Portal:Aviation/Anniversaries/September 21

September 21


 * 2012 – A Syrian Air Force jet reportedly is shot down by rebel forces over Atarib, Syria.


 * 2012 – A Space Shuttle is airborne for the last time as a Shuttle Carrier Aircraft completes a three-day journey to transport the retired Space Shuttle Endeavour from Cape Canaveral, Florida, to Los Angeles, California. After two days of delays due to bad weather, the aircraft had departed Cape Canaveral on 19 September and made low passes over Florida's Space Coast and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) centers in Mississippi and Louisiana before spending the night at Ellington Field in Houston, Texas; proceeded on 20 September to El Paso, Texas, for a refueling stop before flying over the White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico and over Tucson, Arizona, in tribute to retired Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, ending the day with an overnight stop at Edwards Air Force Base in California; and on 21 September had completed the final leg of the journey by making low-level passes over Sacramento, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and Los Angeles, California, before landing at Los Angeles International Airport.


 * 2005 – JetBlue Airways Flight 292, an Airbus A320, makes an emergency landing in Los Angeles, California because of landing gear steering failure. There are no injuries to the 139 passengers and six crew members.


 * 2004 – UH-60A Black Hawk 87-24579 from A Company, 1–244th Aviation Regiment crashes near Nasiriyah, wounding four crew members.


 * 2002 – Air Canada Douglas DC-9 makes final flight to place of honour at the Canada Aviation Museum


 * 1994 – Introduction: Hongdu JL-8


 * 1993 – In the first of the three Transair Georgia airliner shootdowns, a Tupolev Tu-134A is hit on approach to Sukhumi-Babusheri Airport by a surface-to-air missile; the plane crashes into the Black Sea, killing all five crew members and all 22 passengers.


 * 1984 – First flight of the Dassault Falcon 900


 * 1979 – Two RAF Hawker Siddeley Harrier jump-jets from RAF Wittering collide over the UK. Both pilots ejected safely. One of the jets broke up in midair and fell harmlessly into a field but the other dropped onto the center of Wisbech in Cambridgeshire, destroying two houses and a bungalow. Several people were injured in the accident and three people were killed.


 * 1969 – The Mexicana Boeing 727-64 XA-SEJ strikes the ground short of the runway on final approach to Mexico City International Airport in Mexico City, Mexico, becomes airborne again, then crashes on a railway embankment, killing 27 of the 118 people on board.


 * 1967 – Hawker Siddeley Kestrel, XS693, fitted with 19,000-lb. thrust Bristol-Siddeley Pegasus 6 engine, crashes during trials at Filton, Sqn. Ldr. H. Rigg escaping safely.


 * 1964 – First flight of the North American XB-70 Valkyrie, the world’s first Mach 3 bomber in Palmdale, California.


 * 1964 – During delivery flight of North American XB-70A-1-NA Valkyrie, 62-0001, from Palmdale, California to Edwards AFB, California, on touchdown the brakes on the main gear lock up and the friction causes the eight tires and wheels to burn. The Valkyrie was otherwise undamaged.


 * 1961 – First flight of the Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopter


 * 1956 – Grumman company test pilot Tom Attridge shoots himself down in a Grumman F11F Tiger, BuNo 138260, during a Mach 1.0 20 degree dive from 22,000 feet (6,700 m) to 7,000 feet (2,100 m). He fires two bursts from the fighter's 20 mm cannon during the descent and as he reaches 7,000 feet (2,100 m) the jet is struck multiple times, including one shell that is ingested by the engine, shredding the compressor blades. He limps the airframe back towards the Grumman airfield but comes down at almost the same spot where the first prototype impacted on 19 October: 1954. Pilot gets clear before jet burns, suffers only minor injuries – investigation shows that he had overtaken and passed through his own gunfire.


 * 1953 – North Korean pilot No Kum-Sok defects, bringing his MiG-15 with him to Seoul and collecting a $US 100,000 reward.


 * 1951 – The US Marine Corps makes the world's first mass combat deployment by helicopter. 228 Marines are landed in 12 Sikorsky HRSs.


 * 1943 – (Overnight) A Northwest African Air Force raid on Bastia damages the port enough to slow the German evacuation of Corsica.


 * 1942 – First flight of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress


 * 1942 – Convoy PQ 18 arrives at Archangel in the Soviet Union. During its voyage, aircraft from the British aircraft carrier HMS Avenger have attacked 16 German submarines and contributed to the sinking of one, and Avenger’s fighters and the convoy’s antiarcraft guns have shot down 41 German aircraft. Because of these high losses, German aircraft rarely attack Arctic convoys again.


 * 1939 – First flight of the Lockheed Model 18 Lodestar


 * 1938 – Major General Oscar Westover, Chief of the U. S. Army Air Corps, is killed at Burbank, California, in the crash of a Northrop A-17AS he is piloting.


 * 1938 – USAAC Chief Maj. Gen. Oscar Westover is killed in crash of Northrop A-17AS, 36-349, c/n 289, '1', out of Bolling Field, Washington, D.C., in a crosswind short of the runway at Lockheed Air Terminal in Burbank, California, now known as Bob Hope Airport. The single-engined attack design used as a high-speed staff transport, crashed into a house at 1007 Scott Road in Burbank. Also KWF is his mechanic S/Sgt Samuel Hymes. Northeast Air Base, Massachusetts, renamed Westover Field on 1 December 1939, later Westover AFB on 13 January 1948.


 * 1916 – One only prototype Avro 521 fighter, 1811, (a serial that duplicated one assigned to a Bleriot monoplane), assigned to Central Flying School Upavon, crashes killing pilot Lt. W. H. S. Garnett.


 * 1913 – The first aerobatic maneuver, a sustained inverted flight, is performed in France.


 * 1802 – Frenchman Andre-Jacques Garnerin makes the first parachute descent in England, jumping from a balloon over London.