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1 dead, 1 injured in Virgin Galactic spacecraft crash

10/31/2014

One person was killed and a second person seriously injured on Friday in the crash of a Virgin Galactic passenger spaceship during a test flight in the Mojave Desert in California, CNN and CNBC reported, citing the California Highway Patrol.

At least two pilots were aboard the spacecraft, which was undergoing its first powered test flight since January, according to the Mojave Air and Space Port.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Oct 31 (Reuters) - A suborbital passenger spaceship being developed by Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic crashed during a test flight on Friday at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California, the company said.

"During the test, the vehicle suffered a serious anomaly resulting in the loss of SpaceShipTwo," the company said in a tweet, adding: "We will work closely with relevant authorities to determine the cause of this accident and provide updates ASAP."

Two pilots were aboard the spaceship, which was undergoing its first powered test flight since January, but it was not immediately known if they were able to parachute to safety.

More than 800 people have paid or put down deposits to fly aboard the spaceship, which is carried to an altitude of about 45,000 feet and released. The spaceship then fires its rocket motor to catapult it to about 62 miles (100 km) above Earth, giving passengers a view of the planet set against the blackness of space and a few minutes of weightlessness.

The spaceship is based on a prototype, called SpaceShipOne, which 10 years ago won the $10 million Ansari X Prize for the first privately developed manned spacecraft to fly in space.

Friday's test was to be the spaceship's first powered test flight since January. In May, Virgin Galactic and spaceship developer Scaled Composites, a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman Corp, switched to an alternative plastic-type of fuel grain for the hybrid rocket motor.

The accident is the second this week for a U.S. space company. On Tuesday, an Orbital Sciences Antares rocket exploded 15 seconds after liftoff from Wallops Island, Virginia, destroying a cargo ship bound for the International Space Station.

The crash is a major setback for Virgin Galactic, a U.S. offshoot of billionaire Branson's London-based Virgin Group. SpaceShipTwo, a six-passenger, two-pilot spacecraft is aiming to make the world's first commercial suborbital space flights.

Other companies developing passenger suborbital spacecraft include privately owned XCOR Aerospace, which is building a two-person spaceplane called Lynx, and Blue Origin, a startup space company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Virgin Galactic also plans to use its White Knight Two carrier jets to launch small satellites and payloads into orbit.

You Have to See This: Surfing at 1000 Frames Per Second

10/29/2014

Surfing is one of those things with a million tiny little nuances that make up one incredible package. Blink and you’ll miss it, as the saying goes. On those giant, backless monsters, the brunt of the action is on the wave itself – of course, what the surfer is doing is pretty mind-boggling, but no mere human will ever compare to Mother Nature’s supreme majesty. When asked what it’s like to surf huge barrels at a Q&A after a showing of Sine Qua Non last year, Greg Long casually answered, “pretty much just set your rail and hold on, then enjoy the view.” On smaller waves is where the surfer becomes more of the focus. From airs to powerful carves to stylish little tweaks that give each surfer their own signature, it can be difficult to tell exactly what that signature is made of. But with advancements in technology, it’s becoming easier and easier to see what color ink they’re using to sign that signature.

The clip above was shot by Chris Bryan on the Phantom Flex, Phantom Miro M-320S and the new Phantom 4K Flex with Arri Ultra prime lenses, all at a 1000 frames per second. Featuring the likes of Kelly Slater, Taj Burrow, and John John Florence, blinking and missing it is no longer anything you have to worry about.

SURFING @ 1000 FRAMES PER SECOND from Chris Bryan on Vimeo.

WWII Pilot Found Buried, Still in his plane.

10/29/2014

The remains of an Italian WWII pilot who died in a dogfight with U.S. pilots 70 years ago have finally been unearthed -- still sitting on the parachute in the cockpit.

Found 13 feet underground with the wreckage of his crashed plane, a Macchi C.205 Veltro, the pilot was identified as being Lieutenant Guerrino Bortolani. His plane literately disappeared in the Padua countryside in northern Italy, planting itself deep in the bank of a ditch as it crashed on March 11, 1944.

"The crash site is now a corn field. We were able to find the remains with the help of an elderly man, who on that day witnessed the fighter going into a nosedive and hit the ground," Alessandro Voltolina, of the Romagna Air Finders, a group of wreck hunters from Ravenna, told Discovery News.

Bortolani, who died at 27, belonged to the 1st Fighter Groups, squadron "Asso di Bastoni" (Ace of Clubs), which was commanded by the Italian ace of aces Adriano Visconti.

Bortolani flew on a Macchi C.205, regarded as the best Italian aircraft of World War II, as part of his "Ace of Clubs" group.

"It was an excellent fighter aircraft, extremely effective in action and well armed with two 12.7 mm machine guns and a pair of 20 mm cannons," Agostino Alberti, of another group, the Air Crash Po wreck hunters from Cremona, told Discovery News.

But on March 11, 1944 the Macchi C.205 fighters couldn't really combat the massive attack of the Mediterranean Allied Strategic Air Force (MASAF) which sent 111 B-17 "Flying Fortress" planes to drop more than 300 tons of bombs on Padua.

Italian and German fighters responded to the attack, and although their action was described as "aggressive" by the allied forces, they succumbed. The Germans lost five planes and three pilots; the Italians lost four aircraft and three pilots.

WWII Dogfight Evidence Found in Italy

As well as Lt. Bortolani, Lt Giovan Battista Boscutti was shot down and crashed in the Padua countryside. Lt. Bruno Castellani plunged in the sea off Chioggia, near Venice, while Lt. Andrea Stella managed to make an emergency landing and survived.

"In 2006 we recovered the remains of Lt Boscutti, along with pieces of his crashed Macchi. Obviously, the next goal was the recovery of Lt. Bortolani," Voltolina said.

"It has been a long and complex search, but now this pilot can be finally given a proper burial," he said

The excavation revealed many pieces of the plane, such as the main landing gear wheel, the tail wheel, pieces of the engine, the control stick, the pedals and parts of fuselage.

"Then we saw what everybody hoped to find. The parachute was still closed, and the remains of the pilot were still sitting on it. We aso found the ring he was wearing, which he received at the fighter pilot academy," Voltolina said.

Bortolani will be finally given a burial in the next months, as soon as his closest relatives are found.

We May Have Finally Found a Piece of Amelia Earhart's Lost Plane

10/29/2014

In 1937, Amelia Earhart's plane, the aluminum-clad Electra, disappeared somewhere over the Pacific during the course of her global circumnavigation attempt. Now 77 years later, historians and aviation experts are confident they have found a part of her downed aircraft.

The most widely-believed contemporary explanation of her disappearance states that Earhart and her co-pilot, Fred Noonan, ran out of fuel near their resupply point at Howland Island and crashed into the water. However a small sheet of aluminum discovered at a tiny uninhabited atoll called Nikumaroro—some 350 miles Southeast of Howland—that was discovered in 1991, has been positively identified as one of the Electra's components.

Specifically it was a patch for the plane's navigational window and was installed in Miami during one of Earhart's layovers. We know this because a photo of the Electra sporting its new patch appeared on the front page of the June 1, 1937 Miami Herald—one day before Earhart's disappearance.

By comparing the recovered 19- x 23-inch patch—dubbed Artifact 2-2-V-1 by investigators—against the image, researchers are nearly certain the two are a match. "The Miami Patch was an expedient field repair," Ric Gillespie, executive director of TIGHAR (The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery), "Its complex fingerprint of dimensions, proportions, materials and rivet patterns was as unique to Earhart's Electra as a fingerprint is to an individual."

This confirmation has huge implications to the Earhart saga. It would indicate that Earhart and Noonan did not sink to watery graves but rather, more likely, they crash landed the Electra on the flat coral reefs surrounding Nikumaroro atoll and—either one or both, maybe neither—spent the rest of their lives as castaways on that dead speck of dry land in the middle of the ocean with nary a volley ball to keep them company.

Barn find, Messerschmitt Me-109G been in storage for 45 years.

10/24/2014

History: In 1942 the Spanish government arranged a manufacturing licence with Messerschmitt AG to build the Bf 109G-2, with DB605A engines, propellers, instruments, and weapons to be supplied from Germany. This proved impossible, as Germany was incapable of meeting her own needs, let alone Spain’s. Only twenty-five airframes (minus their tails) and not even half the necessary drawings were delivered.

Post World War II, production resumed on the Buchón’s and the final variant was the HA-1112-M1L Buchón. It first flew 29 March 1954. The 1112-M1L was equipped with the 1,600 hp Rolls-Royce Merlin 500-45 engine and Rotol propeller, both purchased as surplus from the UK. This engine had a chin intake, that altered the lines of the Bf 109’s airframe visually. Its armament consisted of two 20 mm Hispano-Suiza 404/408 cannons and two Oerlikon or Pilatus eight-packs of 80 mm rockets. It remained in service until 27 December 1965.

The HA-1112-M1L’s remained in flying condition until the mid-1960s. This made them available for theatrical use, masquerading as Bf 109’s in movies like The Battle of Britain. $800,000 – $1,100,000 and for sale hereplatinumfighters.com

These examples are HIspano Aviacion HA-1112 M1L’s.

These aircraft were last flown in the Battle Of Britain film in 1968.

Upon completion of the filming of the Battle Of Britain they were disassembled and shipped to Texas where they have been in storage for 45 years.

Wreck of WWII German U-boat found off North Carolina

10/21/2014

A World War II German U-boat, sunk during the Battle of the Atlantic more than 72 years ago, has been discovered off the coast of North Carolina, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Tuesday.

The German sub, the U-576, was found at the bottom of the Atlantic 30 miles off Cape Hatteras and just 240 yards from an American merchant ship, the merchant tanker Bluefields, which was part of a 24-ship U.S. convoy heading from Virginia to Key West, Florida, on July 14, 1942.

“This is not just the discovery of a single shipwreck,” said Joe Hoyt, chief scientist of NOAA’s Office of Marine Sanctuaries expedition, which found the vessels. “We have discovered an important battle site that is part of the Battle of the Atlantic. These two ships rest only a few hundred yards apart and together help us interpret and share their forgotten stories.”

The story of U-576 was is the more tragic of the two wrecks.

Bluefields did not sustain any casualties during the sinking, but all 45 crew of the U-boat were lost.

Commanding U-576 that July day was Kapitanleutnant Hans-Dieter Heinicke. According to documents from the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary, where the wrecks rest, Heinicke had radioed back to commanders in occupied France on July 13 to say the U-boat was damaged and heading back to Germany after a month-long patrol without success against Allied shipping.

As U-576 began that journey home, it ran across convoy KS-520, with 19 merchant vessels and five escorts, on the afternoon of July 14, according to the documents.

Heinicke, who was on his fifth U-boat patrol with relatively little success against Allied shipping, saw a chance for redemption.

“In spite of his damaged ship, Heinicke decided to attack at all costs,” a history from the sanctuary reads. “However, at 4:00 pm just before he could fire his torpedoes, one of the Coast Guard cutters picked up a sonar contact. The Coast Guard crew dropped three depth charges, followed by five more 10 minutes later.”

But Heinicke pressed his attack, firing off four torpedoes about 4:15 p.m.

“The U-576 sank the Nicaraguan-flagged freighter Bluefields and severely damaged two other ships. In response, U.S. Navy Kingfisher aircraft, which provided the convoy’s air cover, bombed U-576 while the merchant ship Unicoi attacked it with its deck gun,” the NOAA release reads. The sub sank in minutes.

Two NOAA research vessels, the Okeanos Explorer and SRVX Sand Tiger, participated in the search for the wrecks, which were found and verified in August, NOAA said.

The wreck site is considered a war grave and protected by international law.

“Few people realize how close the war actually came to America’s shores,” David Alberg, superintendent of NOAA’s Monitor National Marine Sanctuary, said in a statement. “As we learn more about the underwater battlefield, Bluefields and U-576 will provide additional insight into a relatively little-known chapter in American history.”

http://myfox8.com/2014/10/21/sunken-wwii-german-u-boat-found-off-north-carolina-coast/

What a B52 Stratofortress do a Bombing Run

10/14/2014

1 dead, 1 injured in Virgin Galactic spacecraft crash

You Have to See This: Surfing at 1000 Frames Per Second

WWII Pilot Found Buried, Still in his plane.

We May Have Finally Found a Piece of Amelia Earhart's Lost Plane

Barn find, Messerschmitt Me-109G been in storage for 45 years.

Wreck of WWII German U-boat found off North Carolina

What a B52 Stratofortress do a Bombing Run

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