On This Day in Aviation History

March 11, 2012
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March 11th in Aviation History: Air Force Jet Nearly Nukes Georgia Coast

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By: NYCAviation Staff
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This B-47 Stratojet and its JATO bottles coughs its way into the sky, giving the runway some second-hand smoke.
A B-47 Stratojet like this one, seen here demonstrating a rocket assisted takeoff, dropped a nuclear bomb near Georgia on March 11, 1958.
2011 – An 9.0 magnitude earthquake strikes off Japan’s northeast coast, generating a massive tsunami which sweeps away entire towns in Japan, washes out Sendai Airport and forces Tokyo’s Narita Airport to shut down.

2005 – Canadian low-cost airline JetsGo grinds to a halt as they cease operations and file for bankruptcy protection. The airline had 14 MD-83s and 15 Fokker 100s, which were used to serve 29 scheduled destinations in North America.

2005 – China’s first privately-owned carrier, Okay Airlines, begins operations with a flight from Tianjin to Changsha.

1998 – Japan receives their first two Boeing E-767 AWACS (Airborne Warning And Control System) jets. They had ordered four of the type.

1982 – Winderoe Flight 933, a Twin Otter (LN-BNK) crashes into the Barents Sea after structural failure of the aircraft’s tail due to severe clear-air turbulence. All 15 on the aircraft perish.

1959 – The Sikorsky SH-3 Sea King makes its maiden flight.

1958 – A Boeing B-47E Stratojet (53-1876) and an F-86 Sabre collide in mid-air over Tybee Island, Georgia, during an Air Force training mission, forcing the B-47 to jettison a nuclear bomb. The bomb is never located, but presumed lost somewhere in the waters of Wassaw Sound, near Savannah, Georgia.

1957 – A Boeing 707 prototype aircraft flies from Seattle, Washington to Baltimore, Maryland (2,350 miles) in 3 hours 48 minutes.

1955 – Pakistan International Airlines is formed through the merger of a new government-owned carrier with Orient Airways.

1941 – A record for heaviest payload for a commercial aircraft is set by a Flying Tiger Lines Lockheed Super Constellation flying from Newark, New Jersey to Burbank, Calif.

1910 – The D5 tail-less biplane is tested in England by Lieutenant J.W. Dunne with a 60-horsepower Green engine.