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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

Aircraft spotter on the roof of a building in London. St. Paul's Cathedral is in the background.
Aircraft spotter on the roof of a building in London. St. Paul's Cathedral is in the background.
The Battle of Britain (German: Luftschlacht um England) is the name given to the sustained strategic effort by the German Luftwaffe during the summer and autumn of 1940 to gain air superiority over the Royal Air Force (RAF), especially Fighter Command. The name derives from a speech made on 18 June 1940 in the House of Commons by Prime Minister Winston Churchill, "The Battle of France is over. I expect the Battle of Britain is about to begin..."

Had it been successful, the planned amphibious and airborne landings in Britain of Operation Sea Lion would have followed. The Battle of Britain was the first major campaign to be fought entirely by air forces. It was the largest and most sustained bombing campaign attempted up until that date. The failure of Nazi Germany to destroy Britain's air defence or to break British morale is considered its first major defeat.

British historians date the battle from 10 July to 31 October 1940, which represented the most intense period of daylight bombing. German historians usually place the beginning of the battle in mid-August 1940 and end it in May 1941, on the withdrawal of the bomber units in preparation for the attack on the USSR. (Full article...)

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An overlay diagram showing four of the largest wide-body aircraft ever built, the Hughes H-4 Hercules (the "Spruce Goose", aircraft with the greatest wingspan), the Antonov An-225 Mriya (the largest freight aircraft), the Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental (soon to be the largest version of the Jumbojet), and the Airbus A380-800 (the largest passenger aircraft).

Did you know

...that the Fairey Seafox was a Second World War reconnaissance floatplane of the Fleet Air Arm? ...that during World War II, Marine Fighting Squadron 215 established four new U.S. Marine Corps records in the South Pacific including having the most ace pilots? ... that the loss of nine military crew members and passengers when Buffalo 461 was shot down over Syria in 1974, remains the largest single-incident loss of life in Canadian peacekeeping history?

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

Wiley Hardeman Post (November 22, 1898 – August 15, 1935) was the first pilot to fly solo around the world. Also known for his work in high altitude flying, Post helped develop one of the first pressure suits. His plywood aircraft, the Winnie Mae[1] is on display at the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, VA, and his pressure suit is being prepared for display at the same location. On August 15, 1935, Post and American humorist Will Rogers were killed when Post's plane crashed on takeoff from a lagoon near Point Barrow, Alaska.

Selected Aircraft

Concorde at Heathrow
Concorde at Heathrow

Aérospatiale-BAC Concorde supersonic transport (SST), along with the Tupolev Tu-144, was one of only two models of supersonic passenger airliners to have seen commercial service.

Concorde had a cruise speed of Mach 2.02 (around 2170 km/h or 1,350 mph) and a maximum cruise altitude of 60,000 feet (18 300 metres) with a delta wing configuration and a reheat-equipped evolution of the engines originally developed for the Avro Vulcan strategic bomber. The engines were built by Rolls-Royce. Concorde was the first civil airliner to be equipped with an analogue fly-by-wire flight control system. Commercial flights, operated by British Airways and Air France, began on January 21, 1976 and ended on October 24, 2003, with the last "retirement" flight on November 26 that year.

Construction of the first two prototypes began in February 1965. Concorde 001 was built by Aerospatiale at Toulouse and Concorde 002 by BAC at Filton, Bristol. Concorde 001 took off for the first test flight from Toulouse on March 2, 1969 and the first supersonic flight followed on October 1. As the flight programme of the first development aircraft progressed, 001 started off on a sales and demonstration tour beginning on September 4, 1971. Concorde 002 followed suit on June 2, 1972 with a sales tour of the Middle and Far East. Concorde 002 made the first visit to the United States in 1973, landing at the new Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport to commemorate its opening.

  • Span: 84 ft 0 in (25.6 m).
  • Length: 202 ft 4 in[2] (61.66 m)
  • Height: 40 ft 0 in (12.2 m )
  • Engines: 4× Rolls-Royce/SNECMA Olympus 593 Mk 610 afterburning turbojets 170 kN each.
  • Cruising Speed: Mach 2.04 (1,350 mph, 2,170 km/h)
  • First Flight: March 2, 1969
  • Number built: 20 (including prototypes)

Today in Aviation

August 17

  • 1988 – Death of Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq: President of Pakistan Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq dies in the crash of a C-130 Hercules transport near Bahawalpur, Pakistan.
  • 1988 – 50 people set a world record for flying in a single hot air balloon (Lelystad, Netherlands)
  • 1988 – A PAF Lockheed C-130B Hercules, 23494, 'R' (ex-USAF 62-3494), c/n 3708, crashes near the Pakistani town of Bahawalpur, killing everyone aboard, including the President of Pakistan General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, American Ambassador to Pakistan Arnold Lewis Raphel, Head of Pakistan's military intelligence General Akther Abdul Rehman and nearly all of the top military brass of the Pakistan Army.
  • 1986 - First flight of Tsunami, an experimental purpose-built racing aircraft.
  • 1978 – The U. S. balloon, Double Eagle II, becomes the first balloon to cross the Atlantic. The trip begins in Maine and ends almost 6 days later in France.
  • 1965 – Sikorsky HSS-1N Seabat, BuNo 149841, c/n 58-1430, coded '136', of the Koninklijke Marine, crashes near Noordwijk, Netherlands.
  • 1946 – The first person in the U. S. to be ejected from an airplane by means of its emergency escape equipment is Sergeant Lambert at Wright Field in Ohio.
  • 1945 – Two Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers collide over Weatherford, Texas during a bomber training exercise. Eight crew members were killed, 2 managed to escape from the falling wreckage and parachute to safety. Boeing B-29A Superfortress, 42-93895, of the 234th Combat Crew Training Squadron, Clovis Army Air Field, New Mexico, and Boeing B-29 Superfortress, 44-86276, of the 231st CCTS, Alamagordo Army Air Field, New Mexico, involved.
  • 1945 – During Operation Dodge, the RAF airlift of troops home from Italian deployment, Avro Lancaster, ME834, coded 'K-OG', of 115 Squadron, based at RAF Graveley, struck HK798, coded 'K-OH', of the same squadron, and PB754, coded 'TL-A', of Graveley-based 35 Squadron when it swerves off runway while taking off from Bari, Italy.
  • 1943 – World War II – The U. S. Eighth Air Force suffers the loss of 60 bombers on the Schweinfurt-Regensburg mission.
  • 1943 – 164 U. S. Army Air Forces aircraft of the Fifth Air Force attack Japanese airfields at Wewak, New Guinea, destroying 70 planes while the Japanese are servicing them for another raid on Marilinan.
  • 1943 – The last Axis forces evacuate Sicily, bringing the Sicily campaign to an end. The U. S. Army Air Forces have lost 28 killed, 41 wounded, and 88 missing during the campaign.
  • 1943 – (17-18) The German Luftwaffe makes two 80-plane raids by Junkers Ju 88 s against Bizerte, Tunisia, where Allied ships are assembling for the invasion of mainland Italy. They sink an infantry landing craft, damage three other vessels, destroy oil installations, kill 22 men, and wound 215.
  • 1943 – 17-18 – RAF bombers attack the German missile research station at Peenemünde.
  • 1942 – Heavy bombers of the United States Army Air Forces’ Eighth Air Force carry out their first raid, attacking a railroad marshalling yard at Rouen, France.
  • 1942 – First crash of a Messerschmitt Me 262 occurs when pilot Heinrich Beauvais, of the Rechlin test center, fails to achieve flying speed on his first take-off in the type from Leipheim air field, overruns runway, wipes out in adjacent potato field. Both engines of the Me 262 V3 prototype are torn from the nacelles, both wings damaged, starboard wheel shorn off, but airframe is deemed repairable. Pilot uninjured.
  • 1942 – Grumman XF6F-3 Hellcat, BuNo 02982, first flown 30 July 1942, suffers engine failure of Pratt & Whitney R-2800-10 on test flight out of Bethpage, New York, Grumman test pilot Bob Hall dead-sticks into a farmer's field on Long Island, survives unpowered landing but airframe heavily damaged.
  • 1940 – Billy Fiske – American aviator and Olympic athlete, died as the first American pilot casualty of World War II during the Battle of Britain. (b. 1911).
  • 1940 – No. 1 (Fighter) Squadron became operational and commenced patrols from its base at Northholt, England.
  • 1929 – Francis Gary Powers, American U-2 pilot whose U-2 spy plane was shot down while over the Soviet Union, thus causing the U-2 Crisis of 1960, was born. (d. 1977).
  • 1927 – The Dole Derby Air Race, also known as the Dole Derby, was a tragic air race to cross the Pacific Ocean from northern California to the Territory of Hawaii in August 1927. Of the 15-18 entrant airplanes, 11 were certified to compete but three crashed before the race, resulting in three deaths. Eight eventually participated in the race, with two crashing on takeoff and two going missing during the race. A third, forced to return for repairs, took off again to search for the missing and was itself never seen again. In all, before, during, and after the race, ten lives were lost and six airplanes were total losses. Two of the eight planes successfully landed in Hawaii. 1925 – Entered Service: Curtiss P-1 Hawk with 1st Pursuit Group, United States Army Air Service
  • 1917 – Tasked to study how the United Kingdom’s air forces could be best organized for the war with Germany and to consider whether or not they should remain subordinate to the British Army and Royal Navy, General Jan Smuts completes the Smuts Report. In it, he observes that an air service could be used as “an independent means of war operations, ” that “there is absolutely no limit to the scale of its future independent war service, ” that soon “aerial operations with their devastation of enemy lands and destruction of industrial and populous centres on a vast scale may be the principal operations of war, to which older forms of military and naval operations may become secondary and subordinate. ” He projects that by the summer of 1918 “the air battle front will be far behind the Rhine” while the ground front is still bogged down in Belgium and France and that air attacks on German industry and lines of communication could be an “important factor in bringing about peace. ” The report is the foundation of a new theory of warfare advocated by British bomber advocates and will inspire the creation of the independent Royal Air Force in 1918.
  • 1914 – The Imperial Japanese Navy’s first aviation ship, Wakamiya, is recommissioned as a seaplane carrier.
  • 1910 – The first English Channel crossing by an airplane with a passenger is made by John Moisant who takes his mechanic in his two-seater Blariot on the flight from Calais, France to Dover, England.
  • 1890 – Stefan Bastyr, Polish aviation pioneer and pilot of the first military flight in the history of the Polish Air Force, was born. (d. 1920)

References

  1. ^ Winnie Mae
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