Historical Photos of Convair Model 118 ConvAirCar, a Prototype Flying Car of Which Only 2 Were Built in 1947

If you think the other flying cars all look a little too much like airplanes, join the club. Industrial Designer Henry Dreyfuss decided to design an actual flying car in 1947, and the ConvAirCar was the result. This was a re-engined development of the Model 116, designed by Theodore P. Hall.

Convair Model 118 ConvAirCar (1947)

The ConvAirCar debuted in 1947, and offered one hour of flight and a petrol mileage of 45 miles per gallon. The car itself sported a lightweight fiberglass body and could seat four. The wings and engine/propeller snapped onto the top of the car, and when not in use were towed behind the car.

Intended for mainstream consumers, two prototypes were built and flown. The first prototype was lost after a safe, but damaging, low fuel incident. Subsequently, the second prototype was rebuilt from the damaged aircraft and flown. By that time, little enthusiasm remained for the project and the program ended shortly thereafter.

Convair Model 118 ConvAirCar (1947) - 1st Prototype

Convair Model 118 ConvAirCar (1947) - 1st Prototype

Convair Model 118 ConvAirCar (1947) - 1st Prototype

Convair Model 118 ConvAirCar (1947) - 1st Prototype

Convair Model 118 ConvAirCar (1947) - 1st Prototype

See more»

May 24, 1991: During Operation Solomon, the World Record for the Most Passengers on a Commercial Airplane is 1,122

Operation Solomon was a covert Israeli military operation to airlift Ethiopian Jews to Israel from May 24 to May 25, 1991. Non-stop flights of 35 Israeli aircraft, including Israeli Air Force C-130s and El Al Boeing 747s, transported 14,325 Ethiopian Jews to Israel in 36 hours.

The operation set a world record for single-flight passenger load on May 24, 1991, when an El Al 747 carried 1,122 passengers to Israel (1,087 passengers were registered, but dozens of children hid in their mothers’ robes). Planners expected to fill the aircraft with 760 passengers. Because the passengers were so light, many more were squeezed in. Five babies were born aboard the planes.

The operation was overseen by the Prime Minister at the time, Yitzhak Shamir. It was kept secret by military censorship. Operation Solomon was sped up with tremendous help from the American Association for Ethiopian Jews (AAEJ). In 1989, the AAEJ accelerated the process of the Aliyah because Ethiopian-Israeli relations were in the right place. Susan Pollack, who was the director of the AAEJ in Addis Ababa, fought for Operation Solomon to happen sooner rather than later. Israel, who had a gradual plan for this operation, and the US were given a graphic report from Pollack that informed both countries of the terrible conditions that the Ethiopian Jews were living in.

The organization went right ahead and got transportation like buses and trucks to have the people of Gondar quickly come to Addis Ababa.To get the Jews in Addis Ababa, many of the Jews that came from Gondar had to venture hundreds of miles by car, horses, and by foot. Some had things taken by thieves on the way, and some were even killed. By December 1989, around 2,000 Ethiopian Jews made their way by foot from their village in the Gondar highlands to the capital and many more came to join them by 1991.

In order to accommodate as many people as possible, airplanes were stripped of their seats, and up to 1,122 passengers were boarded on a single plane. May 24, 1991, also happened to be a Friday which falls on Shabbat for Jews. On Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath, transportation is not used. This made it easier to complete the operation. The Jewish Religious Law mentions that one can break the Sabbath traditions if it is for saving lives.

Many of the immigrants came with nothing except their clothes and cooking instruments, and were met by ambulances, with 140 frail passengers receiving medical care on the tarmac. Several pregnant women gave birth on the plane, and they and their babies were rushed to the hospital. Before Operation Solomon took place, many of the Jews there were at a high risk of infection from diseases, especially HIV. The Jews that were left behind had an even higher risk at the infection because the rate of it kept increasing. After a few months, around 20,000 Jews had made their way over. While they were there, they were struggling for basic resources like food and warmth. They thought they would see their families right away.

Between 1990 and 1999, over 39,000 Ethiopian Jews entered Israel.

See more»

Amelia Earhart Completed the First Transatlantic Solo Flight by a Woman on May 21, 1932

Amelia Earhart, the pioneering female pilot, achieved enduring fame with the many aviation records she set during the 1920s and ’30s. Early in her career she achieved an impressive feat when she became the first woman to receive a pilot’s license from the distinguished National Aeronautic Association, on May 16, 1923. In 1928 she became the first woman to cross the Atlantic by plane when she flew as part of the crew (her duty was to keep the flight log) with Wilmer Stultz and Louis Gordon.

That successful airplane flight obviously whetted her appetite for aviation, and four years later Earhart made a bold attempt to fly across the Atlantic Ocean solo. This daring flight feat had only been accomplished once before, by Charles Lindbergh in 1927.

On 20 May 1932, the fifth anniversary of Lindberg’s famous flight, Earhart departed Newfoundland, Canada in her 600-horsepower Lockheed Vega to cross the vast ocean with 420 gallons of gasoline and a quart of chicken soup. Her goal destination was Paris, but after 14 hours and 56 minutes of fighting strong winds and some slight mechanical problems, she settled for landing her plane in Derry, Northern Ireland. She had done it—the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic! For this 15-hour feat of endurance and pluck she became the first woman to receive the Distinguished Flying Cross, and the flight cemented her fame.

Earhart later told reporters, “I was never in Ireland before, but the sight of the thatched cottages and the marvelous green grass and trees left me no doubt that I had actually made the Emerald Isle. I was still surer when I heard the brogue of my friend Dan McCallion.”

After spending the day in Derry, Earhart traveled first to England and then to Paris, where the French Government awarded her with The Cross of the Legion of Honor. When she returned to America, President Hoover bestowed upon her the National Geographical Medal, and Congress awarded her the Flying Cross.

In 1937, Amelia Earhart set herself the challenge of being the first woman to fly around the world. This challenge, however, would prove too great and she disappeared after taking off from Lae New Guinea, bound for Howland Island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. A rescue attempt lasted 17 days and scoured more than 250,000 square miles of ocean, but she was never found.

The aviator remains a household name in the U.S, and an airport in her home state of Kansas was named in her honor.

May 21, 1927, Charles Lindbergh Landed in Paris, Completing the World’s First Solo, Nonstop Transatlantic Flight

On May 21, 1927, Charles Lindbergh landed in Paris’ Le Bourget Field at 10:22 p.m. local time, completing the first solo, nonstop transatlantic flight.

Aboard The Spirit of St. Louis, Lindbergh flew from New York to Paris in a span of 33 ½ hours. He was greeted in Europe by a large crowd of up to 100,000. The journey totaled over 3,600 miles.

In recognition of the feat, Frenchman Raymond Orteig awarded Lindbergh the $25,000 Orteig Prize, the original check from which is preserved at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. The prize was reserved for “the first first aviator to fly nonstop from Paris to New York or New York to Paris.”

Lindbergh, whom the museum characterizes as a “meticulous planner,” packed survival tools in the event of a crash. Among those items were a tins of rationed food, matches, hand flares and even a fishing line in case he needed to catch dinner. These items are on display at the Barron Hilton Pioneers of Flight Gallery Exhibit at the Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C.

A year after his famous flight, Lindbergh gifted The Spirit of St. Louis to the Smithsonian in 1928. Flying it from St. Louis to Southeast Washington, The Spirit of St. Louis remained on display at the Arts and Industries Building, until it was moved to the Air and Space Museum in 1975.

April 28, 1988: The Roof of an Aloha Airlines Jet Ripped Off in Mid-Air at 24,000 Feet, But the Plane Still Managed to Land Safely!

It was just another routine inter-island flight when an Aloha Airlines jet took off from Hilo, bound for Honolulu, on April 28, 1988. Cruising at 24,000 feet, an 18-foot section of the plane’s roof suddenly ripped off, causing an explosive decompression, creating a gaping hole in the fuselage and sucking a flight attendant out of the plane.

The Boeing 737 landed safely at Kahului Airport on Maui, but it goes down as one of the most significant events in aviation history.

Flight 243 departed from Hilo International Airport at 13:25 on April 28, 1988, with six crew members and 89 passengers on board, bound for Honolulu. Nothing unusual was noted during the pre-departure inspection of the aircraft, which had already completed three round-trip flights from Honolulu to Hilo, Maui, and Kauai earlier that day, all uneventful. Meteorological conditions were checked but there were no advisories for weather phenomena reported along the air route, per AIRMETs or SIGMETs.

After a routine takeoff and ascent, the aircraft had reached its normal flight altitude of 24,000 feet (7,300 m), when at around 13:48, about 23 nautical miles (43 km; 26 mi) south-southeast of Kahului on the island of Maui, a small section on the left side of the roof ruptured with a “whooshing” sound. The captain felt the aircraft roll to the left and right, and the controls went loose; the first officer noticed pieces of grey insulation floating above the cabin. The cockpit door had broken away and the captain could see “blue sky where the first-class ceiling had been.” The resulting explosive decompression had torn off a large section of the roof, consisting of the entire top half of the aircraft skin extending from just behind the cockpit to the fore-wing area, a length of about 18.5 feet (5.6 m).

There was one fatality: 58-year-old flight attendant Clarabelle Lansing, who was swept out of the airplane while standing near the fifth row seats; her body was never found. Lansing was a veteran flight attendant of 37 years at the time of the incident. Eight other people suffered serious injuries. All of the passengers had been seated and wearing their seat belts during the depressurization.

Co-pilot Tompkins was flying the aircraft when the incident occurred; Captain Schornstheimer took over and steered the aircraft toward the closest airport, on Maui island. Thirteen minutes later, the crew performed an emergency landing on Kahului Airport’s Runway 2. Upon landing, the aircraft’s emergency evacuation slides were deployed and passengers quickly evacuated from the aircraft. A total of 65 people were reported injured, eight of them with serious injuries. At the time, Maui had no plan in place for an emergency of this type. The injured were taken to the hospital in tour vans belonging to Akamai Tours (now defunct), driven by office personnel and mechanics, as the island only had two ambulances. Air traffic control radioed Akamai and requested as many of their 15-passenger vans as they could spare to go to the airport (three miles from their base) to transport the injured. Two of the Akamai drivers were former paramedics and established a triage on the runway. The aircraft was written off.

See more»

In the 1950s, a Pilot Twice Landed an Aircraft on the Streets of New York City While Drunk to Win a Bar Bet

While drinking, a pilot bet he could land outside the bar, 2 hours later he touched down in central New York in a stolen aircraft. Years latter he repeated the stunt because someone wouldn’t believe him.

It was on September 30, 1956 and New Jersey resident Thomas Fitzpatrick was visiting pals in his old stomping grounds of Washington Heights, in New York City. After a few drinks at a bar, the story goes someone proposed a bet that Fitzpatrick couldn’t get from Jersey to the Heights in 15 minutes.

Apparently, when he returned to Jersey that night, the challenge still stuck in his craw. So at around 3 a.m. he snuck into a single-engine plane at the Teterboro School of Aeronautics. Then, fortified by the courage that earned him a Purple Heart during the Korean War – and also maybe by beer — he flew the thing back to the Big Apple. Nailing a perfect landing on St. Nicholas Avenue near 191st Street in front of the bar in which the bet was placed earlier that day.

The New York Times called it a “fine landing” and reported that it had been widely called “a feat of aeronautics.” In that gentler era, Thomas was hailed not as a threat to society, but a minor hero. The plane’s owner refused to press charges. So instead of going to jail for grand larceny, Thomas’s only punishment was a hundred dollar fine. Which might explain why, two years later, he did it again.

Seriously. On October 4, 1958 just before 1 a.m., Fitzpatrick again stole another plane from the same airfield and landed on Amsterdam and 187th after another bar patron disbelieved his first feat.

For his second stolen flight, judge John A. Mullen sentenced him to six months in prison. When asked why did had undertaken the 2nd flight Fitzpatrick told the police “that he had pulled off the second flight after a bar patron refused to believe he had done the first one”

Fitzpatrick has three sons and was married to his wife, Helen, for 51 years working as a steamfitter. He sadly died in 2009 at the age of 79 Fitzpatrick has a mixed drink named after him for his feat called the “Late Night Flight”.

Controlled Impact Demonstration: In 1984, NASA Made Airliners Safer by Crashing a Boeing 720

The Controlled Impact Demonstration (or colloquially the Crash In the Desert) was a joint project between NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that intentionally crashed a remotely controlled Boeing 720 aircraft to acquire data and test new technologies that might help passengers and crew survive. The crash required more than four years of preparation by NASA Ames Research Center, Langley Research Center, Dryden Flight Research Center, the FAA, and General Electric. After numerous test runs, the plane was crashed on December 1, 1984. The test went generally according to plan, and produced a spectacular fireball that required more than an hour to extinguish.

The FAA concluded that about one-quarter of the passengers would have survived, that the antimisting kerosene test fuel did not sufficiently reduce the risk of fire, and that several changes to equipment in the passenger compartment of aircraft were needed. NASA concluded that a head-up display and microwave landing system would have helped the pilot more safely fly the aircraft.

On the morning of December 1, 1984, the test aircraft took off from Edwards Air Force Base, California, made a left-hand departure and climbed to an altitude of 2,300 feet (700 m). The aircraft was remotely flown by NASA research pilot Fitzhugh Fulton from the NASA Dryden Remotely Controlled Vehicle Facility. All fuel tanks were filled with a total of 76,000 pounds (34,000 kg) of AMK and all engines ran from start-up to impact (flight time was 9 minutes) on the modified Jet-A. It then began a descent-to-landing along the roughly 3.8-degree glideslope to a specially prepared runway on the east side of Rogers Dry Lake, with the landing gear remaining retracted.

Passing the decision height of 150 feet (46 m) above ground level (AGL), the aircraft turned slightly to the right of the desired path. The aircraft entered into a situation known as a Dutch roll. Slightly above that decision point at which the pilot was to execute a “go-around”, there appeared to be enough altitude to maneuver back to the center-line of the runway. The aircraft was below the glideslope and below the desired airspeed. Data acquisition systems had been activated, and the aircraft was committed to impact.

The aircraft contacted the ground, left wing low, at full throttle, with the aircraft nose pointing to the left of the center-line. It had been planned that the aircraft would land wings-level, with the throttles set to idle, and exactly on the center-line during the CID, thus allowing the fuselage to remain intact as the wings were sliced open by eight posts cemented into the runway. The Boeing 720 landed askew. One of the Rhinos sliced through the number 3 engine, behind the burner can, leaving the engine on the wing pylon, which does not typically happen in an impact of this type. The same rhino then sliced through the fuselage, causing a cabin fire when burning fuel was able to enter the fuselage.

The cutting of the number 3 engine and the full throttle situation was significant as this was outside the test envelope. The number 3 engine continued to operate for approximately ⅓ of a rotation, degrading the fuel and igniting it after impact, providing a significant heat source. The fire and smoke took over an hour to extinguish. The CID impact was spectacular with a large fireball created by the number 3 engine on the right side, enveloping and burning the aircraft. From the standpoint of AMK the test was a major set-back. For NASA Langley, the data collected on crashworthiness was deemed successful and just as important.

Inside a 1947 Boeing 377 Stratocruiser, the “Largest and Fastest Aircraft in Commercial Service”

After World War II, Boeing reentered the commercial market with a new long-range airliner, the Stratocruiser (Model 377). It was the first Boeing commercial transport since the Stratoliner, and like its military counterpart, the C-97, was based on the B-29 Bomber. It possessed all the speed and technical improvements available to bombers at the end of the war.

The Stratocruiser’s first flight was on July 8, 1947. Its design was advanced for its day; its innovative features included two passenger decks and a pressurized cabin, a relatively new feature on transport aircraft. It could carry up to 100 passengers on the main deck plus 14 in the lower deck lounge; typical seating was for 63 or 84 passengers or 28 berthed and five seated passengers.

Pan American placed the first order for 20 Stratocruisers, worth $24 million, and they began service between San Francisco, California, and Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1949. Boeing built 56 Stratocruisers between 1947 and 1950. The airplane marked the company’s first significant success selling passenger planes to airlines in other countries.

During the early 1960s, Aero Space Lines ballooned the Stratocruiser’s fuselage into a whale-like shape to carry spacecraft sections. Nine of the variants were assembled. The first was called the “Pregnant Guppy,” followed by five larger “Superguppies” and three smaller “Miniguppies.”

The Stratocruiser’s lower-deck lounge had a bar where passengers could buy a cocktail or soft drink.

Sets of seats could be converted into lower double berths roomier than those on a train.

Stratocruiser seats were roomy and comfortable.

Separate men's and women’s dressing rooms provided a place for passengers to prepare for sleep or the dawning day.

A unique feature of the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser was its lower-level lounge and bar, reached via a spiral staircase.

See more»

February 3, 1959 – The Day the Music Died: Photos From the Plane Crash That Killed Buddy Holly and Others in Iowa

On February 3, 1959, American rock and roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and “The Big Bopper” J. P. Richardson were killed in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa, together with pilot Roger Peterson. The event later became known as “The Day the Music Died,” after singer-songwriter Don McLean referred to it as such in his 1971 song “American Pie.”

At the time, Holly and his band, consisting of Waylon Jennings, Tommy Allsup, and Carl Bunch, were playing on the “Winter Dance Party” tour across the Midwest. Rising artists Valens, Richardson and Dion and the Belmonts had joined the tour as well. The long journeys between venues on board the cold, uncomfortable tour buses adversely affected the performers, with cases of flu and even frostbite. After stopping at Clear Lake to perform, and frustrated by such conditions, Holly chose to charter a plane to reach their next venue in Moorhead, Minnesota. Richardson, who had the flu, swapped places with Jennings, taking his seat on the plane, while Allsup lost his seat to Valens on a coin toss.

Soon after takeoff, late at night and in poor, wintry weather conditions, the pilot lost control of the light aircraft, a Beechcraft Bonanza, which subsequently crashed into a cornfield. Everyone on board was killed.

Buddy Holly’s funeral was held at the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Lubbock, TX, on February 8, 1959, drawing over a thousand mourners. Holly’s widow did not attend. On the same day, Ritchie Valens was buried in San Fernando Mission Cemetery.

The event has since been mentioned in various songs and films. A number of monuments have been erected at the crash site and in Clear Lake, where an annual memorial concert is also held at the Surf Ballroom, the venue that hosted the artists’ last performance.

Holly's band, The Crickets, later memorialized the day in 2016 with a farewell and final concert called “The Crickets and Buddies,” where almost every living member of the band Holly helped form played tribute to the vocal legend’s passing.

See more»