RAF Form 414, Vol. 20

RAF Form 414, Vol. 20

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 Applegate Memorandum

The Applegate Memorandum

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.

RAF Form 414, Vol. 19

RAF Form 414, Vol. 19

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.

Sailing Off to Hawaii

Sailing Off to Hawaii

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

Crash Investigation is No Accident

Crash Investigation is No Accident

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 Twelve Crashes of Christmas

The Twelve Crashes of Christmas

 

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.