by Nick Anderson | Apr 16, 2023 | Plane Tales
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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
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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
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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.
by Nick Anderson | Feb 17, 2023 | Plane Tales
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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,
by Nick Anderson | Feb 17, 2023 | Plane Tales
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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.
