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Excerpts from
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Remembering
the Lockheed YF-12A The fastest, highest-flying reconnaissance aircraft in the world, designed in the late 1950s by the Lockheed Corporation, also became the highest, fastest, air-to-air interceptor in the world, then and now. The A-12 program proved concepts of Mach 3-plus flight at operating levels exceeding 80,000 feet, while its variant, the YF-12A program successfully proved the design and also provided the supreme "look-down-shoot-down" capability unmatched then or today. Torrey Larsen, senior flight test engineer for the YF-12A, and others remember the many obstacles overcome and the validation of its hard-earned technical success. YF-12A Beginnings |
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This article is second of a series being prepared to record the history of this durable jet transport. The first appeared in AAHS Journal Vol. 54, No. 1, Spring
2009. The fiftieth anniversary of the entry of the Douglas DC-8 into regular passenger service occurred recently. The DC-8 entered service with both Delta Air Lines and United Air Lines on September 18, 1959, the first day the FAA permitted the DC-8-11 to be operated in passenger service. By this date only eight DC-8s had been delivered. United had six DC-8s on hand. Delta had only two, the second being delivered four days before. Delta’s first DC-8 service was from New York’s Idlewild Airport to Atlanta. United’s first service was from San Francisco to New York (IDL). Unlikely though it was, the "little-guy," Delta was first to operate a DC-8 revenue passenger flight. Through a series of happenstances, United Air Lines, who led the list of DC-8 customers, was the second to operate a revenue passenger flight. In this article we will take a look at the DC-8s involved in the first day of service for the type, with particular emphasis on Delta N801E, Ship
14. Delta DC-8-11 N801E becomes the first to enter
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Airborne
Photography of the Solar Eclipes of the Quiet Sun; Project APEQS (Airborne Photography of the Solar Eclipse of the Quiet Sun) was an expedition that gave a large group of astronomers an opportunity to observe and record various phenomena during the total eclipse of the sun on July 20, 1963, from a stratosphere vantage point over the Northwest Territories of Canada. The expedition was undertaken jointly by the National Geographic Society and the Douglas Aircraft Company,
Inc. Modifications Required to Accomplish the APEQS
Mission Autopilot |
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Naval
Aeronautics in the Civil War:
As noted in Part I (AAHS Journal Winter 2009, Vol. 54 No. 2), at the start of the Civil War a number of civilian balloonists volunteered their service as aeronauts to the Union and Confederate armies. On the Union side, this included John La Mountain, who in August 1861 became the first person to ascend in an observation balloon from a ship, and Thaddeus Lowe, appointed as Chief Aeronaut of the Union Army. The latter had the support of Major General George B. McClellan, Commanding General of the Army of the Potomac, who obtained resources from the Army for Lowe to build a number of balloons for the Aeronautic Corps. Included in the funding was the construction of mobile hydrogen-gas generators, which Lowe had built at the Washington Navy Yard. The aeronaut also acquired from the Navy the services of a coal barge, the
George Washington Parke Custis, which the Navy Yard converted into a balloon barge, the world’s first vessel specifically constructed for aeronautical purposes. Balloon Operations in Georgia and South
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A
Lost Squadroon, VMF-422’s WWII Misadventure VMF-422, the "Leatherneck Buccaneers," took off from Hawkins Field at Tarawa at 0930 on the morning of January 25, 1944. It was to be a simple 463-mile flight heading southeast along the Gilbert Islands and then they would turn almost directly south for Nanumea (frequently referred to during WWII as Nanomea), which was the northernmost of the Ellice Islands. This entailed an overwater flight of about a 190 miles. After a lunch on Nanumea the flight would continue south to Funafuti, which was to be the Squadron’s base for the next few weeks. In aviator parlance it would be a piece of cake. |
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U.S.
Naval Aircraft of the Golden Age, 1919-1941 |
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From Air Taxi to Airline: The Embry-Riddle Company of Cincinnati
In the 1920s, a number of small airlines appeared throughout the United States trying to capitalize on the technological aeronautical advances, the general excitement over aviation and passage of government laws designed to benefit aviation. One such entity was The Embry-Riddle Company of Cincinnati, Ohio, which formed Embry-Riddle Airline in 1927. Talton Higbee Embry and John Paul Riddle were brought together by a mutual interest in aviation. Born in 1901 in Pikeville, Ky., Riddle earned his wings as a United States Army Air Service cadet in 1922 before becoming a barnstormer in Kentucky and Ohio. His path crossed with that of Embry in 1923 when the latter paid Riddle $20 for an airplane ride. Born in Cincinnati on May 17, 1897, and educated in Cincinnati and Asheville, N.C., Embry was interested in automobiles from an early age, but at some point in his youth, set his eyes on the
sky.[1] He had already spent $10 for a five minute ride in a Curtiss Jenny which left Embry, in his words, "perfectly
satisfied."[2] After receiving seven days of instruction under Riddle, Embry soloed in the Waco (Weaver Aircraft Company) No. 9 that he had
purchased.[3] |
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There was a young boy who came upon the term: The Golden Age of Aviation. He asked his father for the meaning of this statement and, without hesitation, his dad took the obvious 21st century action – he "Googled" the
term. |
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Lockheed
Constellation and Constellation Survivors The Lockheed Constellation represented the ultimate refinement of piston-engine airliner design when the final aircraft rolled off the Lockheed assembly line in 1958. Fifty-two years later at least 50 of the 856 aircraft produced survive, with a handful still airworthy and many examples preserved in museums. This article provides an overview of surviving aircraft with a brief description of each aircraft’s current status. Airworthy and Regularly Flown |
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For
those of us who recall the period, a boom in general aviation was to take
place following World War II. It was anticipated that returning airmen
would trade their wartime aircraft, flown in hostile skies, for light
planes flown over peaceful American terrain. The return of many veteran
pilots, aviators and airmen was to be the catalyst behind the figurative
statement "an airplane in every garage," and it gave impetus to
artists’ conceptions of smiling families flying to vacation destinations
in futuristic light planes. Aviation magazines of the day reinforced this
vision by depicting modern-day housing developments with a runway and
individual taxiways leading up to each new home. |
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