by Nick Anderson | Apr 20, 2023 | Plane Tales
Podcast (pt): Download
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.
by Nick Anderson | Apr 16, 2023 | Plane Tales
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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
by Nick Anderson | Apr 16, 2023 | Plane Tales
Podcast (pt): Download
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.
by Nick Anderson | Apr 13, 2023 | Plane Tales
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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.
by Nick Anderson | Feb 20, 2023 | Plane Tales
Podcast (pt): Download
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.
by Nick Anderson | Feb 17, 2023 | Plane Tales
Podcast (pt): Download
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.
