Aviation History & the Air and Space Museum

In 1911, on 1 November, Italian Lieutenant Giulio Gavotti flew an Etrich Taube monoplane over Ottoman positions in Libya during the Italo-Turkish War and threw four grenades, about four pounds each, by hand from roughly 600 feet. He dropped three on the Tajura oasis and the last on a camp at Ain Zara, the first bombing from an airplane in war. Vintage Aviation News notes the same war also saw the airplane's first combat reconnaissance and aerial photography, less than eight years after the Wrights first flew.

In 1918, at 2:20 p.m. on 1 November, Lieutenant Paul-René Fonck of the French Escadrille 103 shot down a German Halberstadt C east of Vouziers, killing its pilot; it was his 75th confirmed victory, making him the highest-scoring Allied fighter pilot of the First World War. He was flying SPAD S.XVII No. 682, an improved S.XIII with a 300-cv Hispano-Suiza 8Fb V-8 and twin Vickers guns, one of about 20 built. This Day in Aviation notes Fonck claimed as many as 52 more that were never confirmed.

Why it matters: Fonck's SPAD is a close relative of the museum's SPAD XIII "Smith IV", a ready point of comparison on the floor.

The Forgotten Factories series follows the Schweizer brothers, Paul, William and Ernest, from gliders built in a barn to Schweizer Aircraft Corporation of Elmira, New York, founded in 1939. Its gliders trained Army Air Forces pilots as the TG-2 and TG-3, and the SGS 2-33 served the Air Force Academy as the TG-4 until 2002. Schweizer built 2,455 Grumman Ag Cats under contract from 1957 to 1981 and took over the Hughes 269 helicopter as the Schweizer 300 in 1986; Sikorsky bought the firm in 2004 and closed the plant in 2011 and 2012.

Heavy Attack Squadron 8, the Fireballers, formed at NAS Whidbey Island on 1 May 1957 and flew the Douglas A-3 Skywarrior until it was disbanded on 17 January 1968. In March 1960 nine A3D-2s flew about 4,800 miles from USS Midway back to Whidbey in 10.9 hours, and in 1962 an A3D dropped Marine paratroopers over Camp Pendleton in Exercise Potshot. The squadron made three Vietnam deployments from 1965 to 1967 aboard Midway and Constellation, the last flying KA-3B tankers.

Vintage Aviation News published Brent Mosbrook's recap of Central Coast AirFest, hosted by the Planes of Fame Air Museum at Santa Maria, California, on 12 and 13 September. Air-to-air sessions paired Mark Peterson's Vietnam combat veteran A-37 Dragonfly with Jason Somes's MiG-17, and Kevin Eldridge flew Planes of Fame's F-86 Sabre. Jay Consalvi flew Lewis Air Legends' F7F Tigercat "Here Kitty, Kitty" over the Pacific.