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Portal:Aviation/Anniversaries/May 16

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May 16

  • 2011 – Launch: Space Shuttle Endeavour STS-134 at 12:56:28 UTC. Mission highlights: ISS assembly flight ULF6, ELC 3, ROEU, Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. Final flight of Endeavour.
  • 2001 – A Turkish Air Force CASA CN-235M-100 crashes into a field in Malatya, Turkey killing all 34 on board.
  • 1977 – The landing gear failed on a New York Airways Sikorsky S-61 while it was taking on passengers on the roof of the Pan Am building. The aircraft rolled onto its side. Its spinning rotor blades killed four passengers waiting to board (including movie director Michael Findlay) and injured a fifth. Parts of a broken blade fell into the streets below, killing one pedestrian and injuring another.
  • 1958 – Captain Walter W. Irwin sets a new airspeed record of 1,404 mph (2,259 km/h) in a F-104 Starfighter, the first record over 2,000 km/h.
  • 1954 – Birth of Dafydd Rhys "Dave" Williams, Canadian physician and a retired CSA astronaut. He had two space flights, both of which were Space Shuttle missions.
  • 1946 – A B-17G Flying Fortress crashes into White's Hill near Fairfax, California, while en route to Hamilton Field in Marin County, California, after running out of fuel. Two crew members are killed.
  • 1919 – A naval Curtiss aircraft NC-4 commanded by Albert Cushing Read leaves Trepassey, Newfoundland, for Lisbon via the Azores on the first transatlantic flight.
  • 1918 – The Imperial German Navy recommissions the light cruiser Stuttgart after her conversion into a seaplane carrier. She is the only German seagoing aviation ship capable of working with the fleet commissioned during either World War I or World War II.
  • 1915 – (16-17 overnight) Two Royal Naval Air Service Avro 504s interceot the Imperial German Navy Zeppelins LZ 38 and LZ 39, badly damaging LZ39 with four 20-lb (9-kg) bombs dropped on its envelope from above.

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