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The Aviation Portal

A Boeing 747 in 1978 operated by Pan Am

Aviation includes the activities surrounding mechanical flight and the aircraft industry. Aircraft includes fixed-wing and rotary-wing types, morphable wings, wing-less lifting bodies, as well as lighter-than-air craft such as hot air balloons and airships.

Aviation began in the 18th century with the development of the hot air balloon, an apparatus capable of atmospheric displacement through buoyancy. Some of the most significant advancements in aviation technology came with the controlled gliding flying of Otto Lilienthal in 1896; then a large step in significance came with the construction of the first powered airplane by the Wright brothers in the early 1900s. Since that time, aviation has been technologically revolutionized by the introduction of the jet which permitted a major form of transport throughout the world. (Full article...)

Selected article

Air Force One
Air Force One
Air Force One (the ATC callsign of any U.S. Air Force aircraft carrying the President) has, since 1990, consisted of two specifically-configured, highly customized Boeing 747-200B series aircraft, known as the VC-25. The planes' three floors (4,000 square feet – 372 m²) include multiple modifications including the president's executive suite which includes a private dressing room, workout room, lavatory, shower, and private office. (Full article...)

Selected image

Boeing-Stearman NS-1 Bi-plane
Boeing-Stearman NS-1 Bi-plane
Credit: U.S. Navy
Boeing-Stearman Model 75's. Taken in 1936 at NAS Pensacola during training of the first class of the Naval Aviation Cadet program. Photo includes Boone Guyton (plane in rear) who later became a test pilot for Chance-Vought (Vought Sikorsky) in 1939.

Did you know

...that in 1943 British Overseas Airways Corporation Flight 777 was shot down by German Junkers Ju 88s, killing actor Leslie Howard and leading to speculation that it was an attempt to assassinate Winston Churchill? ...that Garuda Indonesia flight 152 was the deadliest air disaster of 1997, claiming the lives of over 230 people? ... that on 28 May 1931, a Bellanca CH-300 fitted with a Packard DR-980 diesel engine set a 55-year record for staying aloft for 84 hours and 32 minutes without being refueled?

More Did you know facts

General images - load new batch

The following are images from various aviation-related articles on Wikipedia.

In the news

Wikinews Aviation portal
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Associated Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

Selected biography

Charles Lindbergh
Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr. (February 4, 1902 – August 26, 1974), known as "Lucky Lindy" and "The Lone Eagle", was a pioneering United States aviator famous for piloting the first solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927, flying from Roosevelt Airfield (Nassau County, Long Island), New York to Paris on May 20-May 21, 1927 in his single-engine aircraft The Spirit of St. Louis.

He grew up in Little Falls, Minnesota. Early on he showed an interest in machinery, especially aircraft. After training as a pilot with the Army Air Service Lindbergh took a job as lead pilot of an airmail route in a DeHavilland DH-4 biplane. He was renowned for delivering the mail under any circumstances.

Lindbergh is recognized in aviation for demonstrating and charting polar air-routes, high altitude flying techniques, and increasing aircraft flying range by decreasing fuel consumption. These innovations are the basis of modern intercontinental air travel.

Selected Aircraft

[[File:|right|250px|]] The Tupolev TB-3 (Russian: Тяжёлый Бомбардировщик, Tyazholy Bombardirovschik, Heavy Bomber, civilian designation ANT-6) was a heavy bomber aircraft which was deployed by the Soviet Air Force in the 1930s and during World War II. It was the world's first cantilever wing four-engine heavy bomber. Despite obsolescence and being officially withdrawn from service in 1939, TB-3 performed bomber and transport duties through much of WWII. The TB-3 also saw combat as a Zveno project fighter mothership and as a light tank transport.

  • Span: 41.80 m (137 ft 2 in)
  • Length: 24.4 m (80 ft 1 in)
  • Height: 8.50 m (27 ft 11 in)
  • Engines: 4× Mikulin M-17F V12 engines, 525 kW (705 hp) each
  • Maximum Speed: 196 km/h (106 knots, 122 mph) at 3000 m (9,840 ft)
  • First Flight: 22 December 1930
More selected aircraft Read more...

Today in Aviation

October 1

  • 1994 – United Airlines creates a new airline named United Shuttle.
  • 1990 – Curtis LeMay, American Air Force general, dies (b. 1906).
  • 1986 – The B-1 B achieved Initial Operational Capability.
  • 1984 – Aeroflot Flight 3352, a Tupolev Tu-154B-1, crashes on landing at Tsentralny Airport, Omsk Russia. One hundred and seventy-four passengers and four people on the ground perish in the crash.
  • 1969 – The Concorde supersonic transport plane exceeds the speed of sound - more than MACH 1 for the first time.
  • 1959 – English Electric test pilot Johnny W.C. Squier, flying prototype two-seat English Electric Lightning T.4, XL628, suffers structural failure, ejects at Mach 1.7, becoming first UK pilot to eject above the speed of sound. Radar tracks the descending fighter, but not the pilot as he landed in the Irish Sea, and despite an extensive search, Squier has to make his way ashore by himself after 28 hours in a dinghy. Squier passes away 30 January 2006, aged 85.
  • 1958 – NASA was created to replace NACA.
  • 1957 – Aborted takeoff at Homestead AFB, Florida, causes write-off of Boeing B-47B-50-BW Stratojet, 51-2317, of the 379th Bomb Wing. Gear collapses, aircraft burns, but base fire department is able to quench flames such that crew escapes - pilots blow canopy to get out, navigator egresses through his escape hatch.
  • 1956 – Chapter Two of the Experimental Aircraft Association is chartered in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
  • 1956 – The RAF's first Avro Vulcan B.1, XA897, which completed a fly-the-flag mission to New Zealand in September, approaches Heathrow in bad weather on GCA approach, crashing short of the runway. Two pilots eject, but four crew do not have ejection seats and are killed. Aircraft Captain Squadron Leader "Podge" Howard and co-pilot Air Marshal Sir Harry Broadhurst survive. Signal delays in the primitive Ground-Controlled Approach system of the time may have let the aircraft descend too low without being warned. Undercarriage damaged in contact short of runway with control lost during attempted go-around.
  • 1954 – Nos. 425 and 432 Squadrons were formed at St. Hubert and Bagotville, Quebec, and equipped with Avro Canada CF-100 fighters.
  • 1953 – No. 440 Squadron was reformed at Bagotville, Quebec, and equipped with Avro Canada CF-100 fighters.
  • 1953 – A USAF North American B-25 Mitchell attached to Andrews AFB, Maryland, crashes in fog and heavy overcast into the forested pinnacle of historic Pine Mountain, striking Dowdell's Knob at ~2130 hrs., near Warm Springs in western Georgia, killing five of six on board, said spokesmen at Lawson AFB. The bomber had departed from Eglin AFB. Florida, at 1930 hrs. for Andrews AFB. Two Eglin airmen were among those KWF. The sole survivor, Richard K. Schmidt, 19, of Rumson, New Jersey, a Navy airman assigned at NAS Whiting Field, Florida, who had hitch-hiked a ride on the aircraft, was found by two farmers who heard the crash and hiked to the spot from their mountainside homes "and found the sailor shouting for help as he lay in the midst of scattered wreckage and mutilated bodies. They said [that] they found a second man alive but base officials said [that] he died before he could be given medical attention." Tom Baxley, one of the farmers, said that the bodies of the dead, most of them torn by the collision, were flung about among the pine trees, and bits of the plane were hurled over a wide area. Schmidt was hospitalized with a possible hip fracture and cuts. Among the fatalities were two airmen assigned to Eglin AFB who had also hitch-hiked a ride and were on their way home on leave. The impact location is on the site of the proposed $40,000,000 Hall of History to mark a scenic point frequented by the late President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
  • 1952 – The RCAF No. 1 Air Division formed as part of 4th Allied Tactical Air Force.
  • 1952 – The United States Navy reclassifies all of its “aircraft carriers” (CV) and “large aircraft carriers” (CVB) as “attack aircraft carriers” (CVA).
  • 1952 – U.S. Navy Grumman TBM-3S2 Avenger, BuNo 53439, of Air Anti Submarine Squadron-23, NAS San Diego, California, on night radar bombing training flight strikes Pacific Ocean surface at 110 knots (200 km/h) ~2 1/2 miles W of Point Loma. Both crew survive the accidental ditching, with pilot Lt. Ross C. Genz, USNR, rescued after four hours in a life raft by a civilian ship, but radarman AN Harold B. Tenney, USN, apparently drowns after evacuating the bomber and is never seen again. Wreckage discovered in 1992 during underwater survey.
  • 1950 – No. 411 Squadron (Auxiliary) was formed at Toronto, Ontario.
  • 1946 – RAF Bristol Brigand TF.1, RH744, failed to develop sufficient power on takeoff from RAE Farnborough, overran into soft ground and flipped over, without injuries to crew. This was the first Brigand written off.
  • 1946 – RCAF returned to a peacetime footing and many Regular Force personnel were reduced in rank.
  • 1945 – The first annual general meeting of the International Air Transport Association begins in Montreal, Canada.
  • 1942 – No. 149 (TB) Squadron was formed at Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
  • 1941 – Inter-Island Airways is renamed Hawaiian Airlines.
  • 1940 – A British bomber is shot down over the Netherlands by German antiaircraft artillery after being illuminated by a searchlight coupled to a Freya radar. It is the first time an aircraft is destroyed after being detected and illuminated by a radar-guided searchlight.
  • 1938 – The newly-formed Trans-Canada Air Lines began regular air mail service between Winnipeg and Vancouver.
  • 1936 – C. W. A. Scott and Giles Guthrie win the Schlesinger Race from England to Johannesburg, South Africa, flying Vega Gull G-AEKE landing at Rand Airport on 1 October 1936. The aircraft had left Portsmouth 52 hours 56 min 48 seconds earlier. Out of the original 14 entries to the race Scott and Guthrie were the only ones to finish, winning the 10,000 pounds prize money.
  • 1931 – KLM begins a regular service between Amsterdam and Batavia by Fokker F.XII. At 13,744 km (8,540 miles) this is the longest regular air route in the world at the time.
  • 1926 in aviation|1926 – An oil field accident cost aviator Wiley Post his left eye, but he used the settlement money to buy his first aircraft.
  • 1924 – Pilot E. A. Alton set out on the first recorded aerial mail flight from Estevan, Saskatchewan to Winnipeg, but unfortunately was aborted by a crash.
  • 1920 – Refresher training began at Camp Borden, Ontario.
  • 1917 – The Royal Navy tests an aircraft catapult for the first time, using a compressed-air catapult aboard the catapult trials ship Slinger to launch an unmanned Short 184 with its fuselage fabric removed and engine replaced by ballast. On the same day, the Royal Navy conducts the first launch of an aircraft from a battleship or battlecruiser, when Royal Naval Air Service Flight Commander F. J. Rutland takes off in a Sopwith Pup from a platform mounted on a 15-inch (381-mm) gun turret of the battlecruiser HMS Repulse.
  • 1912 – The Military Aviation Service is founded in Germany. [3]
  • 1906 – United States Army Lieutenant Frank Lahm wins the first Gordon Bennett international balloon race. [4]
  • 1881 – William E. Boeing is born in Detroit, Mich. (d. 1956).
  • 1861 – The United States Army Balloon Corps, consisting of five balloons and fifty men, is formed. [5]

References

  1. ^ Foster, Malcolm (October 1, 2012). "Ospreys Fly to U.S. Base on Okinawa Despite Protests". (Associated Press) Bigstory.ap.org. Retrieved December 2, 2012.
  2. ^ Editor-in-Chief: Bill Gunston, Aviation: Year by Year, Amber Books Limited, London, UK, 2001.
  3. ^ Editor-in-Chief: Bill Gunston, Aviation: Year by Year, Amber Books Limited, London, UK, 2001.
  4. ^ Editor-in-Chief: Bill Gunston, Aviation: Year by Year, Amber Books Limited, London, UK, 2001.
  5. ^ Editor-in-Chief: Bill Gunston, Aviation: Year by Year, Amber Books Limited, London, UK, 2001.
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