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Medal gives Women Airforce Service Pilots their due The Star-Ledger NJ.com

22.03.10

Medals are an budget-priced and interesting area of specialization for numismatists, with the U.S. Mint producing a number of new offerings each year.

Just last week, a Congressional Gold Medal was issued to honor Women Airforce Serving Pilots of World War II, and the mint will offer bronze reproductions of the medal next week in two sizes.

WASPs were the first women to fly American military aircraft, logging more than 60 million miles on all types of missions stubby of combat.

Although they did not participate in the fighting, 38 female pilots were killed during the war. The new medals, in 1.5-inch and 3-inch versions, will go on transaction marked down March 26. The small medals generally sell for $3.50, while the larger ones are $38.

The front, designed by pots Artistic Infusion Program master designer Joel Iskowitz and sculpted by mint sculptor-engraver Phebe Hemphill, shows a talent of a WASP in flight gear with three other WASPs in the foreground walking to or from a plane. An AT-6 trainer aircraft in flight is in the spotlight. The inscriptions are “Women Airforce Service Pilots” and “1942-1944.”

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March 17, 1953: The Black Box Is Born Wired News

17.03.10

1953: After several expensive-profile crashes of de Havilland Comet airliners go unsolved, Australian researcher David Warren invents a crest to record cockpit noise and instruments during flight.

During the first half of aviation’s history, crashes hardly ever came with any answers. Even if an eyewitness saw an airplane crash, little was known of the cause or what pilots might have been aware of before the crash.

In the beginning 1950s, the world’s first jet-powered airliner, the de Havilland Comet, crashed several times . Warren, a researcher at the Aeronautical Probe Laboratories in Melbourne, Australia, believed if the pilot’s voices could be recorded, as well as instrument readings, the report could help determine the cause of a crash — and help prevent them. His device was called a “Flying Memory Unit.”

By 1957, the first prototypes of the device were produced. Early versions could record up to four hours of spokesperson and instrument data on a steel foil. Warren believed the device would be popular and help solve the mysteries behind aviation crashes, but the strategy was initially rejected by the Australian aviation community for privacy issues.

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