18 December 1941: First Lieutenant Boyd David (“Buzz”) Wagner, United States Army Air Corps, commanding officer of the 17th Pursuit Squadron (Interceptor) at Nichols Field, Pasay City, Commonwealth of the Philippines, shot down his fifth Japanese airplane, a Mitsubishi A6M2 Type Zero fighter, with Read More...
December 12, 1953, Bell X-1A Hits Mach 2.44, A New Record
12 December 1953: On its tenth flight, U.S. Air Force test pilot Major Chuck Yeager flew the Bell X-1A rocket plane to Mach 2.44 (1,621 miles per hour/2,609 kilometers per hour) at 74,700 feet (22,769 meters), faster than anyone had flown before. (From This Day in Aviation.) Read More...
Moog hardware provides control for the mighty Saturn V
Image credit: NASA November 9th marks the anniversary of the first launch of the Saturn V, the most powerful rocket ever made and the one that would soon propel man to the Moon. The first stage of Saturn was powered by five F-1 engines, each making 1.5 million pounds of thrust. The engines on all Read More...
14 October 1938: Curtiss-Wright 75P first flight
14 October 1938: At Buffalo, New York, test pilot Everett Edward Elliot made the first flight in the new Curtiss-Wright Corporation’s Model 75P, a prototype for a single-engine pursuit plane which had been designated XP-40 by the U.S. Army Air Corps. Designed by Curtiss-Wright’s Chief Engineer, Read More...
October 14, 1947, Chuck Yeager breaks the sound barrier in Bell XS-1
Air Force test pilot Captain Charles Elwood "Chuck" Yeager flew the Bell XS-1 through “the sound barrier,” something many experts had believed might not be possible. His maximum speed during this flight was Mach 1.06 (699.4 miles per hour/1,125.7 kilometers per hour). Read more at This Day in Read More...
Doolittle makes first instrument flight in Consolidated airplane
On 24 September 1929, Lieutenant James H. Doolittle, U.S. Army Air Corps, made the first completely blind airplane takeoff flight and landing, solely by reference to instruments on board his aircraft. Flying from the rear cockpit of a NY-2 Husky manufactured by Consolidated Aircraft in Buffalo, NY, Read More...
