This Date in Aviation History: January 9 - January 12

[ttyymmnn]

A Lockheed L-1649 Constellation of Trans World Airlines (NASA)

January 9, 1943 – The first flight of the Lockheed Constellation. With its graceful curves, the Lockheed Constellation, nicknamed “Connie,” is arguably one of the most beautiful aircraft ever designed. But the comely Connie started life as a much more plain Jane aircraft, the Lockheed L-044 Excalibur, a run of the mill, four-engine transport that never entered production. In 1939, eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, owner of Transcontinental & Western Airlines (which would later become TWA), held a meeting with Jack Frye, the president of T&WA, along with other Lockheed executives. Hughes expressed his desire for a new large passenger airliner, and he felt that the Excalibur wouldn’t meet his needs. So the Lockheed engineers, including Clarence “Kelly” Johnson, who was destined to become one of America’s greatest aviation engineers, went back to the drawing board. A mere three weeks later, they presented Hughes with the initial plans for the Connie, now designated L-049.

The first Constellation in US Army Air Forces livery, where it was known as the C-69 (San Diego Air and Space Museum)

The Constellation was a truly modern airliner, and featured electric de-icing, hydraulic assisted controls and variable pitch propellers. The wings were patterned after the Lockheed P-38 Lighting, which had been designed by Kelly Johnson. The Connie was powered by a quartet of Wright R-3350 Duplex-Cyclone radial engines and was also pressurized to allow for high altitude flight. At the time, the Connie was the most expensive airliner ever produced, and Hughes himself funded the purchase of 40 aircraft since T&WA didn’t have the funds to pay for them. By bankrolling the purchase, Hughes got to weigh in on the design, and he brought in famed designer Raymond Loewy to redesign the cabin to his liking.

Lockheed C-121 Constellation flying for the US Air Force Military Air Transport Service (MIke Freer)

Production of the Constellation was a tightly held secret, since Hughes didn’t want Pan Am or any other rival air carriers to know about his new airliner. But the secret was revealed when the US Army came to inspect Lockheed’s production facility a few months before the war. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Lockheed’s production lines became the property of the US government, and production of the Constellation would have to wait until the Army got theirs first. Thus, the first flight of the L-049 Constellation was actually the first flight of the Lockheed C-69, its military designation. The Army ordered 260 C-69s for cargo and troop transport, and even considered converting it into a bomber. But problems with the engines led to delays that caused the Army to reduce its order to 73 aircraft. Eventually, only 22 C-69s were built, and just 15 were delivered.

Lockheed EC-121D Warning Star over Thailand in 1972 (US Air Force)

Following the war, Lockheed production returned to the civilian market, with military Connies converted to civilian aircraft. Improvements were made to those already under construction, such as the addition of a luxury interior, more windows, a galley, and crew rest areas, along with better ventilation and heating. And, since the C-69 had already been tested and flown by the Army, Lockheed was far ahead of its competitors, who were still working on their own post-war designs. The first production L-049 flew on July 12, 1945 and was delivered to TWA four months later. The first commercial flight was from New York City to Paris, a trip that took nearly 17 hours with stops for fuel in Newfoundland and Ireland. The Connie proved to be a remarkably adaptable airplane. Future variants to its civilian version added increased speed, passenger space, and range. And the improved C-121 Constellation (L-749) joined the Air Force as a transport and cargo aircraft., while the EC-121 Warning Star electronic surveillance variant served the US Air Force into the 1980s. The military retired their Constellations in the 1970s, but some passenger Connies flew into the 1980s before being retired.

An Avro Lancaster Mk 1 warbird in flight in 2014 (Ronnie Macdonald)

January 9, 1941 – The first flight of the Avro Lancaster. In the 1930s, the US and Britain were following different tacks in the development of strategic bombers. The Americans were tending towards four-engine aircraft, while the British, who were concerned with the ability to produce enough engines, put their efforts into twin-engine bombers in the belief that having two very powerful engines was a better arrangement than four smaller ones. In 1936, A.V. Roe, better known as Avro, produced the Manchester, a twin-engine bomber that was powered by two 24-cylinder Rolls-Royce Vulture engines. Despite the promise of these large X-type engines, the Manchester was underpowered and only built in small numbers. But it was the Manchester that provided the basis for the mighty Lancaster that followed.

The twin-engine Avro Manchester served as the basis for the four-engine Lancaster. Note the center vertical stabilizer of the Manchester Mk 1 which was removed in the Mk 2 and Lancaster variants. (UK Government)

By 1936, the RAF came to the conclusion that four engines were indeed better than two. Seeing the results of efforts in the US and Russia, which demonstrated that four smaller engines provided good lifting power as well as better range, the British began work to develop their own four-engine bomber. Three new heavy bombers came out of this effort: the Handley Page Halifax, the Short Stirling, and the Avro Lancaster. For the Lancaster, Avro chief design engineer Roy Chadwick began with the Manchester and enlarged it to carry more payload and fitted it with four Rolls-Royce Merlin engines. While not as powerful as the Vulture, the Merlins were more reliable, and would become perhaps the greatest inline engine of the war. With its Merlins, the Lancaster made use of the podded “power-egg” concept developed by the Germans, where entire engines and ancillary equipment could be changed out as a single unit or swapped between comparable aircraft. The first Lancaster prototype featured the twin-lobed tail and stubby vertical stabilizer from the first Manchesters, but that arrangement was abandoned in favor of removing the central fin and enlarging the lobes. Not only did this improve stability, it also provided a clearer field of fire for the dorsal gunner. Of particular importance to the design of the Lancaster was its enormous bomb bay. With an unobstructed length of 33 feet, the Lancaster was able to carry a wide variety of payloads, including the 12,000-pound Tall Boy and 22,000-pound Grand Slam strategic earthquake bombs developed by British engineer Barnes Wallis.

A view of the Lancaster’s long bomb bay showing a typical bomb load for a nighttime area bombing raid: one 4,000 impact-fused high-capacity bomb, called a “cookie,” and 12 Small Bomb Containers (SBCs) each loaded with incendiaries. (RAF)

The Lancaster entered service with RAF Bomber Command in March 1942 with a mine-laying mission near the Heligoland Bight, and a bombing mission over the German city of Essen. It soon became the principal nighttime bomber in use by the RAF and the RCAF, and by 1945 Lancasters had dropped 618,378 US tons of bombs over the course of 156,000 sorties. Though the Lancaster was a rugged aircraft, only 35 managed to complete more than 100 missions, and the longest surviving Lancaster, which completed 139 missions, was retired and scrapped in 1947. In addition to its role as a nighttime area bomber, the Lancaster also took part in precision daylight raids, including dropping the Tall Boy and Grand Slam bombs, the largest non-nuclear bombs deployed until 2017, against German U-boat pens. Lancasters were also modified to carry Barnes Wallis’ bouncing dam buster bombs during Operation Chastise, which attacked dams in the Ruhr Valley in an attempt to destroy German power generation, industrial water use and farm production.

British wartime production and development focused almost solely on bombers, so they had little in the way of transport aircraft immediately after the war. Here, a Lancaster has been converted to commercial service, where it was known as the Lancastrian.

But the “Lanc” proved to be a versatile aircraft that performed beyond dropping bombs. Lancasters served as a test bed for nascent turbojet engines and early turboprop engines, and the former bomber was used to ferry prisoners of war back to the British Isles and continued in Canadian service until 1963. It was also developed into a transatlantic passenger and mail plane known as the Lancastrian. Lancastrians played a vital role in the Berlin Airlift, and one took part in a 1945 mission to locate the Magnetic North Pole. The Lancaster was further developed into the larger Avro Lincoln, which replaced the Lancaster and was the last piston-powered bomber flown by the RAF. A total of 7,377 Lancasters were built in England and Canada, the most of any British heavy bomber.

A Finnair McDonnell Douglas MD-11 (OH-LGB) lands at Singapore Changi Airport in 2005 (Aldo Bidini)

January 10, 1990 – The first flight of the McDonnell Douglas MD-11. Passenger aviation entered the jet age with the de Havilland Comet, and aircraft that followed, such as the four-engine Boeing 707 and the Douglas DC-8, helped usher in global air travel. But ad the commercial aviation industry grew, the development of the jet airliner became a race for bigger and bigger aircraft that could carry more passengers to farther destinations. In the early era of the jet airliner, those range and capacity goals could only be met by stretching the length of current, single-aisle airliners to their limit. Thoughts turned to a double-decker airliner, something that had been done with modest success in the piston era, but the ultimate solution lay not in lengthening the airliner but in widening it to allow for a second aisle. The first of what came to be known as the wide-body class of airliners arrived in 1969 with the Boeing 747, an aircraft that was also a partial double-decker.

The DC-10 formed the basis for the more advanced MD-11. While outwardly very similar, the DC-10 had a shorter fuselage and lacked winglets. (Aero Icarus)

While the majority of airliners of the early jet era featured either two or four engines slung under the wings, the idea of using three engines was first put to use commercially in the Hawker Siddeley Trident and the Boeing 727, which took their maiden flights in 1962 and 1963. The McDonnell Douglas DC-10 combined the trijet concept with the wide body airliner, an arrangement that had certain benefits. With one engine on each wing and a third centered on the tail, the airliner’s wing could be moved farther aft, along with its center of gravity (COG). Having more room in the center of the airliner allowed for quicker loading and unloading of passengers, and the rearward COG improved efficiency, though it did introduce some handling difficulties. Though it suffered some early difficulties in its development, including some high profile crashes, the DC-10 eventually became a reliable people hauler and cargo aircraft.

An MD-11 of Dutch airline KLM, the last commercial airline to operate the type in passenger service (Boushh_TFA)

By 1976, McDonnell Douglas began work on developing a more advanced version of their wide-body tri-jet. They considered stretched versions of the existing DC-10, but customers showed no interest. By 1984, they had settled on two versions of what would be called the MD-11. The first was called the MD-11X-10 and was based on a DC-10-30 with a range of 6,500 miles. The second was the MD-11X-20, which would have a longer fuselage to accommodate up to 331 passengers with a range of 6,000 miles. By the end of 1986, McDonnell Douglas had 52 firm orders from 10 airlines in three different versions: passenger, combined passenger and freight (combi), and freighter. While based on the DC-10 and bearing a strong resemblance to its predecessor, the MD-11 has a stretched fuselage and increased wingspan with winglets that improve fuel efficiency. A combination of newer, more efficient high-bypass turbofan engines and an increased use of composites help to reduce weight and extend range. The advanced cockpit has a crew of two, removing the need for a flight engineer. It also employs what McDonnell Douglas called the Advanced Common Flightdeck (ACF) that it shares with the Boeing 717 (the final variant of the DC-9 series following the merger of McDonnell Douglas and Boeing in 1997). Finnair received the first MD-11 into service in 1990, and the 200th and final MD-11 was delivered to Sabena in April 1998.

A Lufthansa Cargo MD-11F lands at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport (Tim Shaffer)

Though the trijet configuration had its benefits, advances in jet engine technology eventually outweighed the benefits of three engines, and airlines began to switch to more efficient twinjets. Ultimately, the MD-11 was a victim of a lack of sales caused by competition with other aircraft in the Boeing line, particularly the Boeing 767 and 777, as well as competition from the Airbus A330 and A340, and only 200 were built. KLM was the last airline to operate the MD-11 as a passenger carrier, and the company sold their last two airliners to a Russian cargo company in 2009. Though retired as a passenger airliner, the MD-11 remains in service today as a freighter.

McDonnell F2H-2N Banshee (US Navy)

January 11, 1947 – The first flight of the McDonnell F2H Banshee. Following the arrival of the jet engine during WWII, the US Navy was keen to take advantage of the new technology. They were impressed with the work done by fledgling aircraft designer James McDonnell on the radical XP-67, so the Navy enlisted McDonnell to develop a jet fighter that could operate from the decks of Navy carriers. The aircraft that came out of this work was the McDonnell FH Phantom, a straight-wing, twin-engine fighter that, while only built in small numbers, proved that naval jet operations were feasible. But even as the Phantom was making a name for itself as the first pure jet aircraft to operate from the deck of an aircraft carrier, McDonnell was already working on a successor before the Phantom even entered production.

The McDonnell FH Phantom, the first pure jet fighter to fly from an American carrier, formed the basis for the F2H Banshee (US Navy)

The Banshee, as the new fighter was called, was essentially an enlarged Phantom, but the Westinghouse J34 turbojet engines provided almost twice the power of the J30 used in the Phantom. Other improvements included the repositioning of the guns to below the nose to avoid blinding the pilot while firing at night, a pressurized air-conditioned cockpit, and bulletproof canopy glass that was heated to prevent frost. Since the Banshee shared a lineage with the earlier Phantom, commonalities between the two fighters allowed McDonnell to complete the prototype just three months after the first Phantoms came off the production line. And, following their experience of the Phantom, the Navy accepted the Banshee with minimal flight testing.

An early production model F2H-1 Banshee. Note the shorter fuselage and lack of wingtip fuel tanks. (US Navy)

As with all early turbojet-powered aircraft, range was an issue with the first Banshees. To address this deficiency, McDonnell added a 13-inch section to the fuselage which increased fuel capacity by 176 gallons, and permanent wingtip tanks were installed that added another 400 gallons. This aircraft became the F2H-2 and was the most-produced variant of the 895 aircraft built by McDonnell. Eight underwing hard points could hold nearly 1,600 pounds of external stores, and more powerful J34-WE-34 turbojets pushed the Banshee to 580 mph in level flight.

F2H-2 Banshees of Fighter Squadron 172 (VF-172) “Blue Bolts” returning to the aircraft carrier USS Essex (CV-9) during the Korean War (US Navy)

The Banshee was introduced into Navy and Marine Corps service in 1948 and became one of the primary US aircraft flown during the Korean War, where it was affectionally called “Banjo” by its pilots. Initially employed as a high-altitude escort for American bombers, the destruction of the North Korean air force soon freed up the Banshee to take over low level ground attack missions. Since most of their missions were flown over South Korea, and not near the Yalu River bordering China to the north, the Banshee never had to mix with Chinese fighters coming south, and therefore scored no air-to-air victories during the war. As a result, only three Banshees were lost, all to ground fire. In the era before antiaircraft missiles, the speed of the Banshee also made it an invaluable asset as a reconnaissance aircraft, where it could fly high and fast above the battlefield, practically immune to antiaircraft fire. Despite its excellent service, advances in swept-wing fighters led the Navy to retire the Banshee in 1959 in favor of more modern designs. But McDonnell continued to provide the US Navy with fighters, first with the F3H Demon, and then with the remarkable F-4 Phantom II, a more than worthy heir to the Phantom name.

(Christian Volpati)

January 9, 1963 – The first flight of the Hawker Siddeley HS 121 Trident, a short- to medium-range airliner and the first to feature a third engine on the fuselage centerline. While the Trident’s design was unique for its era, political infighting in the British government over what form the new airliner would take delayed delivery until after the appearance of the Boeing 727, a similar tri-jet configuration, and seriously hampered sales of the new airliner. Seating up to 140 passengers depending on variant, the Trident flew for the airlines of eight nations, as well as the militaries of China and Pakistan. By the time the Trident ceased production, only 117 had been built, while Boeing would eventually complete over 1,800 727s.

(Authors unknown)

January 9, 1951 – The first flight of the Tupolev Tu-85. On four different occasions in 1944, American Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers attacking Japan were forced to make an emergency landing in Russia. Rather than return the bombers, the Soviets kept them and Tupolev made exact duplicates which were designated Tu-4. The Tu-85 (NATO reporting name “Barge”) was a greatly enlarged variant of the Tu-4, being nearly 50-percent heavier and having almost twice the range, though it still lacked the range to attack the US from Russia. After the B-29 proved susceptible to attack by more modern MiG-15 fighters over Korea, the Russians halted development of the Tu-85 after two prototypes, choosing instead to develop the Tu-95 which remains in service today.

(Author unknown)

January 10, 1967 – The death of Laura Houghtaling Ingalls, a pioneering aviatrix and winner of the prestigious Harmon Trophy for her 1934 flight from Mexico to Chile piloting a Lockheed Air Express, then across the Andes to Rio de Janeiro, then to Cuba and finally to Floyd Bennett Field in New York. The flight was the first over the Andes by a woman and the first flight by a woman from North America to South America. It also set a distance record for woman pilots of 17,000 miles. In 1942, Ingalls was convicted of serving as a publicity agent for the Nazis by accepting money from the German embassy while encouraging American non-intervention in WWII. Sentenced to up to eight years in prison, Ingalls was released in 1943 and applied for, but never received, a presidential pardon despite support from WWI fighter ace and Medal of Honor recipient Eddie Rickenbacker.

(US Air Force)

January 10, 1964 – A Boeing B-52H Stratofortess has its vertical stabilizer sheared off by turbulence but lands safely. The B-52H, on loan from the US Air Force and flying with a four-man civilian crew, was on a test mission to record sensor data for high speed, low altitude flight. Over New Mexico’s Sangre de Christo mountains, the crew encountered severe turbulence at 14,000 feet, and though it lasted only nine seconds, it was so severe that the vertical stabilizer was torn off the Stratofortress. In spite of the loss of yaw control from the missing stabilizer, and a center of gravity that had shifted due to the loss of the approximately 2000-pound fin, the crew managed to control the aircraft and call for assistance from chase planes and Boeing engineers on the ground. After flying for five hours, they diverted to Blytheville, Arkansas for more favorable weather conditions and landed the bomber without incident. The Air Force produced a safety film about the incident titled Flight Without a Fin.

(US Navy)

January 11, 1988 – The death of Gregory “Pappy” Boyington. Born on December 4, 1912 in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, Boyington began his military flying career as an aviation cadet in the US Marine Corps Reserve before resigning his commission to fly with the American Volunteer Group, better known as the Flying Tigers, fighting for Nationalist China against the Japanese. Returning to the USMC in 1942 at the rank of major, Boyington became famous as the commander of VMF-214, better known as the Black Sheep, a squadron flying the Vought F4U Corsair in the Pacific. In January 1944, Boyington tied the record of famed WWI ace Eddie Rickenbacker with 26 victories, but was then shot down and ended the war as a POW. Following the war, Boyington received the Navy Cross and the Congressional Medal of Honor.

(Imperial War Museum)

January 11, 1944 – USAAF Major James Howard earns the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions on a bombing mission over Germany. While on a mission to protect US bombers on a mission over Germany, Howard’s formation was attacked by a large number of German fighters. Finding himself alone after the other elements of his wing had moved to the rear of the formation, Howard saw more than 30 German fighters attacking the lead elements of the formation. Despite being hopelessly outnumbered, Howard pressed the attack in his P-51 Mustang, eventually shooting down as many as six enemy fighters in a fight that lasted 30 minutes. He continued to swoop at the remaining fighters after he had run out of ammunition and his fuel had run critically low. When he retuned to base, he reportedly discovered just a single bullet hole in his Mustang. For his actions, Howard was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and promoted to Lieutenant Colonel. He survived the war, retired from the US Air Force as a Brigadier General, and died in 1995 at age 81.

Earhart and her Vega are thronged with well-wishers on her arrival in Oakland (Hawai’i Aviation)

January 11, 1935 – Amelia Earhart becomes the first pilot to fly solo between Hawaii and the United States. Amelia Earhart is perhaps the world’s best known aviatrix, but that fame was garnered more for her unsuccessful flight around the world when she disappeared without trace over the Pacific Ocean with navigator Fred Noonan in 1937. As a trailblazing woman pilot, Earhart was the first woman to cross the Atlantic as a passenger in 1928, then made the transatlantic flight herself as a solo pilot in 1932. Three years later, flying eastward from Honolulu, Hawai’i to Oakland, California, Earhart became the first aviator, man or woman, to fly solo across the eastern Pacific, making the 2,400-mile journey in 18 hours while flying a Lockheed Vega that first had been shipped to Hawai’i.

(US Air Force)

January 12, 1962 – The US Air Force begins Operation Ranch Hand. Operation Ranch Hand was a part of the larger Operation Trail Dust which sought to spray chemical defoliants over the dense jungles of South Vietnam in an effort to expose the movements of Viet Cong troops and destroy crops. The most widespread chemical defoliant used was nicknamed Agent Orange, and over a ten-year span more than 20,000 sorties were flown over the countryside of South Vietnam, most by formations of Fairchild C-123 Provider cargo aircraft each carrying 1,000-gallon tanks of the herbicide. By the end of operations, approximately 11.2 million gallons of Agent Orange were sprayed, while 5 million acres of forest and 500,000 acres of crops were heavily damaged or destroyed. The chemicals found in the defoliants were later traced to cancers and birth defects among those who came in contact with them, both Vietnamese civilians and US military personnel alike. Tactically, the use of defoliants was largely unsuccessful.

(US Navy)

January 12, 1953 – The US Navy begins operational flights from USS Antietam (CV-36), the first carrier to feature an angled deck. Earlier aircraft carriers had straight decks that were fine for propeller aircraft, but the higher landing speeds of jet aircraft made such an arrangement much more dangerous. The idea for an angled flight deck was first proposed by Royal Navy Captain Dennis Campbell, but it was the Americans, with Antietam, who first proved the benefits of this design when a sponson was added to support the overhanging angled deck. Existing Essex and Midway class carriers were retrofitted with angled decks, while the first purpose-built American angled deck carrier came with the Forrestal class. The first British carrier constructed with an angled deck was HMS Ark Royal (R09).

(US Library of Congress)

January 12, 1912 – The first flight of the Curtiss Model F, a pre-WWI flying boat developed by Curtiss and flown in large numbers by the US Navy. By 1917, the Model F had become the standard flying boat trainer. The biplane aircraft had a crew of two and was powered by a single engine powering a pusher propeller. More than 150 Model Fs were produced in a total of seven variants. In addition to the US Navy, the Model F was flown by Brazil, Italy, England and Russia, who ordered two batches of the flying boat.

This Date in Aviation History: January 6 - January 8

Aviation Photography: How I Do It

Aviation History Snapshots

Thanks for reading This Date in Aviation History.

[BicycleBuck]

@ttyymmnn

“Power egg,” hah! That’s the first time I’ve heard that phrase!

[Skyfire77]

@ttyymmnn
Looks kinda like a scaled up Electra with a more pointed nose.

[ttyymmnn]

@skyfire77 said in This Date in Aviation History: January 9 - January 12:

@ttyymmnn
Looks kinda like a scaled up Electra with a more pointed nose.

You find something that works and you stick with it. That basic wing is all over Lockheed's planes.

[Roadkilled]

@ttyymmnn I do think that the Constellation was one of the most beautiful aircraft of its era. However, the Excalibur did have the advantage of letting more light and fresh air into the cabin.

[Skyfire77]

@roadkilled The lightness would have really added to the range too....

[ttyymmnn]

@roadkilled No worry about catching the covid in that baby.

[john norris]

@ttyymmnn Have I seen this before?

[ttyymmnn]

@john-norris said in This Date in Aviation History: January 9 - January 12:

@ttyymmnn Have I seen this before?

Have you seen what before? This particular post?

[john norris]

@ttyymmnn Yes. I am having Constellation photo flashbacks.

[ttyymmnn]

@john-norris said in This Date in Aviation History: January 9 - January 12:

@ttyymmnn Yes. I am having Constellation photo flashbacks.

Well, the Connie is, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful aircraft ever flown. So it's it's likely that I've posted other pictures. I do a weekly Aviation History Snapshots post on Wednesdays, and I think I may have led with one a couple of weeks ago.

Here, have another one.

[john norris]

@ttyymmnn

[ttyymmnn]

@john-norris

Now I want pancakes.

Also, this:

[RacinBob]

@john-norris I've toured this Constellation at the air combat museum at Topeka KA. They were selling new and unused exhaust valves for them for $9 each. I figured at that price it was a bargain. Its a big piece of metal. It's sitting at my desk at work next to my collection of bent Type R valves.

http://www.combatairmuseum.org/aircraft/lockheedec121warningstar.html

[john norris]

@racinbob That sounds awesome. Photo of the exhaust valve?

[john norris]

@ttyymmnn Actually it looked kind of thick and doughy in the middle. Perhaps it came preloaded with butter and syrup.

[RacinBob]

@john-norris Maybe someday, problem is that I have been in my office a total of 2 days in the last 9 months......