Portal:Aviation/Anniversaries/October 26

October 26


 * 2011 – All Nippon Airways flies the first commercial flight of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, from Tokyo to Hong Kong.


 * 2011 – In response to an ongoing industrial dispute with three labour unions, all Qantas aircraft are grounded by Qantas chief executive officer Alan Joyce.


 * 2009 – S-Air Flight 9607, a BAe 125, registration RA-02807, crashes on approach to Minsk International Airport. All three crew and both passengers are killed.


 * 2008 – Qatar Airways launches daily nonstop flights between Doha and New York-JFK using Boeing 777-300ER.


 * 2007 – First flight of the Embraer Lineage 1000


 * 2007 – Philippine Airlines Flight 475, an Airbus A320-214, overruns the runway on landing at Bancasi Airport in Butuan City, the Philippines, and is destroyed when it plows into the tropical rainforest beyond the end of the runway. All 154 people on board survive.


 * 2006 – 2006 Falsterbo Swedish Coast Guard crash was the crash of a CASA C-212 Aviocar turboprop airplane belonging to the Swedish Coast Guard in Falsterbo Canal, Sweden.


 * 1993 – China Eastern Airlines Flight 5398, a McDonnell Douglas MD-82, overruns the runway at Fuzhou Changle International Airport in heavy weather, killing 2 of 80 on board; pilot error is blamed.


 * 1993 – ValuJet Airlines begins operations.


 * 1989 – China Airlines Flight 204, a Boeing 737, crashes into the Chiashan mountain range after takeoff from Hualien Airport due to pilot error; all 54 on board perish.


 * 1983 – Pan Am celebrates the 25th anniversary of their first Boeing 707 with a 707 flight from JFK International Airport to Paris.


 * 1982 – A West German Air Force Lockheed F-104G Starfighter crashed in the Netherlands, pilot killed.


 * 1978 – A USAF LTV A-7D-6-CV Corsair II, 69-6240, of the 355th TFW, on flight from Tinker AFB, Oklahoma, crashes on approach to Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona, coming down in street between University of Arizona buildings and Mansfield Junior High School in Tucson, killing driver of auto struck by the fighter, and injuring at least six other civilians. Pilot Capt. Frederick Ashler, 28, ejected safely while passing over the university campus.


 * 1973 – First flight of the Dassault-Breguet/Dornier Alpha Jet


 * 1972 – Igor Sikorsky dies.


 * 1968 – First flight of the Embraer EMB 110 Bandeirante


 * 1967 – First flight of the BAC Strikemaster


 * 1966 – A fire in a flare locker in Hangar Bay One of the USS Oriskany (CVA-34) beginning at 0728 hrs. spreads through the hangar deck and to the flight deck. Before the fires are extinguished two Kaman SH-2 Seasprite helicopters are lost, Douglas A-4E Skyhawk, BuNo 151075, is destroyed, and three others are damaged, as are Hangar Bays One and Two, the forward officer quarters and catapults, and 44 crew are killed.


 * 1962 – The last Boeing B-52 off the production line is delivered to the US Air Force.


 * 1958 – The first commercial flight by a Boeing 707 jet airliner takes place, on Pan American World Airways transatlantic service from New York City to Paris.


 * 1958 – Snowy Mountains Project worker Tom Sonter accidentally discovers the wreckage of the Australian National Airways Avro 618 Ten Southern Cloud, which had disappeared without trace in bad weather over the Snowy Mountains in New South Wales, Australia, with the loss of all eight people on board on March 21, 1931, in Australia‘s first airline disaster.


 * 1958 – North American F-86L Sabre, 53-0569, of the 330th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron, Stewart AFB, New York, crashes W of that base while on approach in a snow storm, killing pilot Lt. Gary W. Crane.


 * 1956 – Royal Canadian Navy accepted the first seven of 100 Grumman Tracker aircraft at Downsview, Ontario.


 * 1956 – A USAF Fairchild C-119G-FA Flying Boxcar, 51-8026A, c/n 10769, of the 61st Troop Carrier Squadron, 314th Troop Carrier Wing, Tactical Air Command, Sewart Air Force Base, Tennessee, on a cargo airlift mission to Olmsted Air Force Base, Pennsylvania, crashes 7 miles N of Newburg, Pennsylvania at ~1515 hrs. ET, killing four crew. The weather at Olmsted was fluctuating rapidly with rain and fog, and at 1400 hrs. the pilot reported a missed approach to the field. After being cleared to altitude over the Lancaster beacon the conditions at Olmsted improved to above minimums and the pilot requested another approach. At 1506 Eastern he was cleared for a straight-in approach from New Kingston Fan Marker to Olmsted. At 1509 he reported leaving the New Kingston Fan Marker inbound and at 1511 he reported leaving 3,000 feet. The aircraft crashed in mountainous terrain 22.5 nm W of the Kingston Fan Marker. KWF are 1st Lt. Robert Siegfried Hantsch, pilot, Walter Beverly Gordon, Jr., co-pilot, T/Sgt. Marvin W. Seigler, engineer, and 1st Lt. Gracye E. Young, of the 4457th USAF Hospital, Sewart AFB.


 * 1952 – A BOAC Comet is badly damaged in an accident during take-off from Rome.


 * 1947 – (October 26-November 7) Rhulin A. Thomas makes the first solo coast-to-coast flight by a deaf pilot. (Calbraith Perry Rodgers was an earlier deaf pilot who flew coast-to-coast in 1911, but was supported by a team on the ground.)


 * 1944 – The highest-scoring Japanese ace in history, Hiroyoshi Nishizawa, is killed when the Nakajima Ki-49 (Allied reporting name “Helen”) transport aircraft in which he is riding as a passenger is shot down by a U. S. Navy F6 F Hellcat fighter over Calapan, Mindoro Island, in the Philippine Islands. His score stands at at least 87—and possibly over 100—victories at the time of his death.


 * 1944 – 44 U. S. Army Air Forces B-24 Liberator and B-25 Mitchell bombers of the Fifth and Thirteenth Air Forces sink the Japanese light cruiser Abukuma southwest of Negros, and 253 carrier aircraft of Task Force 38 sink the Japanese light cruiser Noshiro off Batbatan Island.


 * 1944 – Sole Platt-LePage XR-1A helicopter, 42-6581, is damaged in an accident at Wright Field, Ohio, due to the failure of a pinion bearing support in the starboard rotor hub and is shipped back to the manufacturer. It will be declared surplus following the end of World War II.


 * 1944 – WASP pilot Gertrude Tompkins Silver of the 601st Ferrying Squadron, 5th Ferrying Group, Love Field, Dallas, Texas, departs Mines Field, Los Angeles, California, in North American P-51D-15-NA Mustang, 44-15669, at 1600 hrs PWT, headed for the East Coast. She took off into the wind, into an offshore fog bank, and was expected that night at Palm Springs. She never arrived. Due to a paperwork foul-up, a search did not get under way for several days, and while the eventual search of land and sea was massive, it failed to find a trace of Silver or her plane. She is the only missing WASP pilot. She had married Sgt. Henry Silver one month before her disappearance.


 * 1943 – First flight of the Dornier Do 335 V1 CP+UA


 * 1943 – F/L RM Aldwinckle and crew in a Consolidated Liberator of No. 10 Squadron sank the German submarine U-420 in the North Atlantic.


 * 1942 – An aircraft carrier action takes place northeast of the Solomon Islands during the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands. U. S. Navy carrier aircraft badly damage the Japanese aircraft carriers Shōkaku and Zuihō, while Japanese carrier aircraft fatally damage the aircraft carrier USS Hornet (CV-8). The abandoned Hornet is finished off by Japanese destroyers early the next morning becoming the only U. S. fleet carrier ever to be sunk by enemy surface ships.


 * 1940 – First flight of the North American P-51 Mustang


 * 1931 – First flight of the de Havilland Tiger Moth prototype G-ABRC


 * 1925 – Schneider Trophy race flown at Baltimore, USA. Won by Jimmy Doolittle (United States) in a Curtiss R3C at 374.2 km/h (232.6 mph).


 * 1922 – The first landing is made on USS Langley by Lt Cdr Geoffrey DeChevalier in an Aeromarine 39.


 * 1909 – Marie Marvingt pilots a balloon across the North Sea and the English Channel from Europe to England.


 * 1907 – Henry Farman sets a world powered heavier-than-air distance record of 771 m (2,530 ft).