Historidex / Sky and space

History of Flight: Early Aviation and Space Photos

Balloons, early planes, rockets and the view from up there, from the first flights to the Moon.

25 history of flight stories

• The first airplane flight lasted 12 seconds 1903, Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina

  Orville at the controls, Wilbur running alongside. They flew 120 feet, shorter than a Boeing 747's wingspan. Orville set up the camera, and John T. Daniels of the local lifesaving station squeezed the shutter bulb.

• Apollo 11 liftoff in slow motion 1969, Kennedy Space Center, Florida

  A camera at the base of the launch tower filmed the Saturn V's engines lighting up at 500 frames a second. The ice falling off the rocket formed on tanks chilled by super-cold liquid oxygen.

• Earthrise from Apollo 8 1968, Lunar orbit

  William Anders took this on Christmas Eve 1968 from Apollo 8, the first crewed ship to orbit the Moon. For years, commander Frank Borman said he took the first shot of the scene, until the mission tapes showed it was Anders.

• Apollo 16's Rover Grand Prix 1972, Descartes Highlands, the Moon

  John Young put the lunar rover through a speed workout in April 1972 while Charles Duke filmed with a 16 mm camera. With no air to hold it up, the dust flew in clean arcs and fell back to the surface instead of hanging in a cloud.

• Photos from a lost balloon expedition 1897, Arctic ice north of Svalbard

  Three Swedish men set off for the North Pole in a hydrogen balloon in July 1897 and vanished. Their last camp was found on Kvitøya in 1930, along with film that could still be developed. This is their camp on the ice after the balloon came down.

• Flying Through Skylab 1973, Skylab, in Earth orbit

  NASA film shows Skylab astronauts floating through the Orbital Workshop in 1973. The first crew stayed 28 days, doubling the American record set by Gemini VII in 1965, after repairing a station damaged during its launch.

• The Navy's flying aircraft carrier 1933, Over New Egypt, New Jersey

  USS Macon was 785 feet long and carried its own fighter planes. Each Sparrowhawk flew back and hooked onto a trapeze that lifted it into the airship's hangar. Macon went down off California in February 1935, and only two of the men aboard died.

• Kittinger's 102,800-foot jump 1960, New Mexico, USA

  On August 16, 1960, Joseph Kittinger stepped out of an open balloon gondola at 102,800 feet over New Mexico. His right glove had failed during the climb, and the hand swelled to twice its size. He jumped anyway, falling about four and a half minutes at up to 614 miles per hour.

• A Water Ball on Artemis II 2026, Aboard Orion, in space

  Artemis II astronauts Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen watch a ball of water float inside Orion. In weightlessness, surface tension pulls the drop into a sphere, and it bends light like a lens. The mission ended with a splashdown on 10 April.

• Snatching a glider off the ground 1945, Wesel, Germany

  On April 17, 1945, a C-47 flew low over a field in Wesel, Germany, and hooked a glider's towline to snatch it into the air. A snatched glider went from a standstill to flying in seconds. The Army used snatches to pull gliders, some carrying wounded soldiers, out of small fields.

• Man High II balloon in flight 1957, Crosby, Minnesota

  On August 19, 1957, Air Force doctor David Simons lifted off from an open pit mine near Crosby, Minnesota. His sealed gondola rose to about 101,500 feet, and he stayed up about 32 hours, running 25 experiments. He landed in South Dakota.

• NASA Crashed a Jet on Purpose 1984, Edwards AFB, California

  On 1 December 1984, NASA and the FAA flew a Boeing 720 by remote control into the lakebed at Edwards, California, with dummies aboard. Its fuel held an additive meant to stop fires, but a fireball engulfed the plane anyway. The FAA then dropped plans to require the additive.

• Miss Baker, squirrel monkey astronaut 1959, Cape Canaveral, Florida

  On May 28, 1959, a squirrel monkey named Baker and a rhesus monkey named Able rode a Jupiter rocket and were recovered alive. Able died four days later during surgery to remove an electrode. Baker lived to 27, and visitors leave bananas on her grave in Huntsville, Alabama.

• Japan's paper balloon bombs 1945, California, USA

  Japan launched about 9,300 hydrogen balloons made of mulberry paper toward North America between November 1944 and April 1945. About 300 were found. On May 5, 1945, one killed six people near Bly, Oregon, the only deaths from enemy action on the American mainland in the war.

• Inflating the balloon Intrepid 1862, Near Gaines Mill, Virginia

  On June 1, 1862, Union troops inflated the balloon Intrepid to watch the Battle of Fair Oaks in Virginia. Thaddeus Lowe's balloon corps made hydrogen in the field with portable generators like these. The corps was disbanded in 1863.

• A visit to a moon probe 1969, Ocean of Storms, the Moon

  Apollo 12 landed about 600 feet from Surveyor 3, a robot probe that had reached the Moon in April 1967. In November 1969, Pete Conrad and Alan Bean walked over and took its TV camera and other parts home. The camera is now at the National Air and Space Museum.

• A family photo on the Moon 1972, Descartes Highlands, the Moon

  On the last Apollo 16 moonwalk, April 23, 1972, astronaut Charlie Duke left a plastic-wrapped photo of his family on the Moon. A note on the back says it is the family of astronaut Duke from planet Earth. Duke said he brought it so the whole family could go to the Moon.

• Women who ferried B-17 bombers c. 1944, Lockbourne Army Air Field, Ohio

  These WASP pilots trained at Lockbourne, Ohio, to ferry B-17 bombers. They were trained as rigorously as military pilots, yet they were civil service employees with no military standing. Congress did not grant them veteran status until 1977.

• The fighter that hovered on its tail 1954, Brown Field, California, USA

  The Convair XFY Pogo took off and landed standing on its tail. Test pilot Skeets Coleman made its first free flight on August 1, 1954. To land, the pilot had to look back over his shoulder at the ground.

• The airplane you inflated 1957, Hampton, Virginia, USA

  Goodyear's Inflatoplane was an airplane of rubber-coated fabric that inflated in about five minutes. The military wanted it as a rescue plane for downed pilots, carried in a container. NACA, NASA's forerunner, photographed this one in its Langley wind tunnel on August 19, 1957.

• Over the Alps by Balloon 1898, Swiss Alps

  On October 3, 1898, balloonist Eduard Spelterini flew the balloon Wega across the Alps and the Jura with geologist Albert Heim aboard, landing near Besançon in France. Spelterini photographed the peaks from the basket during the flight.

• Hooking a plane onto an airship 1932, Aboard USS Akron

  On May 3, 1932, Lt. Howard Young flew a Sparrowhawk fighter up to USS Akron's trapeze, photographed from inside the airship's hangar. A hook on top of the plane caught the trapeze, and the plane was lifted inside. Akron was lost in a storm off New Jersey in April 1933.

• Gemini 7 Seen From Gemini 6A 1965, Earth orbit

  Gemini 6A caught up with Gemini 7 on December 15, 1965, the first rendezvous of two crewed spacecraft. Gemini 6A took this view of Gemini 7 during the rendezvous, which brought the two as close as about one foot. Wally Schirra and Tom Stafford played "Jingle Bells" on a harmonica and small bells.

• The Blue Marble from Apollo 17 1972, Between Earth and the Moon

  The Apollo 17 crew took this photo of Earth on 7 December 1972, on the way to the Moon. It was the first time an Apollo trajectory allowed a picture of the south polar ice cap, at the bottom. Almost all of Africa's coastline is visible.

• Mail balloon in besieged Paris 1870, Montmartre, Paris, France

  This balloon on Place Saint-Pierre in Montmartre is believed to be the Neptune. On September 23, 1870, during the Prussian siege, pilot Jules Duruof flew it out of Paris with mail and landed near Évreux. It was the first of about 65 mail balloons to leave before the siege ended in January 1871.

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