Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, considerable debate developed within the new government on the fate of the 77 Grumman F-14A Tomcats that were acquired under the regime of the Shah of Iran. Throughout the rest of 1979 there were low-intensity negotiations with the United States to buy back to Tomcats for refurbishment to put into service with the US Navy, possibly even the USAF as an interceptor. Discussions even revolved around selling them to a foreign customer.

In February 1979 it was suggested to fly them to Saudia Arabia or Egypt for sale to the Saudis. In the following month the new prime minister Mahdi Bazargan and Ayatollah Khomeni's son-in-law Sadeq Tabatabaie suggested the Tomcats had to be sold as they were to complex to operate by the new Islamic republic. Bazargan wanted them sold back to the USA for a quick sale. The Pentagon welcomed the move as they were looking to possibly sell the F-14s to the United Kingdom. In April the Canadians were rumored to be willing to buy them at 1/3 of their original price.

The defense minister, General Riyahi, and General Bagheri, the head of the IRIAF, wanted to hold on to the Tomcats for the defense of Iran. Official spokesmen for the new government disavowed any intent to sell the Tomcats and by August Ayatollah Beheshti and Ayatollah Khameni (today's supreme leader in Iran) with the support parliament speaker Hashemi Rafsanjani overrode the first president of the Islamic republic, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, and declared that the F-14 fleet was an essential defense asset of Iran.

Source: International Air Power Review, Volume 23. "Air Combat: The Nine Lives of the Cat- Iran's Tomcats at War" by Tom Cooper and Farzad Bishop, p113.

On 7 September 1941 the first 24 Hawker Hurricanes arrived at Vaenga-Pervaya airfield near Murmansk to form Royal Air Force's 151 Wing composed of both No. 81 and No. 134 Squadrons. This first group was departed the carrier HMS Argus which delivered them into the Soviet Arctic. The rest of the wing's aircraft arrived five days later via cargo ship at the port of Murmansk and the 40 Hawker Hurricanes flown by RAF pilots was code-named Force Benedict.

For over a month the RAF pilots of the two squadrons flew combat missions over the Kola Peninsula against the Luftwaffe and also flew escort missions for the bombers of the Soviet Union's Northern Fleet Air Force. Fifteen Luftwaffe aircraft were shot down with only the loss of one pilot and one Hurricane.

On 11 October 1941 Soviet Admiral Nikolai Kuznetsov signed an order creating the 78th IAP (Fighter Air Regiment) to operate the RAF's Hurricanes after the RAF pilots departed back for the UK. Four days later the 78th IAP (made up of three squadrons) was declared operational and became the first unit in the Soviet Air Force to operate foreign aircraft in wartime.

Source: Aeroplane Monthly, September 2007. "A Biting North Wind" by Yuriy Rubin, p23.

On the last night of World War II, a Northrop P-61 Black Widow from the 548th Night Fighter Squadron from Ie Shima was on nocturnal patrol and in low-altitude pursuit of a Japanese fighter when the enemy aircraft hit the water before the Black Widow could fire a shot. The war officially ended at midnight that night, but there remained the possibility of kamikaze attacks on American airfields despite the surrender, so the P-61s remained on alert.

The following night on August 15, another P-61 was vectored by ground control on Saipan towards another Japanese fighter flying at low level. This time the Japanese pilot was dropping window to confuse the Black Widow's radar operator. Like the previous night, a low altitude pursuit ensued, but before the P-61 could open fire, the plane impacted the water.

The P-61 Black Widow in effect made the final two kills of World War II without firing its guns!

Source: Aviation History, November 2008. "Bite of the Black Widow: Northrop's P-61 was the ultimate nocturnal predator in the Pacific War" by Warren Thompson, p54-55.

After a quarter century of using the Dassault HU-25 Guardian on sea patrols, the US Coast Guard is transitioning to the EADS CASA HC-144A Ocean Sentry which is based on the CN-235 transport. Though it may seem backwards to go from a pure jet to turboprop aircraft, the HC-144A carries the same fuel load as the HU-25 but burns it at half the rate which translates longer time-on-station, eight to nine hours versus the Guardian's four hours on-station. The per-hour operating cost has improved as well with the HC-144A costing less than $1000/hour compared to the Guardian's $1500-$1800/hour.

In addition, the HC-144A has a rear cargo door/ramp as well as a belly-mounted observation bubble allowing SAR crews to do something not previously possibly on other USCG aircraft- look below the aircraft. The last of the Guardians should be retired in 2020 (of the 21 in service now) and replaced with 36 HC-144A Ocean Sentries. Five are now in service with pilot training taking place at CGAS Mobile, Alabama.

Source: Air & Space Smithsonian, January 2009. "Then & Now: Frozen Moments as Time Marches On" by Paul Hoversten, p68.

The US Marine Corps had initially required the Grumman A-6 Intruder to meet an STOL requirement to take off in 1500 feet over a 50 foot obstacle. To accomplish this, the first seven A-6 Intruders had tilting tailpipes in which the exhaust of the twin J52 engines was vectored downward 23 degrees on takeoff and landing. There was a knurled knob on the outboard throttle that the pilot used to activate the feature. During testing, the Navy evaluation team set out to see if the feature worked as advertised and found the tilting tailpipes only marginally effective in meeting the USMC requirements- in fact, in many configurations the approach speeds were actually lower than they had been in propeller-driven aircraft.

The Navy team recommended deleting the feature at a cost savings of $25,000 per aircraft. After some back and forth arguing between the Marines and the Navy, the tailpipes and the associated actuation mechanisms were deleted beginning with aircraft number 8.

Source: Intruder: The Operational History of Grumman's A-6 by Mark Morgan and Rick Morgan. Schiffer Publishing, 2004, p16-17.

Since 2005 UAV builder Aurora Flight Sciences has been working on an innovative hybrid turbine-electric propulsion for VTOL flight. The Excalibur demonstrator features a Williams F145 turbofan engine (the same used on the Tomahawk cruise missile) in a mid-fuselage tilting nacelle combined with battery-powered electric lift fans in the wingtips and nose. In VTOL flight, the lift fans augment the vertical lift provided by the jet engine and in conventional flight, the engine also recharges the batteries for the lift fans.

The challenge for VTOL flight is that the high power needed for vertical flight means that the engines are larger than necessary for cruise flight. By using electric lift fans, the engine can be sized for cruise flight, thereby lighter, and can more easily use off-the-shelf engines than one designed for vertical flight. In VTOL flight, the Excalibur's jet engine provides 70% of the lift thrust with the fans providing the balance.

The Excalibur is a small proof-of-principle aircraft that is already flying and plans are for a second Excalibur with the necessary changes to make a full transition to high speed level flight.

Source: Aviation Week & Space Technology, July 20, 2009. "Hovering Hybrid: Aurora flies turbine-electric UAV designed to combine high speed and vertical flight" by Graham Warwick, p38.

The airport for La Paz, Bolivia, sits at 13,313 feet elevation and is the highest elevation airport in common use and is the reason many jets are certified for airports up to an elevation of 14,000 feet above sea level. Recently, however, the Cessna Citation XLS received approval to operate at airports up to 15,000 feet elevation. The flight inspection division of China's Civil Aviation Administration operates seven Citations and recently it made its first landing at the airport of Qamdo Bangda in Tibet which sits at 14,219 feet above sea level. The Citation XLS' certification is to 15,000 feet as there are no other runways in the world higher than that of Qamdo Bangda.

Source: Flying, July 2009. "Airways: Industry News & Notes", p17.

In 1945 there wasn't a large body of technical knowledge on supersonic flight when the design of the Bell X-1 was formulated. Many engineering and design decisions had to be made based on the best possible estimates of the aircraft's performance. The fusleage's shape was the end product of the study of the .50 caliber bullet, as it was known to be stable at supersonic velocities. Bell's engineers tried to fill in the data gaps on supersonic flight by observing objects known to fly at supersonic speeds- in this case, the .50 caliber round. Discussions with ballistics experts concluded that little was known about the aerodynamics of the round after it was fired, but since there was no question that it was stable at high speeds, its shape formed the basis for the X-1's fuselage.

Source: Bell X-1 Variants, Aerofax Datagraph 3 by Ben Guenther and Jay Miller. Aerofax, 1988, p6.

In 1955 De Havilland began work on the Blue Steak, a medium-range ballistic missile that would have been based in underground silos in eastern England. Powered by two Rolls-Royce RZ.2 liquid-fuelled engines (which were based on the earlier RZ.1 which themselves were based on the US Rocketdyne S-2 engine), it would have been armed with a single nuclear warhead. Several complete systems minus the warhead were live-fired at test stands at RAF Spadeadam and were shown to be very robust and reliable.

In 1960 the Blue Streak was cancelled in favor of the Douglas Skybolt air-launched ballistic missile which was to have been carried by Avro Vulcans in RAF service. Work on the Blue Streak continued as a space launcher, though, with its proven live-fire reliability an asset as a satellite launcher. However, later that year it was cancelled altogether, but all was not lost. The Blue Streak formed the basis for the Europa booster which in turn led to the Ariane launcher used by the European Space Agency.

Source: British Secret Projects, Hypersonics, Ramjets, & Missiles by Chris Gibson and Tony Buttler. Midland Publishing, 2007, p125.

On July 7 of this year the Antares DLR-H2 motor glider became the first piloted aircraft to fly powered only by a fuel cell. The DLR-H2 has a fuel cell and hydrogen tank in underwing pods which powered an electric motor and propeller. Flying for the first time in Hamburg, Germany, the DLR-H2 has a range of 466 miles and a maximum speed of 106 mph with no emissions other than water vapor. The fuel cell delivers 20 kW of power and only 10 kW is needed to maintain level cruise flight. Total efficiency of the system is 44%- approximately twice the efficiency of a conventional piston engine.

Source: Aviation Week & Space Technology, July 13, 2009. "Industry Outlook" edited by Edward H. Phillips, p14.