Plane Tales

Life on 77 Squadron had settled down to a routine, if it ever really could on a fighter squadron. There was certainly plenty of variety to our flying. In one month I flew some practice bombing attacks, both day and night, on the Evans Head weapon’s range north by 230 nm. This was followed by a 4 ship formation demonstration of ground attack on our own airfield as part of an Open Day celebration for the public.  Then night radar bombing on the Beecroft range at Jarvis bay about 150 nm south. Then we bombed and sank a tug boat before flying off to New Zealand.   The Squadron hours board   A head on view of the FA18A   Our Hornets in close formation   A MK82 low drag general purpose bomb   A 77 Sqn Hornet landing   RNZAF Strikemasters AKA the Bluntie   The RNZAF A4 Skyhawk   Landing at Ohakea   My old buddy John       Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Myself and Greenshed.

Marvin and Rebecca's first two flights of the day were cancelled due to high winds at Newark so they both waited in the crew room until their company dispatch released them for flight 3407 at 6pm, 4 and a half hours after their initial report time.  Certainly for Rebecca, it had been a long time since she had done more than nap in a chair.  Their flight to Buffalo was due to take 53 minutes and they were carrying 45 passengers which, along with their two cabin attendants meant that they had 49 souls onboard their Q400 aircraft. The pilots’ performance was likely impaired because of fatigue but to what extent could not be conclusively determined.  However, they boiled down to the flight crew’s failure to monitor airspeed, the flight crew’s failure to adhere to sterile cockpit procedures, the Captain’s failure to effectively manage the flight and Colgan Air’s inadequate procedures for airspeed selection, management during approaches in icing conditions and training.  This is the story of Colgan Air Flight 3407.   A Bombardier Q400   The SAAB 340   The DH Dash 8   Examples of wing icing   Stills from the NTSB accident report   Stills from the NTSB accident report   Stills from the NTSB accident report   The wreckage of Flight 3407   Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Lord of the Wings, Bill Abbott, Steve Fitzgerald, NASA and the NTSB.

With thanks to listener Sam Dawson who has such interesting relatives and to Betty Goerke, the author of a book about Baz Bagby, A Broken Propeller. I am pleased to present the story of Sam Dawson's Great Uncle Baz.   Stunt pilot Lincoln Beachey at Niagara   The 1st Aero Squadron   Early Aerial Reconnaissance   The 88th Aero Squadron     General Billy Mitchell   The start of the Great Transcontinental Air Race   Great Uncle Baz   Images under creative commons licence with thanks to the Library of Congress, the USAAC, the USAF, the RFC, the US Army, the National Archives and SADSM.  

The continuation of my log book tales, otherwise known as RAF Form 414, and we are up to Volume 20.  Apart from other asides, this tale deals with my accidental overflight of a very secret satellite surveillance base run by the Australians and the CIA!   Overflying Uluru (Ayres Rock)   My arrival at Alice Springs airport   My 'circumnavigation' of Australia   My aircraft being impounded on arrival at RAAF Pearce   Seeing my father at the 1881 Resturant   The Great Australian Bight   Passing through RAAF Edinburgh   Looking back through the fins   Heading home to Williamtown Images under creative commons licence with thanks to Myself, Nachoman-au and Google Earth.

The DC-10 was McDonnell Douglas's first commercial airliner project since the merger between McDonnell Aircraft Corporation and the Douglas Aircraft Company in 1967. It started life on the drawing boards as a 4 engined, double decked, wide body airliner that could carry 550 passengers but morphed into single deck, three engined aircraft that could carry one passenger short of 400!  In what was expected to be a knockout blow to the competing Lockheed L-1011, the President of American Airlines and James McDonnell of McDonnell Douglas announced American Airlines' intention to acquire the DC-10. Flight 96 was en route between Detroit and Buffalo when, above the city of Windsor in Ontario whilst climbing through 11,750 ft the flight crew heard a distinct thud and dirt and debris flew up from the cockpit floor into their faces. On inspection it was obvious that the rear cargo door had detached from the aircraft.  This is the story of the DC-10 cargo door issue and the engineer who tried to warn the company of the dire problem. The 4 Engined Douglas Proposal   The DC-10   The Cargo Door   The Cargo Door of Flight 96 The Accident Report of Turkish Airlines Flight 981   Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the SDASM archives, the Douglas Aircraft Corp, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, the FAA and the DOT AIB.

Telling the tale of my flying career, I left you at the end of my F/A18 conversion course as we reformed the No 77 Royal Australian Air Force Squadron with their brand new Hornets. So far our one and only aircraft A21-5 was being shared around and everyone wanted a piece of it, either to fly or learn how to fix it.  The squadron execs were pretty busy dealing with the job of getting the new squadron personnel squared away so the rest of us got more than our share of flying.  There wasn’t much we could do with a single jet but I was happy just to play with a multi million dollar toy and get used to my new home.   The M61A Vulcan Cannon   The 'Pig' Australian F111   My route around Australia   Mt Isa   Arriving at Darwin   Uluru through the HUD         Pine Gap   Alice Springs   Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Peter Gronemann, General Dynamics, Fhrx, and Google Maps.

Hawaii became the most recent state to join the union in 1959 and is now the third wealthiest.  Following it’s annexation, Hawaii became an important naval base for the US Navy so it is hardly surprising that they should be the first to attempt a flight from the US mainland to the island.  Aviation had already arrived at the islands in 1910 courtesy of Bud Mars, the Curtiss Daredevil.   The Hawaiian Archipelago   The annexation of Hawaii   J C Mars   Commander John Rodgers   Rodgers in the Wright Flyer   The PN9 flying boat   Rodgers and his crew survive to be welcomed into Hawaii   The Atlantic-Fokker C-2 Tri-motor   Atlantic-Fokker C-2 "Bird of Paradise" arrival in Hawaii   The start of the Dole Air Race   In all, six aircraft were lost or damaged beyond repair and ten lives lost.   Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Google Map Images, Bain News Service, Harris and Ewing, the Library of Congress, Hawaii Aviation, the USAF and the SDASM.           Images under Creatiove Commons licence with thanks to

It was the 13th of May 1912, a Monday, when a Flanders F3 Monoplane took off from Brooklands in Surrey, a county of England.  The pilot was the aviation pioneer Edward Victor Beauchamp Fisher and his passenger the American millionaire Victor Mason.  Fisher had an Aviator’s Certificate, the 77th to be issued, had learned to fly at Brooklands and was a flying instructor there.  He had also worked with both A V Roe (the founder of Avro) and Howard Flanders, whose monoplane he was flying at the time.  The two men had made two or three circuits of the airfield at about 100ft, the 60 hp Green engine operating well when, in a left turn, the aircraft fell to the ground killing both the aviator and his passenger before catching alight and burning.  In the early days of aviation such accidents were fairly common but what sets this one apart is that it was the first in history to become the subject of an accident investigation by an official civilian body… the Public Safety and Accidents Investigation Committee of the Royal Aero Club.   Brooklands airfield and motor racing circuit circa 1907   The Flanders F3/4   The Wright crash   Lt Frank Lahm   The 1920 Air Navigation Act   The 1926 formation of the NTSB   NTSB Investigators   The Challenger disaster     Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Daimler Chrysler AG, Bain News Service, National Museum of Health and Medicine, the USAF, UK Gov, NTSB and the Kennedy Space Centre.

  The 12 days of Christmas are generally thought to run from the 26th of December to the 6th of January and is an important period of religious celebration or for those of us who observe Christmas in a more secular manner, it’s more likely to be a traditional time of recovery following our holiday excesses and to welcome in the New Year. Of course, those of us in the Aviation industry often remember dates by events that occurred on a particular day and the most memorable are often the most tragic.  With that in mind I present the 12 crashes of Christmas.   The TU144   Earthrise from Apollo 8   The Lockheed A-12 Oxcart   The C-130   The Avro Ten   The Vickers Wellington   The Handley Page O   The captured bomber   Gustav Hamel and Eleanor Trehawke Davies   Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man   The Flying Machine   The Convair 440 Metropolitan airliner   Amelia Mary Earhart   Earhart's Electra   Amy Johnson     A Finnish Fokker   Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Michel Gilliand, NASA, the USAF, State Library of Queensland, the RAF, US National Archives, the Rijksmuseum, Luc Viatour, SDASM,and those images within the Public Domain.

Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier was one of two men who left the earth's surface and flew in Montgolfier's balloon for the very first time. He also designed a type of balloon that was given his name that flew using a combination of a lifting gas and hot air. More than 200 years later, his design would be used in the balloon that made the first non stop round the world flight. A Rozièr balloon   Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier in a Montgolfier balloon   De Rozièr perishes in a baloon crash over Wimereux   Don Cameron led the way in record breaking and unusual balloon design     Double Eagle II   Virgin Flyer   The successful balloon circumnavigation by Piccard and Jones     Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to those Public Domain images available, NASA, the Smithsonian,The Virgin Group, Cameron balloons and Breitling.

Each year upwards of 2 million of the faithful make the journey to follow the path of the profit Muhammad to a number of holy sites before their pilgrimage rites are considered complete. Muslims from around the world make this journey which, in modern times, is often completed using air travel, as it was in 1991 when Nigeria Airways wet leased a Douglas DC8 operated by Nationair Canada to help them cope with the season’s increase in passenger traffic due to the Hajj. Under the hot sun of the Arabian desert, the scene was set for a disaster.   A Nationair DC8   King Abdulaziz International airport in Jeddah   The Maintenance Record analysis   The DC8 gear   A typical brake fire   Excerpt from the accident report   Excerpt from the accident report   Conditions in the cabin became unsurvivable     Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Pedro Aragão, Yousefmadari, ICAO and the USAF.

They were the pioneers who trod the territory beyond the sound barrier… a place no man had ever been before and which had killed many who attempted the journey. The rocket powered, winged bullet first flew only 42 years after man’s first powered flight, an achievement that still astounds me. To think that a toddler around at Kitty Hawk who saw one of the Wright Brothers first flights, could have heard the world’s first man made sonic boom before they reached the ripe old age of 50 is a true testament to the ability of America’s finest minds and the bravery of their greatest pilots.   The Bell X1 in flight   The Miles M52   The X Planes   US Military astronaut wings   The X2 drop   The X2 crash   The X15   An X15 launch   Armstrong with the X15   Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to NASA, the RAF, the USAF, NPRC,

It's time for another of my flying logbook tales and it’s May 1987 and I’m on the Australian FA18 No 2 Operational Conversion Unit at RAAF Williamtown starting the final phase on course 1 of 87 before moving onto No 77 Squadron which was to be my home for the next few years.   An FA/18B with a pair of BDU33 practice bomb carriers   The Salt Ash bombing range   A practice bomb strikes the centre of the target   The CCIP aiming symbology   Mk 82 500lb General Purpose bombs   RAAF Townsville   Mk82s hitting the target on Cordelia Island   Course graduation   Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to the Welcome Collection and the USAF.

A tribute to Sherman Smoot, friend of the APG Show, who died doing what he loved best... flying.     Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Capt Nick Anderson.        

The First World War battle of the Somme continues, to this day, to fascinate and appal in equal measures. Much has been written about the ground war the first day of which saw the greatest number of British casualties than had occurred before in the entire history of the British Army… 19,240 were dead and 38,230 injured. The fighting over a 16 mile front lasted almost 5 months, after which the Allied troops had advanced about 6 miles. The butchers bill of casualties was horrendous. The combined Commonwealth countries number reached nearly 60,000 but was dwarfed by the United Kingdom’s casualty number of over 350,000. The battle opened on the 1st of July 1916 with a massed explosion that ranks amongst the largest non nuclear explosions in history and was then considered the loudest human made sound to date, audible beyond London 160 miles away.  It was witnessed by an 18 year old RFC pilot.     The mine under Hawthorn Ridge   Then the dust cleared and we saw the two white eyes of the craters   Going over the top   The la Boisselle mine crater now and then.   Pip's landing   The Fokker Eindecker   Bristol Fighters   A dogfight   The battlefield     Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to British First World War Air Service Photo Section, Ernest Brooks, Henry Armytage Sanders, H. D. Girdwood, the RFC and the IWM.