A Brief History On December 23, 2002, the first known air to air battle between a manned fighter plane and an unmanned aerial drone took place in the sky above Iraq, when an Iraqi MiG-25 fighter jet shot down an American General Atomics MQ-1 Predator. Digging Deeper Far from the manned fighter merely taking out the drone, the high technology dogfight was a real air to air combat, with the drone armed with and firing an air-to-air missile at the Iraqi fighter. Luckily for the Iraqi pilot, the drone’s Stinger missile was allegedly confused by the heat signature of the…
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A Brief History On December 18, 1995, a Lockheed L-188 Electra airliner driven by four large turboprop engines crashed in Angola, leaving 141 of the 144 people aboard dead. First flown in 1957 and entering service in 1959, the Electra was the first big turboprop powered airliner made in the USA. Digging Deeper While turboprop aircraft may look like the old fashioned prop planes of the past powered by internal combustion engines, the turboprop variety uses basically a jet engine or turbine engine to provide power, using a lower cost fuel and a lighter weight engine, allowing for lower take…
A Brief History On October 11, 2018, the Russian manned space mission, Soyuz MS-10, suffered a booster failure shortly after liftoff, necessitating an emergency abort. Incredibly, both crew members survived the successful abort and reentry to safely land in Kazakhstan. Digging Deeper The Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft reached an altitude of 58 miles, not quite reaching outer space, and landed about 12 miles from the launch site. An error in assembly was blamed for the mishap, and the next flight, MS-11, went off successfully on December 3, 2018. Another example of a successful abort procedure took place on September 26, 1983,…
A Brief History On October 4, 1957, the USSR launched its first satellite to achieve orbit around the Earth, Sputnik 1, marking the beginning of the space age. Digging Deeper The world marveled while the 184 pound satellite circled 134 to over 500 miles above and emitted a radio “beeping” signal that even amateur radio buffs could monitor. Americans were chagrined that the Soviets could “beat” the US into space. The Soviets continued to beat the Americans with the first living mammal in space, a dog named Laika in November of 1957, then the first human in space that also…
A Brief History On September 27, 1941, the first of 2,710 “Liberty” ships rolled off the assembly line, the SS Patrick Henry, built in Baltimore. While it may be naïve to think a single weapon or machine of war can be said to have “won the war,” items such as the Liberty and Victory ships made huge contributions to victory without being weapons. Digging Deeper Liberty ships were mass produced cargo vessels uniquely suited to moving many tons of war materiel across the oceans, especially the Atlantic, to keep Russia and the UK in the war, while also moving American…