Aviation news from 90 years ago

Dana

Dana

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OK, 90 years and 4 days, I forgot to post this on Friday... we had a birthday party for my 90 year old aunt, and they had a copy of the newspaper from the day she was born... on the front page there were a couple of aviation items. 14 planes caught in bad weather, 4 damaged, and one... broken finger???

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Dana said:
OK, 90 years and 4 days, I forgot to post this on Friday... we had a birthday party for my 90 year old aunt, and they had a copy of the newspaper from the day she was born... on the front page there were a couple of aviation items. 14 planes caught in bad weather, 4 damaged, and one... broken finger???

View attachment 111968
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wonder what the yoke/stick looked like?:rolleyes:
 
dang no gps, no ils and they got only a broken finger out of that?
Pretty impressive!
 
Let's see...2020-90 = 1932, more or less. So given the timeframe, and my estimates of how problems were solved back then, I'd bet the broken finger was from a pilot that punched the guy that suggested they fly in the fog in 1932. Just a guess. :)

Oh, and happy birthday to the aunt!
 
In 1932 would they be likely to even have attitude gyros?
 
Even wilder, Naval Aviation began 21 years before that. Some of those guys still come to 'Hook I'm pretty sure (looking at you A4 Skyhawk association admin :) )
 
Salty said:
In 1932 would they be likely to even have attitude gyros?
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The internet says Doolittle had an artificial horizon when he made the first instrument flight in 1929, and that they were invented by Sperry in 1916. That surprised me a bit as I always thought he just had needle, ball, & airspeed. I would bet they had ai's, but radio navigation was in its infancy and the ILS was still being developed, so finding the runway in coastal fog was quite an accomplishment. It's a wonder 10/14 were undamaged.
 
I did some googling too and couldn’t find much definitive, but I suspect they did not. Those first flight with AIs were not small devices installed in the console. I doubt that they retrofitted biplanes in the early thirties with them. But, I do not know. I could easily be wrong.
 
It would be interesting to know what model they were. I assume stearmans?... imagine that being a new aircraft.
 
Stearmams, at least the trainer you're doubtless thinking of, weren't introduced until 1934.

I wonder what Princess Ingrid was flying on?
 
Oops...math is hard :oops:
 
Man, I hope the pilot with the broken finger recovers quickly.
 
Best I could find for planes flying for the navy in 1932 is
O2U-3
Curtiss F6C-4
Grumman FF-1
Martin BM

But man, it's surprisingly hard to find any real information on the subject.
 
The Prince George referred to in the Princess Ingrid article was the Duke of Kent, not his brother Albert who later became King George VI. Kent was killed in the crash of a Shorts Sunderland flying boat in Scotland in 1942. There have been disputed claims that he was enroute to Sweden on a secret military mission.

In 1935 Ingrid married Crown Prince (later King) Frederick IX of Denmark.

There will be a quiz.
 
Salty said:
Best I could find for planes flying for the navy in 1932 is
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The movie Dive Bomber with Errol Flynn has a bunch of pre-war naval air footage mixed in. Along with some really atrocious ADM... :)

I assume that there was some hard core scud running involved in the original post. The church I used to attend got hit by an aircraft lost in the fog trying to get back into the Grosse Ile Naval Air station during WW-II - I don't think the steeple is much more than 50 feet AGL. The pilot ended up bailing out.

St__James_Historic_Chapel.jpg
 
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
I assume that there was some hard core scud running involved in the original post.
Click to expand...

Some things never change. There may or may not have been a similar scud run at Pres. Bush Sr's funeral in TX a few years ago as well. Luckily, no fingers were broken!
 
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