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The Aviation Portal

A Boeing 747 in 1978 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 aircraft 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. Clément Ader built the "Ader Éole" in France and made an uncontrolled, powered hop in 1890. This is the first powered aircraft, although it did not achieve controlled flight. 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

Traditional general aviation fixed-wing light aircraft, the most numerous class of aircraft in the sector
Traditional general aviation fixed-wing light aircraft, the most numerous class of aircraft in the sector
General aviation in the United Kingdom has been defined as a civil aircraft operation other than a commercial air transport flight operating to a schedule. Although the International Civil Aviation Organization excludes any form of remunerated aviation from its definition, some commercial operations are often included within the scope of general aviation in the UK. The sector operates business jets, rotorcraft, piston and jet-engined fixed-wing aircraft, gliders of all descriptions, and lighter than air craft. Public transport operations include business (or corporate) aviation and air taxi services, and account for nearly half of the economic contribution made by the sector. There are 28,000 Private Pilot Licence holders, and 10,000 certified glider pilots. Although GA operates from more than 1,800 aerodromes and landing sites, ranging in size from large regional airports to farm strips, over 80 per cent of GA activity is conducted at 134 of the larger aerodromes. GA is regulated by the Civil Aviation Authority, although regulatory powers are being increasingly transferred to the European Aviation Safety Agency. The main focus is on standards of airworthiness and pilot licensing, and the objective is to promote high standards of safety. (Full article...)

Selected image

Credit: U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Samuel Rogers [1]
Capt. Matt Buckner, an F-15 Eagle pilot assigned to the 71st Fighter Squadron at Langley Air Force Base, Va., flies a combat air patrol mission Oct. 7 over Washington, D.C., in support of Operation Noble Eagle.

Did you know

...that after the Red Baron, French ace René Fonck had the most confirmed World War I aerial victories? ...that the airfields captured in the battle of Tinian were used for the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? .. that five UH-1 Iroquois helicopters of the Experimental Military Unit were shot down by a single Viet Cong soldier armed with an AK-47 rifle?

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

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Selected biography

Helmut Paul Emil Wick (5 August 1915 – 28 November 1940) was a German Luftwaffe ace and the fourth recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves (German: Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes mit Eichenlaub). The Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross and its higher grade, the Oak Leaves, was awarded by the Third Reich to recognise extreme bravery in battle or successful military leadership. It was Germany's highest military decoration at the time of its presentation to Helmut Wick.

Born in Mannheim, Wick joined the Luftwaffe in 1936 and was trained as a fighter pilot. He was assigned to Jagdgeschwader 2 "Richthofen" (JG 2—2nd Fighter Wing), and saw combat in the Battles of France and Britain. Promoted to Major in October 1940, he was given the position of Geschwaderkommodore (wing commander) of JG 2—the youngest in the Luftwaffe to hold this rank and position. He was shot down in the vicinity of the Isle of Wight on 28 November 1940 and posted as missing in action, presumed dead. By then he had been credited with destroying 56 enemy aircraft in aerial combat, making him the leading German fighter pilot at the time. Flying the Messerschmitt Bf 109, he claimed all of his victories against the Western Allies.

Selected Aircraft

The Avro Lancaster was a British four-engine Second World War bomber aircraft made initially by Avro for the British Royal Air Force (RAF). It first saw active service in 1942, and together with the Handley-Page Halifax it was one of the main heavy bombers of the RAF, the RCAF and squadrons from other Commonwealth and European countries serving within RAF Bomber Command. The "Lanc" or "Lankie," as it became affectionately known, became the most famous and most successful of the Second World War night bombers, "delivering 608,612 tons of bombs in 156,000 sorties." Although the Lancaster was primarily a night bomber, it excelled in many other roles including daylight precision bombing, and gained worldwide renown as the "Dam Buster" used in the 1943 Operation Chastise raids on Germany's Ruhr Valley dams.

  • Span: 102 ft (31.09 m)
  • Length: 69 ft 5 in (21.18 m)
  • Height: 19 ft 7 in (5.97 m)
  • Engines: 4× Rolls-Royce Merlin XX V12 engines, 1,280 hp (954 kW) each
  • Maximum Speed: 240 knots (280 mph, 450 km/h) at 15,000 ft (5,600 m)
  • First Flight: 8 January 1941
  • Number built: 7,377
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Today in Aviation

January 19

  • 2013 – The Syrian Air Force strikes a mosque and a school building sheltering Syrian refugees in Salqin, Syria, killing and wounding dozens.[1]
  • 2013 – Two American unmanned aerial vehicle strikes during the evening kill a total of eight people in Yemen' Ma'rib province, including at least two members of al-Qaeda.[2]
  • 2006 – Launch of New Horizons, NASA robotic spacecraft mission to the dwarf planet Pluto. It is expected to be the first spacecraft to fly by and study Pluto and its moons, Charon, Nix, and Hydra. NASA may also attempt flybys of one or more other Kuiper belt objects.
  • 2006 – A Slovak Air Force Antonov An-24 carrying peace-keepers from Kosovo crashes near Telkibánya, Hungary. Of the 43 people on board, only one survived.
  • 1995 – Bristow Flight 56C, a Eurocopter Super Puma, is struck by lightning and is forced to make an emergency landing in the North Sea; all 18 on board survive.
  • 1995 – Rockwell-MBB X-31, BuNo 164584, first of two testbed airframes, crashes on 67th flight, north of Edwards AFB, California. German Federal Ministry of Defense test pilot Karl-Heinz Lang, assigned to the X-31 International Test Organization (ITO), ejects safely at 18,000 feet. He is taken to hospital for examination, a fire department spokesman said.[314][315] Footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWcBcxvZfMc
  • 1993 – STS-54, space shuttle Endeavour is back on earth.
  • 1991 – The second Rockwell X-31 enhanced fighter makes its first flight.
  • 1991 – Two Coalition aircraft are shot down, both by Iraqi ground fire. The Iraqi Air Force loses five aircraft in air-to-air combat, all shot down by U. S. Air Force F-15 C Eagle fighters employing AIM-7 Sparrow air-to-air missiles.
  • 1991 – Death of Paul F. Bikle, American Engineer, Record setting glider pilot and Director of the NASA Dryden Flight Research Facility.
  • 1989 – American Airlines purchases the Central and South American routes owned by struggling Eastern Air Lines.
  • 1983 – Death of Ham, also known as Ham the Chimp and Ham the Astrochimp, first chimpanzee launched into outer space in the American space program.
  • 1975 – Death of Antonio Reali, Italian WWI fighter ace.
  • 1972 – Flying a United States Navy F-4 J Phantom II fighter of Fighter Squadron 96 (VF-96) off of USS Constellation (CVA-64), Lieutenants Randy “Duke” Cunningham (pilot) and William “Irish” Driscoll (radar intercept officer) shoot down a North Vietnamese MiG fighter. It is the first air-to-air victory by an American aircraft over Vietnam since March 1970.
  • 1968 – Death of Gaetano Arturo Crocco, Italian scientist and aeronautics pioneer, founder of the Italian Rocket Society.
  • 1965 – Suborbital flight of Gemini 2, US unmanned mission intended as a test flight for the Gemini spacecraft's heat shield.
  • 1961 – Boeing B-52B-35-BO Stratofortress, 53-0390, c/n 16869, of the 95th Bomb Wing, Biggs AFB, Texas, crashes in Utah after failure of tail section in turbulence-induced accident.
  • 1960 – First flight of the Convair CV-580 Super Convair.
  • 1960 – Scandinavian Airlines System Flight 871, a Sud Aviation Caravelle, crashes while on approach to Esenboğa International Airport, killing all 42 on board; an undetermined descent was to blame for the first fatal crash of the Sud Caravelle.
  • 1950 – First flight of the Avro Canada CF-100 Canuck (affectionately known as the "Clunk") RCAF 18101 in Malton by Canadian test pilot Bill Waterton.
  • 1949 – First flight of Martin XSSM-A-1 Matador test vehicle, from White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, ends in crash.
  • 1949 – First flight of the Fouga CM.100, French high-wing cantilever monoplane of conventional configuration with fixed tricycle undercarriage airliner prototype, issued from the Glider assault CM.10 by adding two SNECMA 12 S piston engines.
  • 1948 – First Vampires were taken on strength by RCAF.
  • 1946 – First Flight of the Bell X-1. Originally designated XS-1, joint NACA-U. S. Army/USAF supersonic research project, first of the so-called X-planes.
  • 1944 – Allied heavy and medium bombers strike Viterbo, Rieti, and Perugia, Italy. The Allied air forces claim that their air campaign has cut all communications between northern Italy and the Rome area, although this does not turn out to be true.
  • 1941 – German aircraft again attack the Malta dockyard, causing underwater damage to HMS Illustrious.
  • 1939 – Yugoslav Rogožarski IK-3 prototype, piloted by Capt. Milan Pokorni, fails to recover from terminal velocity dive out of Zemun airfield, destroying airframe. Subsequent investigation exonerates the design and production order for twelve placed.
  • 1937 – Flying a redesigned H-1 Racer featuring extended wings, Howard Hughes set a new transcontinental airspeed record by flying non-stop from Los Angeles to New York City in 7 hours, 28 min and 25 seconds (beating his own previous record of 9 hours, 27 min). His average speed over the flight was 322 miles per hour (518 km/h).
  • 1926 – Death of Leopoldo Eleuteri, Italian WWI flying ace.
  • 1923 – The De Bothezat helicopter lifted 2 persons to a height of 1.2 metres (3 ft 11 in).
  • 1919 – Jules Védrines claims an FF25,000 prize by landing an aircraft (a Caudron G-3) on the roof of a department store in Paris. Védrines is injured and his aircraft is damaged beyond repair in the hard landing in a space only 28 metres (92 ft) x 12 metres (39 ft).
  • 1918 – Birth of Tadeusz Góra, Polish glider pilot and WWII pilot.
  • 1915 – Birth of Ennio "Banana" Tarantola, Spanish War and WWII Italian fighter ace.
  • 1910 – Lieutenant Paul Ward Beck drops sandbag "bombs" over Los Angeles from an aeroplane piloted by Louis Paulhan.
  • 1908 – The world’s first official aerodrome, Port-Aviation, is opened outside of Paris, France.
  • 1899 – Birth of George Ebben Randall, British WWI Flying ace.
  • 1898 – Birth of Basil Henry Moody, South African WWI Flying ace.
  • 1898 – Birth of Carl-August von Schoenebeck, German WWI flying ace, Raid pilot, Arado test pilot and WWII high-ranking officer.
  • 1895 – Birth of Air Marshal Sir Arthur "Mary" Coningham KCB, KBE, DSO, MC, DFC, AFC, RAF, Royal Flying Corps flying ace during WWI, Conningham was later a senior Royal Air Force commander during WWII, as Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief 2nd Tactical Air Force and subsequently the Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief Flying Training Command.
  • 1895 – Birth of Ivan Alexandrovich Orlov, Russian WWI flying ace, Self Glider and Aircraft designer.
  • 1893 – Birth of Maurice Joseph Emile Robert, French WWI flying ace.
  • 1888 – Birth of Millard Fillmore Harmon Jr. American WWI pilot and Lieutenant General in the USAAF during the Pacific campaign in WWII.
  • 1883 – Birth of James McKinley Hargreaves, Scottish WWI flying ace, One of the first Aces in history.
  • 1784 – One of the largest hot-air balloon ever made, called 'Le Flesselle' by the Montgolfier brothers, makes an ascent at Lyon, France. The balloon's capacity is 700,000 cubic feet and it goes up to 3,000 feet.

References

  1. ^ Mrouse, Bassem, "Syrian FM calls on rebels to disarm and negotiate," Associated Press, January 19, 2013.
  2. ^ Al-Haj, Ahmed, "Yemen Drone Strikes: Suspected U.S. Attack Kills At Least 8," The Huffington Post, January 19, 2013, 6:25 p.m. EST.
  3. ^ "Accident: PSA Airlines CRJ2 at Charleston on January 19th 2010, overran runway on takeoff". The Aviation Herald. Retrieved 20 January 2010.
  4. ^ "Accident: BinAir SW4 at Stuttgart on January 19th 2010, right main gear collapsed on landing". The Aviation Herald. Retrieved 20 January 2010.
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