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The Aviation Portal

A Boeing 747 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

Kai Tak Airport in 2009
Kai Tak Airport in 2009
Kai Tak Airport (Chinese: 啟德機場) was the international airport of Hong Kong from 1925 until 1998. It was officially known as the Hong Kong International Airport (Chinese: 香港國際機場) from 1954 to July 6, 1998, when it was closed and replaced by the new Hong Kong International Airport at Chek Lap Kok, 30 km to the west. It is often known as Hong Kong Kai Tak International Airport (Chinese: 香港啟德國際機場), or simply Kai Tak, to distinguish it from its successor which is often referred to as Chek Lap Kok Airport (Chinese: 赤鱲角機場).

With numerous skyscrapers and mountains located to the north and its only runway jutting out into Victoria Harbour, landings at the airport were dramatic to experience and technically demanding for pilots. The History Channel program Most Extreme Airports ranked it as the 6th most dangerous airport in the world.

The airport was home to Hong Kong's international carrier Cathay Pacific, as well as regional carrier Dragonair, freight airline Air Hong Kong and Hong Kong Airways. The airport was also home to the former RAF Kai Tak. (Full article...)

Selected image

Second World War Recruiting poster
Second World War Recruiting poster
Second World War Recruiting poster

Did you know

...that the Vickers machine gun was the standard weapon on all British and French military aircraft after 1916? ...that the Cessna 165 aircraft was instrumental in the recovery of the Cessna Aircraft Company in the years following the Great Depression? ... 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

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

In the news

Wikinews Aviation portal
Read and edit Wikinews

Associated Wikimedia

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

Selected biography

Erich Alfred "Bubi" Hartmann (19 April 1922 – 20 September 1993), also nicknamed "The Blond Knight of Germany" by friends and "The Black Devil" by his enemies, was a German fighter pilot and still is the highest scoring fighter ace in the history of aerial combat. He scored 352 aerial victories (of which 345 were won against the Soviet Air Force, and 260 of which were fighters) in 1,404 combat missions and engaging in aerial combat 825 times while serving with the Luftwaffe in World War II. During the course of his career Hartmann was forced to crash land his damaged fighter 14 times. This was due to damage received from parts of enemy aircraft he had just shot down, or mechanical failure. Hartmann was never shot down or forced to land due to enemy fire.[1]

Hartmann, a pre-war glider pilot, joined the Luftwaffe in 1940 and completed his fighter pilot training in 1942. He was posted to Jagdgeschwader 52 (JG 52) on the Eastern front and was fortunate to be placed under the supervision of some of the Luftwaffe's most experienced fighter pilots. Under their guidance Hartmann steadily developed his tactics which would earn him the coveted Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds on 25 August 1944 for claiming 301 aerial victories.

He scored his 352nd and last aerial victory on 8 May 1945. He and the remainder of JG 52 surrendered to United States Army forces and were turned over to the Red Army. Convicted of false "War Crimes" and sentenced to 25 years of hard labour, Hartmann would spend 10 years in various Soviet prison camps and gulags until he was released in 1955. In 1956, Hartmann joined the newly established West German Luftwaffe and became the first Geschwaderkommodore of Jagdgeschwader 71 "Richthofen". Hartmann resigned early from the Bundeswehr in 1970, largely due to his opposition of the F-104 Starfighter deployment in the Bundesluftwaffe and the resulting clashes with his superiors over this issue. Erich Hartmann died in 1993.

Selected Aircraft

The Convair B-36 was a strategic bomber built by Convair for the United States Air Force, the first to have truly intercontinental range. Unofficially nicknamed the "Peacemaker", the B-36 was the first thermonuclear weapon delivery vehicle, the largest piston aircraft ever to be mass-produced, and the largest warplane of any kind.

The B-36 was the only American aircraft with the range and payload to carry such bombs from airfields on American soil to targets in the USSR, as storing nuclear weapons in foreign countries was diplomatically delicate. The nuclear deterrent the B-36 afforded may have kept the Soviet Army from fighting alongside the North Korean and Chinese armies during the Korean War. Convair touted the B-36 as an "aluminum overcast," a "long rifle" to give SAC a global reach. When General Curtis LeMay headed SAC (1949-57) and turned it into an effective nuclear delivery force, the B-36 formed the heart of his command. Its maximum payload was more than four times that of the B-29, even exceeding that of the B-52.

  • Span: 230 ft 0 in (70.10 m)
  • Length: 162 ft 1 in (49.40 m)
  • Height: 46 ft 9 in (14.25 m)
  • Engines: 6× Pratt & Whitney R-4360-53 "Wasp Major" radials, 3,800 hp (2,500 kW) each
  • Cruising Speed: 230 mph (200 kn, 380 km/h) with jets off
  • Range: 6,795 mi (5,905 nmi, 10,945 km) with 10,000 lb (4,535 kg) payload
  • First Flight: 8 August 1946

Today in Aviation

September 7

  • 2011 – Yak-Service Flight 9634, a Yakovlev Yak-42, crashes just outside of Yaroslavl, Russia due to pilot error, killing 44 of the 45 people on board. Many were players and staff of the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl ice hockey team of the KHL, as the flight was destined for Minsk, Belarus for a league game.
  • 2009 – P-827, a GAF Nomad N.24 A operated by the Indonesian Navy, crashes at Long Ampung Airport, killing five of the nine people on board.
  • 2009 – An Indonesian Air Force Government Aircraft Factories Nomad P837 on a routine flight crashes near a local village of Sekatak Matadau, Bulungan district in East Kalimantan killing 4 of the 9 passengers and crew.
  • 2007 – A Sikorsky MH-53M Pave Low IV, 69-05794, of the 20th Special Operations Squadron, Hurlburt Field, crashes near Duke Field, Eglin Auxiliary Field 3, just before midnight when it suffers tail rotor gear box failure while in a hover. The helicopter was practicing a rescue extraction near a landing zone surrounded by trees more than 90 feet (27 m) tall and had just been brought into a hover at 150 feet (46 m) and was beginning to lower the rescue apparatus when the aircrew felt a shudder. Aircraft commander Lt. Col. Eugene Becker realizes that the tail rotor gears are failing, takes control of the aircraft and prepares to land. Once out of hover, it takes about 45 seconds to return to the LZ, and due to the confined space, Becker drops the chopper vertically but the shuddering worsens. "We knew something was very, very wrong", stated Becker. "all of the gear boxes were surging up and down and making quite a bit of racket." When the MH-53 is 20 feet (6.1 m) above the ground Becker pushes what is left of the rotor's power to the maximum in order to cushion the landing. As soon as the Pave Low hits the ground, the tail rotor fails and the chopper starts spinning and rolls to port, but the sponson fuel tanks keep it from rolling over. Of the seven crew, only two are injured: Col. William Nelson, a flight surgeon from the Air Force Special Operations Command Surgeon General's Office, receives a head injury but walks away from the accident; MH-53 aerial gunner A1C Bradley Jordan suffers a leg fracture. Both men are released from hospital the following day. Lt. Col. Becker is awarded the Koren Kolligian Jr. trophy, one of the Air Force's top safety awards, in July 2008. According to the award nomination, a landing any more forceful could have been fatal to the crew.
  • 2004 – Indonesian human-rights and anti-corruption activist Munir Said Thalib dies of arsenic poisoning on a Garuda Indonesia flight from Jakarta, Indonesia, to Amsterdam in the Netherlands. The victim of an assassination, he apparently had been poisoned during a stopover in Singapore.
  • 1995 – Launch: Space Shuttle Endeavour STS-69 at 15:09:00 UTC. Mission highlights: Wake Shield Facility, SPARTAN.
  • 1988 – The McDonnell Douglas F-15 S/MTD (short takeoff and landing/maneuvering technology demonstrator) flies for the first time.
  • 1966 – Second (of five) Ling-Temco-Vought XC-142As, 62-5922, suffers failure of idler gear in number three engine gearbox during a pre-flight run-up at Edwards AFB, California. Entire gearbox has to be replaced. Investigation reveals problem with inadequately supported aluminum pin that serves as an axle for this gear, making misalignment and eventual failure inevitable, so a fix is designed and the starboard gearboxes of all XC-142s are modified.
  • 1955 – First flight of the Sukhoi S-1, prototype of Su-7
  • 1946 – A Royal Air Force Gloster Meteor flown by Group Captain E. M. Donaldson establishes a new world absolute air speed record of 615.65 mph (990.79 km/h) off the coast of West Sussex, England, . The same day, a U. S. Army Air Forces Republic P-84 Thunderjet narrowly misses the world record, setting a United States speed record of 611 mph (983 km/hr).
  • 1944 – 108 B-29 Superfortresses bomb the Showa Steel Works in Anshan, Manchuria, from bases in China.
  • 1943 – P/O EM O’Donnell and crew in a Vickers Wellington of No. 407 Squadron, sank the German submarine U-669 to the west of the Bay of Biscay.
  • 1942 – Entered Service: Vought F4U Corsair with United States Marine Corps Marine Fighter Squadron 124
  • 1940 – Hermann Göring orders the Luftwaffe to stop targeting British airfields and attack London itself instead.
  • 1940 – 7-8 – The largest mass air combat in history takes place over Britain, with 1,200 British and German aircraft operating in an area of only 24 x 48 km (15 x 30 miles)
  • 1938 – A mass flight of 17 U. S. Navy aircraft makes a 2,570-statute mile (4,138 km) nonstop flight from San Diego, California, to Hawaii in 17 hours 21 min.
  • 1934 – 16 – 9,537 km race over Europe and North Africa and a speed trial of the Challenge 1934 contest.
  • 1931 – Lowell Bayles wins the 1931 Thompson Trophy in the Gee Bee Model Z racer at the National Air Races in Cleveland, Ohio, with a speed of 236.24 mph (380.42 km/hr).
  • 1930 – Capt. John Owen Donaldson, World War I ace (eight victories), after winning two races at an American Legion air meet in Philadelphia, is killed when his plane crashes during a stunt-flying performance. He had won the MacKay Gold Medal for taking first place in the Army's transcontinental air race in October 1919. Greenville Army Air Field, South Carolina, is later renamed Donaldson Air Force Base for the Greenville native.
  • 1909 – The U. S. Army’s first “aerodrome”, an airfield or airport, is established in College Park, Maryland.
  • 1909 – Eugene Lefebvre is killed in the crash of an aeroplane when his controls jam at Juvisy France when his controls jam. Lefebvre dies, becoming the first ‘pilot’ in the world to lose his life in a powered-heavier-than-air-craft.
  • 1904 – The Wright brothers first used their weight-and-derrick-assisted take-off device in order to make themselves independent of the wind and weather. When the heavy weight was released, the rope pulled the aircraft, which sat on a flatbed truck, over the launching track, thus assisting its take-off.
  • 1804 – Zambeccari and two companions, Grasetti and Andreoli, ascend in Bologna attempting to cross the Adriatic, but have to be rescued after one day at sea.

References

  1. ^ Toliver & Constable 1986, p. 12.
  2. ^ "The lucky Tu-154". English Russia. Retrieved 6 November 2011.
  3. ^ "US Navy and US Marine Corps BuNos Third Series (156170 to 160006)". Joe Baugher's Home Page.
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