Newest Air Force stealth bomber, the $750M B-21 Raider,
takes to the air for the time. 

The Hughes Flying Boat—at one time the largest aircraft ever built—
is piloted by designer Howard Hughes on its first and only flight.

The  aircraft is on display at the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum located in McMinnville, Oregon.

In the summer of 1977, members of the rock band Aerosmith
inspected an airplane they were considering chartering for
their upcoming tour—a Convair 240 (above) operated out of
Addison, Texas. Concerns over the flight crew led Aerosmith
to look elsewhere. a decision that saved one band but doomed
another. The aircraft in question was instead chartered by the
band Lynyrd Skynyrd, who were just setting out that autumn
on a national tour that promised to be their biggest to date.

On October 20, 1977, however, during a flight from Greenville,
South Carolina, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s
tour plane crashed in a heavily wooded area of southwestern 
Mississippi during a failed emergency landing attempt, killing
band-members Ronnie Van Zant, Steve Gaines and Cassie
Gaines as well as the band’s assistant road manager and the
plane’s pilot and co-pilot. Twenty others survived the crash.

NANCY LYONS

On This Day In 1977 Concorde Made Its First Visit to New York’s
JFK Airport. It was no-passenger proving flight from Toulouse
to JFK.

The supersonic jet was initially barred from the Big Apple due
to noise concerns. The ban came to an end on 17 October.

U.S. Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager became the first person
to fly faster than the speed of sound.

Yeager, born in Myra, West Virginia, in 1923, was a combat
fighter during World War II and flew 64 missions over Europe.

Brigadier General Charles Elwood Yeager
(February 13, 1923 – December 7, 2020)