This week in naval, aviation history, By Bill Swanson

This week in naval, aviation history, By Bill Swanson

(EXCERPT) SENIOR WRITER

Dec. 11, 1941: John G. Magee Jr., a 19-year-old American serving with
the Royal Canadian Air Force, is killed when his Spitfire collides
with a trainer flown, By a student, near Roxholm, England. He left
behind a poem published two years after his death, and composed during
a Spitfire high-altitude test, called High Flight, now perhaps the
most famous poem about aviation: "Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds
of earth/And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings... Put out my
hand and touched the face of God."

Dec. 12, 1918: The U.S. Navy dirigible C-1, built by Goodyear, makes
the first successful demonstration of what was called the "parasite"
concept, taking aloft a Curtiss JN-4 Jenny biplane to 2,500 feet and
then releasing it. At the time the Germans and the British had been
testing such a system for a year.

1942: After the troopship President Coolidge hits a mine in the
Solomons Islands, Capt. Henry Nelson steers the ship onto a reef, to
delay the sinking. Soon the ship slides off the reef and capsizes;
however, only two of the more than 4,000 troops have been lost, thanks
to Nelson's quick thinking.

Dec. 13, 1814: During the War of 1812, 50 British ships carrying 7,500
troops and Gen. Edward Pakenham arrive at Lake...

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---------------------------
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The American War Library
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