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The Aviation Portal

A Boeing 747

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...)

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The feathered propellers of an RAF Hercules C.4
The feathered propellers of an RAF Hercules C.4
A propeller is essentially a type of fan which transmits power by converting rotational motion into thrust for propulsion of an aircraft through the air, by rotating two or more twisted blades about a central shaft, in a manner analogous to rotating a screw through a solid. The blades of a propeller act as rotating wings (the blades of a propeller are in fact wings or airfoils), and produce force through application of both Bernoulli's principle and Newton's third law, generating a difference in pressure between the forward and rear surfaces of the airfoil-shaped blades and by accelerating a mass of air rearward. (Full article...)

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Antonov An-124
Antonov An-124
An Antonov An-124 belonging to Polet Airlines on final approach to Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow, Russia. The An-124 was designed for strategic lift capability and remains the third-largest operating cargo aircraft.

Did you know

...that on October 5, 1914, a French Voisin III pilot scored the first air-to-air kill of World War I? ...that the Aerocar Coot was a two-seat amphibious aircraft designed for home-building by Moulton Taylor? ...that the Silver Centenary biplane, built in Beverley, Western Australia in 1930, received its airworthiness certificate 77 years after its first flight?

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
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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

Space Shuttle Discovery
Space Shuttle Discovery

NASA's Space Shuttle, officially called the Space Transportation System (STS), was the spacecraft which was used by the United States government for its human spaceflight missions. At launch, it consisted of a rust-colored external tank (ET), two white, slender Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs), and the orbiter, a winged spaceplane which was the space shuttle in the narrow sense.

The orbiter carried astronauts and payload such as satellites or space station parts into low Earth orbit, into the Earth's upper atmosphere or thermosphere. Usually, five to seven crew members rode in the orbiter. The payload capacity was 22,700 kg (50,000 lb). When the orbiter's mission was complete, it fired its Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) thrusters to drop out of orbit and re-enter the lower atmosphere. During the descent and landing, the shuttle orbiter acted as a glider, and made a completely unpowered ("dead stick") landing.

  • Span: 78.06 ft (23.79 m)
  • Length: 122.17 ft (37.24 m)
  • Height: 58.58 ft (17.25 m)
  • Engines: 3 Rocketdyne Block 2 A SSMEs
  • Cruising Speed: 25,404 ft/s (7,743 m/s, 27,875 km/h, 17,321 mi/h)
  • First Flight: August 12, 1977 (glider), April 12, 1981 (powered).
  • Operational Altitude: 100 to 520 nmi (185 to 1,000 km)
  • Number built: 6 (+2 mockups)
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Today in Aviation

June 7

  • 2009 – A Strait Air Britten-Norman Islander crashes on approach to Port Hope Simpson Airport, Canada, killing the pilot. The aircraft is destroyed.
  • 1992 – American Eagle Flight 5456, a CASA C-212 operated by Executive Airlines, crashes into a swamp on approach to Eugenio María de Hostos Airport in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, in heavy rain, killing all five people on board.
  • 1989 – Surinam Airways Flight 764, a Douglas DC-8, crashes while attempting to land in heavy fog at Paramaribo, Suriname. The plane hits trees and flips upside down, killing 176 of 187 people on board.
  • 1973 – Bahamasair commences operations.
  • 1966 – Robert and Joan Wallick set a round-the-world flight record.
  • 1957 – Chance Vought Aircraft pilot James P. Buckner is killed while performing a high-speed flyby of CVA's tower at Hensley Field, Dallas, Texas, while demonstrating an Vought F8U-1 Crusader for a graduating class from the Navy Post Graduate School there. Executing a zoom climb after his low-altitude pass, he apparently overstresses the fighter and it disintegrates before he can eject. The aircraft's wreckage violently explodes at low altitude over Main Street in adjacent Grand Prairie, Texas, causing minor injuries to several bystanders, and pieces of the fighter are scattered throughout the floodplain of the nearby Trinity River; Buckner's body is recovered a few hours after the crash.
  • 1946 – First flight of the Short Sturgeon
  • 1944 – Nos. 401, 411 and 412 (Fighter) Squadrons of No. 126 (RCAF) Wing destroyed 12 enemy aircraft and probably destroyed or damaged five more over the Normandy beaches.
  • 1942 – The English Electric-built Handley Page Halifax B Mk.II, V9977, on a test flight from RAF Defford carrying a secret H2S radar system crashes at 16:30 hrs at Welsh Bicknor, Herefordshire, killing the crew and several EMI personnel on board, including Alan Blumlein, pioneer of television and stereo audio recording. Blumlein, together with Cecil Browne and Frank Blythen, all from EMI, were attached to the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) at the time of the accident. Also killed was Geoffrey Hensby of TRE. Whilst flying at 500ft a fire starts in the starboard outer engine. Unable to extinguish it and by then too low for a parachute escape, whilst attempting to reach an open area to put down the fire burns through the outer main spar at low altitude causing the outer wing to fold and detach, whereupon the aircraft rolls almost inverted and impacts the ground. The aircraft's highly secret cavity magnetron is recovered the next day by a TRE team from RAF Defford led by Bernard Lovell. An investigation into the cause of the fire by Rolls-Royce concludes that an insufficiently tightened inlet valve tappet locknut during maintenance caused the inlet valve to drop, where it was hit by the rising piston and broken off at the stem, allowing burning fuel to enter the rocker cover whereupon it quickly spread. V9977 was one of only two Halifaxes fitted with H2S, the other being the Handley Page-built Mk II, R9490, used for trials of a klystron-based version of the system, developed for security reasons due to the difficulty of self-destructing a magnetron should its carrying aircraft come down over enemy territory. The crash of V9977 wiped out almost the entire H2S development team, delaying its introduction to the extent that Churchill has to be informed.
  • 1942 – Major General Clarence Leonard Tinker, (21 November 1887 - 7 June 1942), of 1/8 Osage Indian heritage, leads four LB-30 Liberator IIs requisitioned by the USAAF on an attack, some sources state against retreating Imperial Japanese Navy units during the Battle of Midway, some sources state a bombing run on Wake Island). His LB-30, AL589, of the 31st Bombardment Squadron, 5th Bombardment Group, 7th Air Force, drops out of formation and is never seen again. Tinker was the first American general to die in World War II; his body was never recovered. He received the Soldier's Medal in 1931 and, posthumously, the Distinguished Service Medal. Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, is named in his honor on 14 October 1942.
  • 1942 – 119 (BR) Squadron and No. 128 (F) Squadron were formed at Sydney, N. S.
  • 1940 – HMS Ark Royal brings aboard the five surviving Supermarine Walrus flying boats of No. 701 Squadron from Harstad and HMS Glorious the surviving Hurricanes of No. 46 Squadron and Gladiators of No. 263 Squadron from Bardufoss as the Allied evacuation from Norway continues.
  • 1927 – The Supermarine S.5 racer, constructed to take part in the 1927 Schneider cup race; makes its first flight in Suffolk, England, piloted by Flight Lieutenant O. E. Worsley.
  • 1920 – The U. S. Army orders 20 GAX (Ground Attack Experimental) triplanes from Boeing as the Model 10, an order later reduced to 10 before the first was delivered in May 1921.
  • 1919 – Flying a Caudron G.3, Raymonde de Laroche of France sets a women’s altitude record of nearly 13,000 feet (3,962 m).
  • 1912 - With Lieutenant Roy Carrington Kirtland flying a Wright Model B at College Park, Maryland, Captain Charles deForest Chandler was the first person to fire a machine gun mounted on an aircraft. The weapon was a prototype designed by Colonel Isaac N. Lewis.

References

  1. ^ Toliver & Constable 1986, p. 12.
  2. ^ Anonymous, "U.S. Drone Strike in Pakistan Said To Kill 7 Militants," UPI.com, June 8, 2013, 11:17 a.m. EDT
  3. ^ Craig, Tim, "Seven Killed in Suspected U.S. Drone Strike in Pakistan," washingtonpost.com, June 7, 2013.
  4. ^ Berhane, Daniel (June 9, 2012). "Kenyan Air Force Shells the Port Town Kismayo, Southern Somalia". Danielberhane.wordpress.com. Retrieved December 2, 2012.
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