BBC's Greatest Turning Points in Aviation
 

BBC does a quick primer on aviation history interspersed with the cost of one-way ticket air fares London - New York:


BBC - Future - Infographic: The greatest turning points in aviation

Boeing 707: First jet-powered transatlantic flight. :ugh:

Comment added to their Facepalm page!

Mind you, an American friend and I argued which was first, Comet or B707, his response was that Comet had some crashes so it does not count!

What sort of logic is that? It was the Comet 4 that has the distinction of being the first jet airliner to enter commercial service across the Atlantic. None of them (Comet 4s) crashed.......

Planemike

US-centric logic.:ok:

If anyone used that logic then the Wright brothers wouldn't count as they had a few crashes as well.

The first jet-powered transatlantic flight was in fact a Canberra in Feb 1951.. On 21 February 1951, an RAF English Electric Canberra B Mk 2 (serial number WD932) flown by Squadron Leader A Callard of the A&AEE, flew from Aldergrove Northern Ireland, to Gander, Newfoundland. The flight covered almost 1,800 nautical miles (3,300 km) in 4h 37 m. The aircraft was being flown to the U.S. to act as a pattern aircraft for the Martin B-57 Canberra.
Photo here.

No, it wasn't.

The first jet to fly non-stop across the Atlantic was an F-84E which flew from Manston to Limestone, ME in September 1950.

The Canberra in 1951 was the first to do so without in-flight refuelling.

Oops, like a lot of "Firsts" the claim should be fully defined ..... I should have written jet AIRLINER!

As the birth of the Spitfire is mentioned I would expect the establishment of the Sopwith Co. with a likely mention!

The 707 is mentioned as the first succesfull jet airliner, wich shouldn't be debateable :-/

The BBC have obviously changed it following the outcry.

Despite the first B of BBC standing for British, nowadays they seem to glean a lot of news and information from US sources, and aim their output squarely at the US. This seems to me to be a classic example. Nowadays on their News site prices are routinely quoted in $ even if the news item is nothing to do with US.

Thanks for that Dave - that was new to me.:ok:

evansb.
Thanks for posting that - lovely graphics.

I do think, though, that many of the claims on that page need clarification (or should that be 'qualification'?) - they could rightly be disputed.

In all, from our lofty perch up here on Cloud Prune, it could be called 'Aviation History for Numpties'.

f84 across the Atlantic
 

I remember a RDAF pilot comparish the F84 and the Hawker Hunter with the words: The Hunter flew like it looked: Slick like a hot knife through butter, where piloting the F84 was like sitting atop a haystack!
Poor pilot who had to fly the non-stop Atlantic crossing: He might have been exhausted :-o

Regarding a comparo between the Hunter vs. the Thunderjet, it should be remembered that the Thunderjet was introduced in 1947, seven years before the Hunter's introduction in 1954. Wing loading on a F-84G was 70 lb/ft squared, vs. a Hunter F.6 with a wing loading of 51.6 lb/ft squared.

She (the F-84) was a bit of a dog, but the F-84 was reputed to be a stable gun platform, and despite the "hot" landing speeds, the Thunderjet was easy to fly on instruments, and crosswinds did not present much of a problem. They could carry up to 4,450 lbs of rockets and bombs, or one Mk.7 nuclear bomb.

The first aircraft operated by The U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds was the F-84G Thunderjet, from 1953 to 1955. They upgraded to the swept wing model F-84F Thunderstreak in 1955, and operated the type until 1956. The F-84E was also flown by the Skyblazers team of United States Air Forces Europe (USAFE) from 1950 to 1955.

As previously mentioned by DaveReidUK, On 22 September 1950, two EF-84Es, flown by David C. Schilling and Col. William Ritchie, flew across the North Atlantic from Great Britain to the United States. Ritchie's aircraft ran out of fuel over Newfoundland but the other jet successfully made the crossing which took ten hours two minutes and three aerial refuelings. The flight demonstrated that large numbers of fighters could be rapidly moved across the Atlantic.

On 20 August 1953, 17 F-84Gs using aerial refueling flew from the United States to the United Kingdom. The 4,485-mile (3,900 nmi, 7,220 km) journey was the longest-ever
nonstop flight by jet fighters.

1,972 Hunters were built. 7,524 F-84s of all variants were built, over half going to NATO countries.

http://i1047.photobucket.com/albums/...and%20pans.jpg

I don't suppose Didcot cooling towers counts then ?

Relying totally on my very fallible few remaining grey cells, but wasn't the 1st jet flight across the Atlantic done by RAF Vampire's?

That didn't take long. A Giggle of 'DH Vampire Atlantic' produced this from Wiki:

"History" now seems to be determined by the nationality of those who write it. It used to hang on "who won the battle".