On This Day in Aviation History

February 5, 2012
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On this Day in Aviation History: February 5th

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By: NYCAviation Staff
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1972 – Aeroflot and Lufthansa team up to operate joint Moscow-Frankfurt flights.

XB-47 test flight, later to become the B-47 Stratojet.

XB-47 test flight, later to become the B-47 Stratojet.

1972 – Airlines in the United States begin mandatory inspection of passengers and baggage for weapons and explosives.

1971 – The Apollo 14 astronauts land on the Moon.

1962 – A United States Navy Sikorsky HSS-2 Sea King sets the world helicopter speed record of 210.6 mph on a flight between Milford, Conn. and New Haven.

1958 – A B-47 Stratojet on a simulated training exercise out of Homestead Air Force base in Florida collides with an F-86 Sabre. The bomber is carrying a 7,600-pound hydrogen bomb, which is jettisoned in an effort to reduce weight for a safe landing. The Sabre pilot ejects, the B-47 makes it to Hunter Army Airfield safely, and the bomb, let go over the Atlantic Ocean, is never found.

1951 – The United States and Canada announce the implementation of the Distant Early Warning (DEW), the air defense system that uses more than 30 radar stations located across the northern portion of North America.

1949 – An Eastern Air Lines Lockheed Constellation lands at New York’s LaGuardia Airport, setting a coast-to-coast record flight of 6 hours 18 minutes from Los Angeles for transport aircraft.

1946 – TWA begins transatlantic service with the Lockheed Constellation flying the New York-Gander-Shannon-Paris route.

1929 – Aviators Frank Hawks and Oscar Grubb land their Lockheed Air Express in New York after a record flight of 18 hours 20 minutes from Los Angeles.

1920 – The Royal Air Force College is established in Cranwell, Licolnshire.

1919 – The world’s first scheduled passenger airline service using heavier-than-air aircraft is launched as Deutsche Luft Reederei’s flies from Berlin to Weimar via Leipzig. They were the first to use what we now know as Lufthansa’s “crane in the sun” logo, designed by Professor Otto Firle.

1918 – The US military scores its first aerial victory as World War I aviator Stephen W. Thompson shoots down an Albatros D.III over Saarbrucken, Germany.

1913 – Two Greek pilots, Michael Moutoussis and Aristeidis Moraitinis fly a Maurice Farman MF.7 seaplane to spot the position of the retreated Ottoman fleet, marking history’s first recorded naval aviation mission.