January 27 – Aviation History

2009 – OEGAA, a Cessna Citation V operating as the Tyrol Air Ambulance is substantially damaged in a belly landing at Tolmachevo Airport Russia.

2009 – FedEx Express Flight 8284, an ATR 42-320-Cargo, registration N902FX, crashes short of the runway at Lubbock Preston Smith International Airport in the United States, and is destroyed in the subsequent fire.

2002 – Boeing’s 737, the world’s most widely use twin jet, becomes the first jetliner in history to amass more than 100 million flying hours. The 737 was launched onto the market 1965.

2002 – Shelkovskaya Mil Mi-8 crash in Chechnya killed 14 people, including senior Russian officers, among them the deputy Interior Minister Mikhail Rudchenko.

2001 – The Oklahoma State University men’s basketball team plane crash occurred when a Beechcraft Super King Air 200, registration N81PF carrying the Oklahoma State University basketball team, crashed near Strasburg, Colorado. The pilot had become disoriented in a snow storm. The plane was flying from Jefferson County Airport to Stillwater Regional Airport after a game against the Colorado Buffaloes men’s basketball. The plane was carrying two players, as well as the pilot and members of the media. There was a total of 10 fatalities.

1998 – A Myanma Airways Fokker F27 crashed while taking off from Yangon, Myanmar killing 16 of the 45 people on board.

1991 – Two U.S. Air Force F-15C Eagles of the 53rd Tactical Fighter Squadron shoot down two Iraqi MiG-23s and two Iraqi Mirage F1s 60-100 miles (97-161 km) south of Baghdad using Sparrow and Sidewinder missiles. United States Central Command claims that Iraqi naval losses thus far in the Gulf War total one oil platform, two patrol boats, one tanker, and four unidentified ships presumed sunk and four mine warfare ships, one hovercraft, three patrol boats, and two unidentified vessels confirmed as sunk. Coalition aircraft have inflicted most of the losses.

1989 – Thomas Sopwith, British aviation pioneer , dies (b. 1888). In June 1912 Sopwith with Fred Sigrist and others set up The Sopwith Aviation Company. The company produced key British World War I aircraft, most famously the Sopwith Camel.

1982 – Cessna delivers its 1,000th business jet.

1973 – A ceasefire agreement between the United States, North Vietnam, and South Vietnam ends U.S. participation in the Vietnam War. Since January 1962, the United States Armed Forces have lost 3,339 fixed-wing aircraft in Southeast Asia, 2,430 of them in combat. American aircraft have shot down 200 enemy aircraft in exchange for 76 of their own lost in air-to-air combat. The United States has also lost 4,870 helicopters in Southeast Asia, 2,588 of them in combat.

1973 – A U.S. Navy F-4 Phantom II from USS Enterprise (CVA(N)-65) piloted by Lieutenant Commander Harley Hall is shot down over South Vietnam near the Demilitarized Zone. It is the last American fixed-wing aircraft lost in the Vietnam War.

1972 – Civil aviation in Canada is halted by a strike by air traffic controllers.

1967 – Apollo 1 – Astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee are killed in a fire during a test of the spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center.

1967 – The Outer Space Treaty, outlawing nuclear weapons in space, was signed by the United States, the UK and the USSR.

1966 – First Flight: Fairchild FH-227.

1959 – First Flight: Convair 880.

1945 – Twentieth Air Force B-29s based at Calcutta bomb Saigon, French Indochina.

1944 – The Japanese have 150 operational aircraft in the Marshall Islands.

1943 – (27-28) For the first time, Oboe-equipped British Mosquitos leading the way for a British raid on Düsseldorf drop ground markers rather than sky markers to guide follow-on Pathfinder aircraft, clearly improving British night-bombing accuracy over that experienced before.

1943 – The U.S. Army Air Forces make their first daylight bombing raid on Germany.

1939 – First Fight: Lockheed XP-38, prototype of the P-38 Lightning.

1929 – USS Saratoga carries out a successful simulated dawn raid on the Panama Canal in a training exercise.

1927 – The Douglas T2D-1 torpedo bomber makes its first flight.

1917 – A French air raid on Freiburg, Germany takes place.

1894 – Captain B. F. S. Baden-Powel (the brother of the first Chief Boy Scout) makes a kite ascent from Pirbright Army Camp, England in what appears to be the first use of man-carrying kites outside China.