 – Los Negros-based U. S. Army Air Forces B-24 Liberators of the Thirteenth Air Force bomb Woleai.


 * 1944 – Allied aircraft begin concentrated attacks on Japanese forces on Noemfoor. By July 1, they will have dropped about 800 tons (725,755 kg) of bombs on the island.


 * 1942 – In North Africa, Axis forces begin the final phase of the Battle of Gazala with a massive aerial bombardment of Tobruk by between 296 and 306 aircraft. Tobruk surrenders the next day.


 * 1941 – The United States Department of War creates the United States Army Air Forces, with General Henry H. Arnold as its first commander. As part of the reorganization, General Headquarters Air Force is renamed Air Force Combat Command; the new Army Air Forces organization consists of Air Force Combat Command (its combat element) and the United States Army Air Corps (its logistics and training element).


 * 1939 – Test flight of first rocket plane using liquid propellants.


 * 1935 – Douglas Y1O-35, 32-319, c/n 1119, of the 88th Observation Squadron, suffers loss of power on right engine during takeoff from Griffith Park, Los Angeles, California, for a flight to Rockwell Field, San Diego, California, at ~1000 hrs. Pilot, Cadet Tracy R. Walsh, manages to hop over soldiers breaking camp alongside runway but does not have sufficient flying speed. Airplane crashes through a tent, a fence, and into an automobile, demolishing itself, the vehicle, and killing three civilians in the car. Three crew on plane unhurt. O-35 surveyed and dropped from records at March Field, 15 October 1935.


 * 1926 – The United States Coast Guard opens the first permanent Coast Guard Air Stations.


 * 1925 – Off New England, a United States Coast Guard Vought UO-1 becomes the first aircraft to pursue a rum-runner.


 * 1917 – The British war cabinet decides to increase the size of the Royal Flying Corps from 108 to 200 squadrons, with most of increase coming in bomber squadrons.


 * 1914 – While the Austro-Hungarian airship Militärluftschiff III (or M.III) hovers over Fischamend testing new camera equipment, an Austro-Hungarian Army pilot tries to loop M.III in a Farman biplane. The airplane strikes the top of the airship, tearing a hole and igniting the escaping hydrogen gas. Both aircraft are destroyed, and both men in the airplane and all seven men aboard M.III are killed. It is the end of the Austro-Hungarian airship program.


 * 1913 – First fatality in U.S. Naval aviation occurs when flight instructor Ens. William Billingsley is thrown from pilot seat of the second Wright CH seaplane, B-2, at height of 1,600 feet in turbulent air over Annapolis, Maryland. The passenger, Lt. John Henry Towers, stays with airplane, sustaining injuries when it hits water. Design was modified conversion of Wright Model B with two pusher propellers driven through chains connected to a 60 hp Wright engine.


 * 1897 – Percy Pilcher is towed about 750 feet in the Hawk, the fourth of his hang gliders


 * 1540 – João Torto, in Viseu, Portugal, builds two pairs of cloth-covered wings, an upper and lower, which are connected by iron hoops. While preparing to jump from the town’s cathedral to the nearby St. Matthew’s fields, he is killed when the elaborated helmet slips over his eyes and he falls onto a roof.