Page 7 - Aerotech News and Review September 2023

On this date ...
Sept. 4, 1984: The B-1B Lancer is rolled out at the Rockwell International facility at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, Calif.
Sept. 5, 1944: The Douglas C-74 Globemaster made its first flight at Long Beach, Calif., with Ben O. Howard at the controls. The flight lasted 79 minutes. The Globemaster was a U.S. heavy-lift cargo aircraft, and was developed after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Sept. 5, 1984: Space Shuttle Discovery, OV-103, completed its first space flight, STS-41-D, when it landed at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., at 6:37 a.m., PDT. It had completed 97 orbits of the Earth. The total duration of its flight was 6 days, 56 minutes, 4 seconds. The purpose of the mission was to place three communications satellites into orbit, and to deploy an experimental solar panel array.
Sept. 6, 1943: Northrop’s experimental fighter, the XP-56 Black Bullet was trucked to the Muroc lakebed and made its first flight, flown by company test pilot John Myers. The XP-56 was a near-tailless design with a pusher engine driving contra-rotating propellers. It was the first aircraft to be constructed entirely of magnesium.
Sept. 7, 1961: As a consultant to Northrop Corporation, Jackie Cochran flew a T-38 Talon to a Fédération Aéronautique Internationale World Record for Speed Over a Closed Circuit of 500-kilometers, flying from Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., to Beatty, Nev., Lone Pine, Calif., and back to Edwards. Her speed averaged 680.749 mph. During August and September 1961, Cochran set series of speed, altitude and distance records with the T-38.
Sept. 8, 1999: The Helios Prototype flew for the first time at the Dryden (now Armstrong) Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif. The Helios Prototype was the fourth and final aircraft developed as part of an evolutionary series of solar- and fuel- cell-system-powered unmanned aerial vehicles. AeroVironment developed the vehicles under NASA’s Environmental Research Aircraft and Sensor Technology program.
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