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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

Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier on October 14, 1947 in the Bell X-1, as shown in this newsreel.
A newsreel showing the breaking of the sound barrier on 14 October 1947 by Chuck Yeager in the rocket-powered Bell X-1. Flying at an altitude of 45,000 ft (13.7 km), Yeager became the first person to break the sound barrier in level flight.

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 Theo Osterkamp was the first German reconnaissance pilot to fly a land-based aircraft to England during World War I?

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 VZ-9 Avrocar (full military designation VZ-9-AV) was a Canadian VTOL aircraft developed by Avro Aircraft Ltd. as part of a secret U.S. military project carried out in the early years of the Cold War.[2] The Avrocar intended to exploit the Coandă effect to provide lift and thrust from a single "turborotor" blowing exhaust out the rim of the disk-shaped aircraft to provide anticipated VTOL-like performance. In the air, it would have resembled a flying saucer. Two prototypes were built as "proof-of-concept" test vehicles for a more advanced USAF fighter and also for a U.S. Army tactical combat aircraft requirement.[3] In flight testing, the Avrocar proved to have unresolved thrust and stability problems that limited it to a degraded, low-performance flight envelope; subsequently, the project was cancelled in 1961.

  • Diameter:18 ft (5.486 m)
  • Height: 3 ft 6 in (1.1 m)
  • Engines: 3 x Turbomeca Marboré Continental J69-T-9
  • Max Speed: 300 mph (482 km/h)
  • First Flight: 12 November 1959
  • Number built: 2
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Today in Aviation

August 28

  • 2009 – Launch: Space Shuttle Discovery STS-128 at 23:59 EDT. Mission highlights: ISS assembly flight 17A: MPLM Leonardo & 6 person ISS crew.
  • 2003 – CH-47D Chinook 88-0098 from F Company/159th Aviation Brigade written off in Iraq.[4]
  • 1993 – 76 die in an airplane crash in Tajikistan. The plane, a Yak-40 crashed while taking off in Khorog for a flight to the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, 160 miles to northwest.
  • 1988 – Ramstein airshow disaster: Three of the ten Aermacchi MB-339PAN jets from the Italian Air Force display team Frecce Tricolori collide in mid-air in front of the audience while performing their 'pierced heart' formation. One aircraft crashes directly into the crowd. Sixty-seven spectators and all three pilots are killed and 346 seriously injured in the resulting explosion and fire.
  • 1980 – (28-31) The 3rd FAI World Rally Flying Championship is held in Aschaffenburg, West Germany. Individual winners are 1. Witold Świadek / Andrzej Korzeniowski (Poland), 2. Otto Höfling / Michael Amtmann (West Germany), 3. Luckerbauer / Meszaros (Austria). Team results are 1. Poland, 2. West Germany, 3. Austria.
  • 1972 – Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) de Havilland Canada DHC-4 Caribou transport aircraft registration A4-233 carrying three crew and 26 passengers crashed in a remote valley south of the town of Wau in Papua New Guinea. The wreckage of the aircraft was located on 31 August following an extensive search by military and civilian aircraft. Five of the passengers survived the crash but one of them died shortly after being rescued.
  • 1968 – McDonnell Douglas completes the 3,000th F-4 Phantom II.
  • 1966 – The Soviet Union announces that it is training North Vietnamese Air Force pilots.
  • 1963 – Two Boeing KC-135A-BN Stratotankers, 61-0319, c/n 18226, and 61-0322, c/n 18229, assigned with the 19th Bomb Wing, collide over the Atlantic between Bermuda and Nassau, all eleven crew aboard the two jets lost (6 on 0319 and 5 on 0322). Debris and oil slicks found ~750 miles ENE of Miami, Florida. Aircraft were returning to Homestead AFB, Florida after mission to refuel two Boeing B-47 Stratojets from Schilling AFB, Kansas (both of which landed safely) when contact with them was lost. Search suspended Monday night, 2 September 1963, when wreckage recovered by the Air Rescue Service is positively identified as being from the missing tankers.
  • 1962 – While on an intermediate stop during a ferry flight to Moscow for acceptance testing, Kamov Ka-22, 0I-01, rolled to the left and crashed inverted, killing the entire crew. The cause was found to be the rotor linkage, and further inspection found that two of the other three Ka-22s suffered from the same defect. Subsequently, in order to improve stability and control, a complex differential autopilot was installed. This sensed attitude and angular accelerations, and fed into the control system.
  • 1961 – In Operation Sageburner, a United States Navy McDonnell F4H-1F Phantom II fighter, Bu. No. 145307, flown by Lieutenants Huntington Hardisty and Earl De Esch, set a world speed record, averaging 1,452.777 kilometers per hour (902.714 miles per hour) over a 3-kilometer (1.864-mile) course while flying below 125 feet (38.1 m) at all times.
  • 1958 – First flight of the Beechcraft Queen Air, an American twin-engined light aircraft evolution of the Model 65 with a more modern swept tail and more powerful engines.
  • 1947 – The Kvitbjørn disaster: A Norwegian Air Lines Short S.25 Sandringham 6 flying boat Kvitbjørn crashes into a mountain near Lødingsfjellet in Lødingen, Norway, killing all 35 people on board. It is the deadliest aviation accident in Norwegian history at the time.
  • 1945 – Consolidated Consolidated B-32 Dominator, 42-108528, of the 386th BS, 312th BG, crashed east of Amaro-O-Shima in the Ryukus after engine failure. 11 of 13 aboard survived. One of the last operational missions of World War II. Also, this date, Consolidated B-32 Dominator, 42-108544, written off when it lost an engine on takeoff from Yontan Airfield, Okinawa. Skidded off runway, exploded, and burned. 13 KIA
  • 1942 – No. 129 (fighter) Squadron was formed at Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
  • 1942 – (Overnight) A raid by 159 British bombers against Nuremberg, Germany, suffers an even higher loss rate of 14.5 percent as 23 aircraft fail to return, although the raid again is moderately successful. “Red Blob, ” Bomber Command’s first target indicator, is used to mark the target for the first time, glowing a distinctive red.
  • 1928 – Famed bush pilot Clennell (Punch) Dickins leaves on his 12-day survey of the eastern Arctic. He covers 6,336 km in 37 hours of flying; he often navigates by the sun.
  • 1923 – United States Army Air Service Lieutenant John Richter and Lowell Smith establish a new endurance record of 37 hours 15 min in an Airco DH.4, covering 3,293 miles (5,299 km). They are refueled fifteen times during the flight.
  • 1919 – The International Air Traffic Association (IATA) is formed at The Hague, Holland.
  • 1910 – Armand Dufaux pilots a Dufaux 4 biplane 66 km (41 mi) from St. Gingolph to Geneva at an altitude of around 150 m (500 ft), taking 56 min and 5 seconds for the crossing of Lake Geneva, the longest flight over “open water” at the time.
  • 1908 – The US Army accepts its first dirigible. It is 96 feet long, with a 20-hp Curtiss engine.

References

  1. ^ Toliver & Constable 1986, p. 12.
  2. ^ Yenne 2003), pp. 281–283.
  3. ^ Milberry 1979, p. 137.
  4. ^ "88-00098". Retrieved 2010-06-01. On 28 August 2003, 88-00098 was lost due to an accident. The aircraft encountered dust conditions during landing at refuel point and impacted the ground, coming to rest on its right side. Aircraft status: Crashed.
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