Dr. Wernher von Braun was a German aerospace engineer born on 23 March 1912 in Wirsitz. He was the second of three sons of a noble Lutheran family. From birth, he held the title of Freiherr (equivalent to Baron), his father being a civil servant and conservative politician that served as Minister of Agriculture in the federal government during the Weimar Republic. The family moved to Berlin in 1915,…
Tag: aeronautical
Rockwell XFV-12
The Rockwell XFV-12 was an American prototype of a supersonic carrier-based VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) fighter developed during the early 1970s for the U.S. Navy under the Vertical Fighter Attack-X program. Rockwell International, a Boeing predecessor company, submitted an entry featuring a Thrust Augmenter Wing (TAW) concept and was awarded a $47 million contract…
Caproni
Società de Agostini e Caproni, also known as Caproni was an Italian aircraft manufacturer. Giovanni Battista “Gianni” Caproni, an Italian aviation pioneer and aeronautical engineer, started the firm in 1908. From 1911, it was known as Società de Agostini e Caproni, and later Società Caproni e Comitti. Caproni was in charge of completing the first…
Jerrie Mock, the first woman to fly around the world
Geraldine “Jerrie” Fredritz Mock was born on November 22, 1925 and was the first woman to fly solo around the world back in 1964. Jerrie Mock first flew with her father in the cockpit of a Ford Trimotor airplane and when she began high school, took an engineering course of which she was the only…
Best ace of all time
Erich Alfred Hartmann,” Bubi”, was a German fighter pilot during World War II and the most successful fighter ace in the history of aerial warfare. He was born on 19 April 1922 in Weissach, Württemberg, to Doctor Alfred Erich Hartmann and his wife, Elisabeth Wilhelmine Machtholf but due to the Great Recession he moved to China with his parents….
The airplane that became ”Flak-Bait”
This is the story of a B-26 Marauder bomber that survived two years of the most intense aerial combat of World War II, taking every bullet that German gunners and fighter pilots threw at it. This airplane was manufactured by Glenn L. Martin Company in Baltimore, Maryland in 1943 and is the aircraft that holds the…
Alberto Santos Dumont
On the 20th of July 1873, Alberto Santos Dumont, an important pioneer aviator, was born in Palmira, Brazil. The 6th of 8 children of Henrique Dumont and Francisca de Paula Santos traveled in 1891 at the age of 18 to Europe, where he perfected his English by spending some months in England. He also climbed…
Urban Air Mobility
Have you ever wondered how would it be to fly to school or work? In the next 3 to 5 years it could become a possibility. Urban Air Mobility (UAM) envisions a safe and efficient aviation transportation system that will use highly automated aircraft that will operate and transport passengers or cargo at lower altitudes within urban…
An endurance record
Have you ever wondered how it is to fly for one or two days without stopping? How about 64 days, 22 hours, 19 minutes, and 5 seconds? This is the world record for an endurance flight and it was established by Robert Timm and John Cook in 1959. But where did it all began? In 1958…
The Starship
If you are a passionate of the space exploration and its colonization ultimately, you may have attended to two events this week: the space bingo of where the Chinese rocket “Long March” was about to crash (which ended happily) and the first successful flight and landing of the SpaceX’s SN15 Starship, this is what we…