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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

Zeppelin
Zeppelin
A Zeppelin is a type of rigid airship pioneered by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin in the early 20th century. Due to the outstanding success of the Zeppelin design, the term zeppelin in casual use came to refer to all rigid airships. The German defeat in World War I halted the business temporarily, but under the guidance of Hugo Eckener, the successor of the deceased count, civilian Zeppelins experienced a renaissance in the 1920s. They reached their zenith in the 1930s, when the airships LZ127 "Graf Zeppelin" and LZ129 "Hindenburg" profitably operated regular transatlantic passenger flights. The Hindenburg disaster in 1937 triggered the fall of the "giants of the air", though other factors, including political issues, contributed to the demise. (Full article...)

Selected image

Credit: NASA Langley Research Center
Coloured smoke reveals a vortex of air created by the wing of an airplane, also known as wake turbulence or jetwash. This turbulence can be especially hazardous during the landing and take off phases of flight, where an aircraft's proximity to the ground makes a timely recovery from turbulence-induced problems unlikely.

Did you know

...that Ansett Airlines Flight 232 from Adelaide to Alice Springs in 1972 was the first aircraft hijacking to take place in Australia? ...that the crash of Crossair Flight LX498 was initially attributed to cell phone use, and led to bans of cell phones in airplanes in several countries? ... that before he flew the Spirit of St. Louis on his historic transatlantic flight, Charles Lindbergh's first choice of aircraft was the Ryan M-2?

More Did you know facts

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

In the news

Wikinews Aviation portal
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Associated Wikimedia

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Selected biography

Benjamin Delahauf Foulois (1879-1967) was an early aviation pioneer who rose to become a chief of the U.S. Army Air Corps. The son of a French immigrant, he was born and raised in Connecticut. He enlisted in the Army at age 18 to serve in the Spanish–American War. After just a few month he was separated because of disease he had picked up in Puerto Rico. He re-enlisted in 1899 and was sent to the Philippines where he received a commission as a Second Lieutenant. Foulois believed that the new airplane would replace the cavalry for reconnaissance and in 1908 transferred into the Signal Corps.

Foulois conducted the acceptance test for the Army's first aircraft, a Wright Model A, in 1909. He participated in the Mexican Expedition from 1916–17 and was part of the American Expeditionary Force in France during World War I where he was responsible for the logistics and maintenance of the U.S. air fleet. During World War I he and Billy Mitchell began a long and hostile relationship over the direction of military aviation and the best method to get there. After the war he served as a military attaché to Germany where he gathered a great deal of intelligence on German aviation. He later went on to command the 1st Aero Squadron and ultimately commanded the Air Corps.

He retired in 1935 as part of the fallout from the Air Mail scandal. Foulois continued to advocate for a strong air service in retirement. In 1959, at the invitation of the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, Foulois began touring Air Force bases advocating national security. He died of a heart attack on 25 April 1967 and is buried in his home town of Washington, Connecticut.

Selected Aircraft

The Avro Lancaster was a British four-engine Second World War bomber aircraft made initially by Avro for the British Royal Air Force (RAF). It first saw active service in 1942, and together with the Handley-Page Halifax it was one of the main heavy bombers of the RAF, the RCAF and squadrons from other Commonwealth and European countries serving within RAF Bomber Command. The "Lanc" or "Lankie," as it became affectionately known, became the most famous and most successful of the Second World War night bombers, "delivering 608,612 tons of bombs in 156,000 sorties." Although the Lancaster was primarily a night bomber, it excelled in many other roles including daylight precision bombing, and gained worldwide renown as the "Dam Buster" used in the 1943 Operation Chastise raids on Germany's Ruhr Valley dams.

  • Span: 102 ft (31.09 m)
  • Length: 69 ft 5 in (21.18 m)
  • Height: 19 ft 7 in (5.97 m)
  • Engines: 4× Rolls-Royce Merlin XX V12 engines, 1,280 hp (954 kW) each
  • Maximum Speed: 240 knots (280 mph, 450 km/h) at 15,000 ft (5,600 m)
  • First Flight: 8 January 1941
  • Number built: 7,377
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Today in Aviation

September 30

  • 2012 – U.S. airlines have collected US$924 million in baggage fees since July 1, a three percent increase over the same period in 2011.[1]
  • 1996 – Air Force Academy Slingsby T-3A Firefly crashes 30 miles E of Colorado Springs, Colorado when the crew, who had been practicing a forced landing, suffer engine failure during the key part of the manoeuvre. Cadet Dennis Rando, 21, and his instructor, Captain Clay Smith, 28, KWF.
  • 1994 – Launch: Space Shuttle Endeavour STS-68 at 7:16:01 am EDT. Mission highlights: Space Radar Laboratory-2.
  • 1985 – The first Italian aircraft carrier, Giuseppe Garibaldi, is commissioned.
  • 1982 – H Ross Perot Jr. and J. W. Coburn make history by landing their Bell LongRanger II helicopter in Dallas, Texas 29 days, 3 hours, and 8 min after taking off. It is the first time a trip around the world is completed by helicopter.
  • 1978 – Aarno Lamminparras, an unemployed home building contractor, hijacks Finnair Flight 405, a Sud Aviation SE-210 Caravelle with 47 other people on board flying from Oulu to Helsinki, Finland. At Helsinki, he allows 34 passengers off the plane, which he then forces to fly back to Oulu, where he receives a ransom payment from Finnair, then back to Helsinki, where he receives more money from a Finnish newspaper and releases the remaining 11 passengers. The aircraft then flies to Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, refuels, and returns to Helsinki for more ransom money from the newspaper before flying on to Oulu, where he releases his final three hostages in exchange for a chauffeured limousine ride home and 24 hours alone with his wife. Police storm his house and arrest him.
  • 1975 – Malév Flight 240, a Tupolev Tu-154, crashes on approach near Lebanon, killing all 60 people on board.
  • 1973 – Aeroflot Flight 3932, a Tupolev Tu-104, crashed shortly after takeoff from Koltsovo Airport in Sverdlovsk, Soviet Union. All 108 passengers and crew on board were killed.
  • 1965 – Republic Aviation becomes a division of the Fairchild-Hiller Corporation.
  • 1955 – First cruise for full-scale training exercises without operational restrictions for the Westland Wyvern S Mk. 4, deployed aboard HMS Eagle with Nos. 813 and 827 Squadrons, begins inauspiciously when on this date a Wyvern attempting a go-around after misjudged approach, strikes ship's funnel, forcing the carrier to return to Portsmouth to have Armstrong Siddeley Python turboprop engine extracted from funnel "in which it was stuck like a dart." Repairs delay cruise by a fortnight.
  • 1954 – XA271 a Royal Air Force Miles Marathon T1 of No. 2 Air Navigation School dives into the ground near Calne, Wiltshire, England following structural failure of outer wings.
  • 1949 – The Berlin Airlift officially ends, with 2,325 tons (2,362 tonnes) of food and supplies having been flown into the city. The final flight is made a week later.
  • 1949 – First Avro 707 delta-wing research aircraft, VX784, first flown 6 September 1949 (one source says 4 September), crashes near Blackbushe on test flight out of Boscombe Down, killing Avro test pilot Flt. Lt. Eric Esler. Cause never established
  • 1945 – Squadrons 121, 167, and 170 (Ferry) squadrons were all disbanded.
  • 1944 – Grumman F6F-3 Hellcat, BuNo. 42782, lost 125 miles (201 km) SE of Nantucket Island, Massachusetts during carrier qualifications. Pilot's name/fate unknown. Located by submarine DSV Alvin, 24 September 1968.
  • 1942 – The pilot of an Imperial Japanese Navy Nakajima A6 M2-N (Allied reporting name “Rufe”) floatplane fighter discovers the American base on Adak in the Aleutian Islands, a month after it was established. Japanese aircraft from Kiska bomb Adak daily for the next five days, but their biggest raid, on October 4, consists of only three planes. The rest of the raids consist of one plane each, and Adak suffers almost no damage.
  • 1942 – Since June 1, German night fighters defending Germany have shot down 435 British bombers.
  • 1942 – Engine failure of Messerschmitt Bf 109G-2/trop, Werke Nummer 14256, "Yellow 14" (on its first combat mission), of 3./JG 27, fills cockpit with smoke, forces Luftwaffe ace Hans-Joachim Marseille to bail out near Sidi Abdel Rahman, Egypt. His chest strikes the vertical fin as he departs the fighter, either killing him outright, or rendering him unconscious, as he makes no effort to deploy his parachute. His body is recovered from the desert, ~7 km. South of Sidi Abdel Rahman.
  • 1941 – Maritime Central Airlines was formed at Charlottetown P. E. I. by Carl Burk and Josiah Anderson.
  • 1940 – Since September 1, the Royal Air Force has lost 65 bombers.
  • 1938 – A senior French general tells the British military attaché in Paris that in the event of a war with Germany “French cities would be laid in ruins…They had no means of defense, ” and adds that France was paying the price for having neglected the French Air Force for years.
  • 1936 – The German airlift of Spanish Nationalist troops from Spanish Morocco to Spain ends after 677 flights carrying 12,000 men in August and September. The airlift will be one of the most decisive factors in the eventual Nationalist victory in the Spanish Civil War.
  • 1929 – Fritz von Opel pilots the world's first rocket-powered Opel RAK.1 aircraft on a 75-second, 1.6-kilometer (0.99 mi) flight near Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany.
  • 1914 – The Wakamiya is damaged by a naval mine and forced to retire from the Siege of Tsingtao, ending the first combat deployment of an aviation ship in history.
  • 1911 – First flight across the Continental Divide: Cromwell Dixon in a Curtiss on (both directions)
  • 1907 – A. V. Roe tested his 6-hp JAP powered full scale Biplane at Brooklands, but does not take off. (RAF).
  • 1907 – Flying a Voisin-Farman I biplane at Issy, Henry Farman begins a progressively longer series of flights.

References

  1. ^ Associated Press, "Baggage-Fee Total Tops Last Year's," The Washington Post, December 18, 2012, p. A14.
  2. ^ Brulliard, Karin, "Pakistan Blocks NATO's Afghan-Bound Supply Trucks After Airstrike Kills 3," washingtonpost.com, 30 September 2010, 12:49 p.m. EDT
  3. ^ Brulliard, Karin, and Joshua Partlow, "NATO Airstrike Strains U.S.-Pakistan Relations", washingtonpost.com, 27 November 2011, which corrects the death toll (reported as three in the earlier article) to two.
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