Spirit of St. Louis at Kearney Mesa, San Diego, California. (Donald A. Hall)
Following its first flight from Dutch Flats on 28 April 1927, Charles A. Lindbergh continued flight testing of the new Ryan NYP, N-X-211, Spirit of St. Louis, over the following week from the Camp Kearney parade grounds (now known as Kearney Mesa) near San Diego, California.
Data was gathered for takeoff and landing distances, obstacle clearance, power settings, fuel consumption, rates of climb, air speeds, speeds over a measured distance, instrument calibrations. . . All the things that need to be known so that reliable planning for a transcontinental and transoceanic flight could be carried out.
In his book, The Spirit of St. Louis, (Charles Scribner’s and Sons, 1953) Lindbergh wrote about having a gust of wind blow his clipboard containing the carefully collected data out the Spirit‘s window, and his efforts to recover it, which he did.
This photograph of the legendary airplane flying at Camp Kearney was taken by Donald A. Hall, the engineer who designed it.
Turi Widerøe with “Atle Viking,” a 1957 Convair 440-75 Metropolitan, LN-KLA, operated by Scandinavian Airlines System. (SAS)Harmon International Trophy (Aviatrix)
30 April 1969: Turi Widerøe made her first scheduled flight as the first officer of a Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) Convair 440 Metropolitan. She was the first woman to fly for a Western airline.
Captain Widerøe earned her commercial pilot certificate in 1965 and flew the Noorduyn Norseman and de Havilland Otter for Widerøe’s Flyveselskap A/S, a regional air service founded by her father, Viggo Widerøe. In 1968 she joined SAS and completed the company flight academy in 1969, qualified as a first officer. She later was promoted to captain, and flew the Caravelle and Douglas DC-9 jet airliners.
The New York Times, in keeping with the sexist attitudes of the era, referred to her as a “svelte blonde” and made sure to include her physical dimensions: “. . . who has the height (just under 6 feet), the cheekbones and the long, shapely legs of a fashion model. . . her shapely statistics only in centimeters (98–68–100, which translates out to about 38½–26½–39). . .” ¹
In 1969, Ms. Widerøe was awarded the Harmon International Trophy “for the outstanding international achievement in the arts and/or science of aeronautics for the preceding year.”
Turi Widerøe left SAS in the late 1970s following the birth of her second child. Her airline officer’s uniform is on display at the Smithsonian Institution National Air and Space Museum.
Turi Widerøe was born 23 November 1937 at Oslo, Norway. She is the daughter of Viggo Widerøe and Solveig Agnes Schrøder. She studied at the Statens håndverks- og kunstindustriskole (the Norwegian National Academy of Arts and Craft Industry), graduating in 1958. She worked as a book designer and magazine editor, then as assistant manager of a mine in Troms.
Ms. Widerøe qualified for a private pilot license in 1962. After earning a commercial pilot license, she went to work for Flyveselskap A/S, though her father was initially opposed to her career change.
Turi Widerøe with a de Havilland Canada DHC-3 Otter float plane. (Unattributed)
After leaving SAS, Ms. Widerøe went to work for NRK, the national radio and television broadcast service of Norway, as a program director.
In 1972, Ms. Widerøe married Karl Erik Harr, an artist. They divorced in 1975.
She earned a master’s degree in history from the University of Oslo in 1998, and a second master’s from the University of Tromsø in 2006.
¹ “Svelte Blonde Is a Commercial Pilot,” by Judy Klemesrud, The New York Times, 16 February 1970, Page 40, Columns 1–4
30 April 1962: The Chief Research Test Pilot at NASA’s High Speed Flight Station, Joseph Albert Walker, flew the first North American Aviation X-15 hypersonic research aircraft, 56-6670, on its twenty-seventh flight. This was Flight 52 of the NASA X-15 Hypersonic Research Program. The purpose of this test flight was to explore aerodynamic heating and stability at very high altitudes.
At an altitude of approximately 45,000 feet (13,716 meters) over Mud Lake, Nevada, the X-15 was released from Balls 8, the NB-52B drop ship, at 10:23:20.0 a.m., Pacific Daylight Savings Time.
This NASA image depicts three X-15 flight profiles. Mud Lake, Nevada, is near the right edge of the image. (NASA)
Walker started the Reaction Motors XLR99-RM-1 rocket engine. The planned burn time was 81.0 seconds, but the engine ran slightly longer: 81.6 seconds. Even with the longer burn, the X-15 undershot the planned speed of Mach 5.35 and peak altitude of 255,000 feet (77,724 meters). The actual maximum speed for this flight was Mach 4.94, and maximum altitude, 246,700 feet (75,194 meters). Walker landed on Rogers Dry Lake. The total duration of Flight 52 was 9 minutes, 46.2 seconds.
Even though the peak altitude reached by the X-15 was 8,300 feet (2,530 meters) lower than expected, Joe Walker established a new Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) World Record for Altitude Gain, Aeroplane Launched from a Carrier Aircraft, of 61,493 meters (201,749 feet).¹
Joe Walker with the Number 2 North American Aviation X-15, 56-6671, on Rogers Dry Lake. Walker is wearing a David Clark Co. MC-2 full-pressure suit (NASA)
“Article 121” takes off on its first flight at Groom Lake, Nevada, 30 April 1962. (Lockheed Martin)
30 April 1962: Though it had been airborne briefly just a few days earlier, “Article 121”, the first Lockheed A-12, serial number 60-6924, took off from a Top Secret facility at Groom Lake, Nevada, on its “official” first flight. Lockheed test pilot Louis Wellington (“Lou”) Schalk, Jr. was in the cockpit.
The 72,000-pound (32,659 kilogram) airplane lifted off the 8,000-foot (2,438 meters) runway at 170 knots (196 miles per hour, 315 kilometers per hour).
A Central Intelligence Agency report on the A-12 project states:
“. . . rolled out for its first official flight on 30 April, just under one year later than originally planned. A number of senior Air Force officers and CIA executives, includingDeputyDirectorforResearchHerbert Scoville and former project chief Bissell (who left the Agency in February 1962), witnessed the long-awaited event. Schalk again was the pilot. He took the aircraft up for 59 minutes and reached 30,000 feet and just under 400 mph; most of the flight was made at under 300 mph. He reported that the A-12 responded well and was extremely stable. Johnson said this was the smoothest official first flight of any aircraft he had designed or tested.”
—ARCHANGEL: CIA’s Supersonic A-12 Reconnaissance Aircraft, by David Robarge, Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, 2012
Lockheed test pilot Louis W. Schalk, Jr. (Lockheed Martin)
The A-12 was a top secret reconnaissance airplane built for the Central Intelligence Agency under the code name “Oxcart.” It was the replacement for the Agency’s high-flying but subsonic U-2 spy plane which had become vulnerable to radar-guided surface-to-air missiles. (A U-2 piloted by Francis Gary Powers had been shot down with an SA-2 Guideline missile while over Russia exactly one year before.)
The A-12 could fly faster than Mach 3 and higher than 80,000 feet—so fast and so high that no missile could reach it. By the time missile site radar locked on to an A-12 and a missile was prepared to fire, the Oxcart had already flown beyond the missile’s range.
Lockheed A-12 60-6924 (Lockheed Martin)
The Lockheed A-12 was a single-place, twin-engine hypersonic reconnaisance aircraft. It was 101.6 feet (30.97 meters) long, with a wingspan of 55.62 feet (16.95 meters) and overall height of 18.45 feet (5.62 meters). It had an empty weight of 54,600 pounds (24,766 kilograms) and maximum gross weight of 124,600 pounds (57,878 kilograms).
The A-12 was powered by two Pratt & Whitney JT11D-20 (J58-P-4) turbo-ramjet engines, rated at 25,000 pounds of thrust (111.21 kilonewtons) and 34,000 pounds of thrust (151.24 kilonewtons) with afterburner. The exhaust gas temperature is approximately 3,400 °F. (1,870 °C.). The J58 is a single-spool, axial-flow engine which uses a 9-stage compressor section and 2-stage turbine. The J58 is 17 feet, 10 inches (7.436 meters) long and 4 feet, 9 inches (1.448 meters) in diameter. It weighs approximately 6,000 pounds (2,722 kilograms).
The A-12’s speed was Mach 3.2 (2,125 miles per hour/3,118 kilometers per hour) at 75,000 feet(22,860 meters). Its cruise altitude was 84,500–97,600 feet (25,756–29,748 meters). The range was 4,210 nautical miles (4,845 miles/7,797 kilometers)
Article 121 was the first of thirteen A-12s built by Lockheed’s “Skunk Works.” They were operational from 1964–1968, when they were phased out in favor of the U.S. Air Force two-man SR-71A “Blackbird.”
Today, the first Lockheed A-12 is on display at Blackbird Airpark, an annex of the Air Force Flight Test Museum, Edwards Air Force Base, California. It has made 322 flight and accumulated a total of 418.2 flight hours.
Lockheed A-12 60-6924 lands at Groom Lake, Nevada, after its first flight, 30 April 1962. (Lockheed Martin)
