Mary Feik
Mary Feik ( ; March 9, 1924 – June 10, 2016) was an American aviation engineer, mechanic, pilot, instructor and aircraft restorer. She received many awards and honors in her storied career and was a colonel in the Civil Air Patrol. Early years She first became interested in aviation at the age of seven when a barnstormer came through her hometown area in a Curtiss JN-4 biplane. She rode in the aircraft and was enthralled. Feik learned welding by age 11, and overhauled her first automobile engine in her father's repair shop when she was 13, then turned to aircraft engines and military aircraft at the age of 18. However, when she tried to enroll in engineering in college, the registrar told her, "We don't take women." She then took a job teaching aircraft maintenance at Seymour Field in Goldsboro, North Carolina. The base was not ready to operate, so she wrote to Wright Field for a position, which was accepted. Aviation engineer During World War II, Feik became an expert o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cleveland
Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. maritime border with Canada, northeast of Cincinnati, northeast of Columbus, and approximately west of Pennsylvania. The largest city on Lake Erie and one of the major cities of the Great Lakes region, Cleveland ranks as the 54th-largest city in the U.S. with a 2020 population of 372,624. The city anchors both the Greater Cleveland metropolitan statistical area (MSA) and the larger Cleveland–Akron–Canton combined statistical area (CSA). The CSA is the most populous in Ohio and the 17th largest in the country, with a population of 3.63 million in 2020, while the MSA ranks as 34th largest at 2.09 million. Cleveland was founded in 1796 near the mouth of the Cuyahoga River by General Moses Cleaveland, after whom the city was named ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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P-47
The Republic P-47 Thunderbolt is a World War II-era fighter aircraft produced by the American company Republic Aviation from 1941 through 1945. It was a successful high-altitude fighter and it also served as the foremost American fighter-bomber in the Close air support, ground-attack role. Its primary armament was eight M2 Browning, .50-caliber machine guns, and it could carry 5-inch rockets or a bomb load of . When fully loaded, the P-47 weighed up to 8 tons, making it one of the heaviest fighters of the war. The Thunderbolt was effective as a short-to medium-range escort fighter in altitude, high-altitude aerial warfare, air-to-air combat and ground-attack aircraft, ground attack in both the European Theater of World War II, European and Pacific War, Pacific theaters. The P-47 was designed around the powerful Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp 18-cylinder radial engine, which also powered two United States Navy, U.S. Navy/U.S. Marine Corps fighters, the Grumman F6F Hellcat and ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Piper PA-20 Pacer
The PA-20 Pacer and PA-22 Tri-Pacer, Caribbean, and Colt are an American family of light aircraft, light strut-braced high-wing monoplane aircraft built by Piper Aircraft from 1949 to 1964. The Pacer is essentially a four-place version of the two-place Piper PA-15 Vagabond, PA-17 Vagabond, with conventional landing gear, a steel tube fuselage and an aluminum frame wing covered with fabric, much like Piper's famous Piper J-3 Cub, Cub and Piper PA-18 Super Cub, Super Cub. The Tri-Pacer is a development of the Pacer with tricycle landing gear, while the Colt is a two-seat flight training version of the Tri-Pacer. Prized for their ruggedness, spacious cabins, and, for the time, impressive speed, many of these aircraft continue to fly today. Factory installed , , , , and engine options were available, and engine after-market conversions have been offered. Development The Pacer and the Tri-Pacer were the first post-World War II Piper designs with Flap (aeronautics), flaps an ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mail Plane
A mail plane is an aircraft used for carrying mail. Aircraft that were purely mail planes existed almost exclusively prior to World War II. Because early aircraft were too underpowered to carry cargoes, and too costly to run any "economy class" passenger-carrying service, the main civilian role for aircraft was to carry letters faster than previously possible. In 1934, some mail services in the USA were operated by the United States Army Air Corps, soon ending in the Air Mail scandal. In the past, mail-carrying aircraft had to carry a special official emblem on the fuselages; in case of British-registered aircraft, a special ''Royal Air Mail pennant'' (a blue triangular flag with a crowned bugle emblem in yellow and the letters "ROYAL AIR MAIL" in white) would sometimes be flown as well. From the late 1940s, mail planes became increasingly rare, as the increasing size of aircraft and economics dictated a move towards bulk carriage of mail onboard airline flights, and this remai ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Northrop Alpha
The Northrop Alpha was an American single-engine, all-metal, seven-seat, low-wing monoplane fast mail/passenger transport aircraft used in the 1930s. Design work was done at the Avion Corporation, which in 1929, became the Northrop Aircraft Corporation based in Burbank, California. Design and development Drawing on his experience with the Lockheed Vega, John K. Northrop designed an advanced mail/passenger transport aircraft. In addition to all-metal construction, the new Alpha benefitted from two revolutionary aerodynamic advancements: wing fillets researched at the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, and a multicellular stressed-skin wing of Northrop's own design which was later successfully used on the Douglas DC-2 and Douglas DC-3. In addition, the Alpha was the first commercial aircraft to use rubber deicer boots on wing and empennage leading edges which, in conjunction with state-of-the-art radio navigation equipment, gave it day o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Northrop Corporation
Northrop Corporation was an American aircraft manufacturer from its formation in 1939 until its 1994 merger with Grumman to form Northrop Grumman. The company is known for its development of the flying wing design, most successfully the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber.Parker, Dana T. ''Building Victory: Aircraft Manufacturing in the Los Angeles Area in World War II,'' pp. 93-106, Cypress, CA, 2013. . History Jack Northrop founded 3 companies using his name. The first was the Avion Corporation in 1928, which was absorbed in 1929 by the United Aircraft and Transport Corporation as a subsidiary named "Northrop Aircraft Corporation" (and later became part of Boeing). The parent company moved its operations to Kansas in 1931, and so Jack, along with Donald Douglas, established a "Northrop Corporation" located in El Segundo, California, which produced several successful designs, including the Northrop Gamma and Northrop Delta. However, labor difficulties led to the dissolution of the c ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pitts Special
The Pitts Special (company designations S-1 and S-2) is a series of light aerobatic biplanes designed by Curtis Pitts. It has accumulated many competition wins since its first flight in 1944. The Pitts biplanes dominated world aerobatic competition in the 1960s and 1970s and, even today, remain potent competition aircraft in the lower categories.Montgomery and Foster 1992, p. 92."Plane and Pilot" 1977, p. 84. Design and development Curtis Pitts began the design of a single-seat aerobatic biplane in 1943–1944.Taylor 1980, p. 899. The design has been refined continuously since the prototype first flew in September 1944; however, the current Pitts S-2 still remains quite close to the original in concept and in design. Several of the aircraft that Curtis Pitts built had a picture of a skunk on them and were called "Stinkers". After she bought it, aerobatic performer Betty Skelton called the second aircraft that Curtis built, "Little Stinker". The prototype S-2, wh ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Betty Skelton Erde
Betty Skelton Frankman Erde (June 28, 1926 – August 31, 2011) was a land speed record holder and aerobatics pilot who set 17 aviation and automobile records. She was known as "The First Lady of Firsts", and helped create opportunities for women in aviation, auto racing, astronautics, and advertising. Early years She was born Betty Skelton in Pensacola, Florida on June 28, 1926. Her parents were teenagers and she was their only child. As a toddler, she was fascinated by the airplanes that flew over her home near the Naval Air Station and preferred model airplanes over dolls. When she turned eight, she started reading books on aviation and made her parents realize that she was serious about flying. Whenever they could, the family spent time at the municipal airport. She would talk pilots into letting her ride on local flights. Kenneth Wright, a Navy ensign, took a special interest in the Skeltons and provided instruction to Betty and her parents. He allowed her to solo in his ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fighting occurring throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Pacific, and parts of Asia. An estimated 9 million soldiers were killed in combat, plus another 23 million wounded, while 5 million civilians died as a result of military action, hunger, and disease. Millions more died in genocides within the Ottoman Empire and in the 1918 influenza pandemic, which was exacerbated by the movement of combatants during the war. Prior to 1914, the European great powers were divided between the Triple Entente (comprising France, Russia, and Britain) and the Triple Alliance (containing Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy). Tensions in the Balkans came to a head on 28 June 1914, following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdin ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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National Air And Space Museum
The National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution, also called the Air and Space Museum, is a museum in Washington, D.C., in the United States. Established in 1946 as the National Air Museum, it opened its main building on the National Mall near L'Enfant Plaza in 1976. In 2018, the museum saw about 6.2 million visitors, making it the fifth-most-visited museum in the world, and the second-most-visited museum in the United States. In 2020, due to long closures and a drop in foreign tourism caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, museum attendance dropped to 267,000. The National Air and Space Museum is a center for research into the history and science of aviation and spaceflight, as well as planetary science and terrestrial geology and geophysics. Almost all spacecraft and aircraft on display are originals or the original backup craft. The museum contains the Apollo 11 Command Module ''Columbia'', the ''Friendship 7'' capsule which was flown by John Glenn, Charles Lin ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |