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Geoffrey de Havilland was an early aviation pioneer and aviator, who designed some of the aircraft that were used by the British air service during World War I, including the 1916 de Havilland DH.4 biplane, while he was employed by the Airco aircraft company. In 1920, he bought this company, which he renamed the de Havilland Aircraft Company, and it produced many significant aircraft designs, for military and commercial use, until it merged with the Hawker Siddeley, in 1965, to become Hawker de Havilland and then part of Boeing, in 2000. Some of its notable light aircraft designs include the DH.60 Moth biplane, from 1925, and the twin-engine DH.88 Comet monoplane, one of which won the 1934 MacRobertson air race from England to Australia. In 1940, it produced the DH.98 Mosquito, which had a wooden airframe and was used, in various versions, as a bomber, a fighter, and a reconnaissance aircraft, during World War II. The company also produced, during World War II, the DH.100 Vampire, which was the first British single-engine jet fighter and was first flown by his son, Geoffrey de Havilland, on September 20, 1943, though it did not enter Royal Air Force service until 1946. Its DH.106 Comet airliner first flew on July 27, 1949 and inaugurated the world's first scheduled jet airliner service, on January 22, 1953, between London, England and Johannesburg, South Africa, but several fatal Comet crashes, due to the structural failure of its airframe, in 1953 and 1954, forced the aircraft to be withdrawn from commercial airline service, for four years, until the modified Comet 4 was ready, in 1958. This photo shows his de Havilland Number 2 biplane, which was purchased by the Royal Army and designated the Farman Experimental 1 (FE1). Its first flight was on September 10, 1910, when he flew it, at Seven Barrows, England, for a distance of 1,312 feet.(1) Geoffrey de Havilland was born on July 27, 1882, was knighted in 1944, and died on May 21, 1965. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered over Seven Barrows, where he conducted his early test flights. His son Geoffrey was killed in a test flight of the experimental DH.108 jet, on September 27, 1946, when it broke up in flight, and his son John was killed in the test flight of another de Havilland aircraft, in 1944. |
(1) Page 82, Bill Gunston, Aviation Year by Year, Dorling Kindersley Limited, London, 2001.
GEOFFREY
DE HAVVILAND (1882-1965)
BOEING HISTORY
WITHIN AUSTRALIA
In 1927, Italian Air Force aviator Francesco De Pinedo made a transatlantic flight, from Africa to Brazil, as part of a tour of South and North America, using the Savoia Marchetti S-55 Santa Maria flying boat. He started the flight from Sardinina, on February 13th, with two crew members, Captain Carlo Del Prete and Sergeant Vitale Zacchetti, and reached New Orleans, Louisiana, on March 19th. However, his flying boat was destroyed on the Roosevelt Reservoir, near Phoenix, Arizona, when a mechanic's cigarette ignited some fuel that had spilled around the aircraft, but he was able to continue his tour, when a replacement airplane reached New Orleans, on May 14th, and the next day he flew into Chicago, Illinois, with an escourt of American military airplanes. He attempted another transatlantic flight, from Trepassy, Newfoundland, in Canada, to Paris, France, on May 22nd, a day after Charles Lindbergh completed his nonstop solo transatlantic flight, from New York to Paris, in his Ryan B-1 Brougham NYP Spirit of St. Louis, but he was forced to land on the Atlantic Ocean, about 200 miles from Horta, in the Azores, because of high winds, and he finally reached Rome, Italy, on June 16th. After the tour, he was promoted to General and given the Royal Air Force Cross from King George, of England. Later, in 1933, he left the Italian Air Force and planned to fly nonstop from New York City to Bagdad, Iraq, in a Bellanca monoplane, but was killed when he crashed the airplane, on takeoff from Roosevelt Field, on September 2, 1933. A memorial service for him was held at Saint Patrick's Cathedral, in New York City, before his body was returned to Italy. |
FRANCESCO
DE PINEDO 1890-1933
FRANCESCO
DE PINEDO
COMMANDER
FRANCESCO DE PINEDO (1890-1933)
A
EULOGY OF FRANCESCO DE PINEDO, THE FORGOTTEN HERO
FOUR-CONTINENT
FLIGHT - 1927
GENERAL
ITALO BALBO 1896-1940
BALBO,
GENERAL ITALO
BALBO'S
FLIGHT
French aviator Raymond Delmotte was an air racer and the chief test pilot for the Cauldron aircraft company. On December 25, 1934, he set a speed record, of 314.32 mph, while flying a Cauldron C. 460, but a new speed record, based on an average of 352.39 mph, was set the next year, on September 13, 1935, by Howard Hughes, in his Hughes H-1 monoplane, which almost reached a speed of 560 mph, before it crashed into a field, on its fifth circuit.(1) These photos show Delmotte's Cauldron C. 109 parasol monoplane, with registration number F-AHFE. (1) Page 327, Bill Gunston, Aviation Year by Year, Dorling Kindersley Limited, London, 2001. |
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John Owen Donaldson was an american World War I pilot and Captain who became the president of the Newark Air Service in 1920. He was awarded the Mackay Gold Medal for winning the United States Army's October 1919 transcontinental race across the United States of America and he was killed in an exhibition flight, near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, when his airplane crashed during a stunt. This photo shows a Curtiss Model 50 Robin C monoplane, in Newark, New Jersey, on September 1, 1929, that was used by the Newark Air Service. |
James Harold Doolittle was a United States Army flyer who won the Schneider Cup Race air race in 1925, for which he was awarded the Mackay Trophy, the 1931 Bendix Trophy Race, from Burbank, California to Cleveland, Ohio, and the 1932 Thompson Trophy Race in Cleveland. On September 4, 1922, he completed the first transcontinental flight across the United States of America in one day, while flying a de Havilland D.H. 4 biplane from Pablo Beach, Florida to San Diego, California, in 21 hours and 19 minutes, during which he stopped only once, at Kelly Field, in Texas. In 1930, he was hired by the Shell Oil Company, as the manager of their Aviation Department, after he resigned his active Army commission, and flew the red and orange Lockheed Orion 9C Shellightning, which is shown in this photo. This aircraft was the only all-metal Orion, from the ten that were produced. He also won the Medal of Honor, on April 18, 1942, during World War II, for leading a flight of sixteen B-25 Mitchell bombers, from the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Hornet, to Tokyo, Japan. |
JAMES H. DOOLITTLE
JAMES
HAROLD DOOLITTLE
LOCKHEED
ORION 9C
THE
AIRCRAFT OF THE SHELL OIL COMPANY IN THE 1930'S
1931
AND 1932 CLEVELAND AIR RACE PHOTOS
THE
BENDIX TROPHY
Amelia Earhart was the first women to make a solo transatlantic flight, which she did in a Lockheed Vega, in May of 1932, in 14 hours and 54 minutes, and she was the first woman to make a non-stop transcontinental flight across the United States of America, which she completed, in her Lockheed Vega, on August 25th, in 19 hours and 5 minutes. Amelia Earhart was also the first woman to make a transpacific flight, which she did in 1935, and the first woman to make a transatlantic flight, which she did as a crewmember of the Fokker F.VIIb-3m Friendship that was flown by Wilmer Stultz and Slim Gorden, from Trepassey, Newfoundland, in Canada, to Wales, in the United Kingdom, from June 17th to 18th, 1928. She also set an autogiro altitude record of 18,415 feet, in a Pitcarin autogiro, on April 8, 1931, at the Pitcarin airfield at Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, and in a Pitcarin PCA-2, which was sponsored by Beechnut Gum, she she became the second person to fly a autogiro across the United States of America, on June 8, 1931, and the first person to fly an autogiro across America from west to east, when she returned to New York, from California. She disappeared, along with her navigator, Fred Noonan, during a flight over the Pacific Ocean, in July 1937, while attempting an around-the-world flight, which she had started in Oakland, California, in her Lockheed Electra monoplane. This photo shows Amelia Earhart, standing, on the left, next to Florence Klingensmith, who is holding the Amelia Earhart Trophy, for female flyers, that she won at the 1932 National Air Races, which were held at the Cleveland Municipal Airport, in Cleveland, Ohio, from August 27th to September 5th. |
Amelia Earhart standing, in the center of the photo, to the right of Florence Klingensmith, at the 1932 National Air Races. |
The monument that was dedicated to Amelia Earhart, in her presence, on June 27, 1932, at Station Park, near the train station in Harrison, New York, where she once lived, with her husband, the publisher George Palmer Putnam, and where there is a street named after her. It was from the polo field at the Westchester Country Club, in Harrison, that she started, with her husband, in an Avro Avian biplane, on Friday August 31st, at 9:52 a.m., the first leg of her 1928 transcontinental flight across the United States of America, which she would later complete, to become the first woman to make such a flight. |
THE
OFFICIAL SITE OF AMELIA EARHART
AMELIA
EARHART
AMELIA
EARHART AEROFILES
AVIATION
HISTORY AMELIA EARHART
AMELIA
EARHART'S FLIGHT ACROSS AMERICA
AMELIA
EARHART BIRTHPLACE MUSEUM
PREFACE
TO GREATNESS
AMELIA
EARHART - A TIMELINE
AMELIA
EARHART INFORMATION