On This Day in Aviation History

September 14, 2011
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On This Day in Aviation History: September 14th

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By: Phil Derner Jr.
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2008: Aeroflot Flight 821, a Boeing 737-500, crashes on approach to Perm Airport in central Russia, killing all 88 people on board. The crash is blamed on pilot error, combined with fatigue, alcohol and unfamiliarity with western-style attitude indicators in the cockpit.

1986: A bomb explodes in outside of Ginpo Airport, suburb of Seoul, South Korea, killing five and injuring twenty-nine.

1984: Joe Kittinger embarks on the first successful solo gas balloon crossing of the Atlantic, flying from Carbon, Maine to Savona, Italy in about four days.

1983: The U.S. House of Representatives votes, 416 to 0, in favor of a resolution condemning Russia for shooting down a Korean Air Flight 007.

1976: A US Navy F-14 Tomcat rolls off the deck of the USS John F. Kennedy in international waters north of Scotland after the ship collides with the destroyer USS Bordelon. An exhaustive salvage operation is launched to retrieve the jet before the Soviets can.

1973: Israel shoots down 13 Syrian MIG-21s.

1959: The Soviet probe Luna 2 crashes onto the Moon, becoming the first man-made object to reach it.

1954: A Russian Tu-4 bomber drops a 40 kiloton atomic bomb on Totskoye in central Russia in a top secret nuclear weapons test. 45,000 soldiers and 10,000 civilians are exposed to the radioactive fallout.

1944: The first successful flight into the eye of a hurricane is made by a three-man American crew flying a Douglas A-20 Havoc. They demonstrate that valuable scientific information can be obtained in this manner, which is still done today.

1938: The Graf Zeppellin II makes its maiden flight. A number of events, including the Hindenburg disaster and a United States refusal to provide helium, prevent the most technologically advanced airship of its day from fulfilling its role as a passenger transport. 19 months later it would be scrapped.