January 3 – Trans World Airlines becomes the first airline to offer its passengers freshly brewed coffee in flight.[6]
January 4 – The Brooklyn Dodgers become the first professional baseball team to purchase its own airplane, buying a Convair CV-440. To reduce the CV-440's price to US$775,000, the team purchases it as part of a larger Eastern Airlines order.[7]
January 18 – Three United States Air ForceB-52 Stratofortress bombers make the world's first round-the-world, non-stop flight by turbojet-powered aircraft. They complete the flight in 45 hours 19 minutes, at an average speed of 534 mph (859 km/h).
January 31 – A Douglas DC-7B being operated by the Douglas Aircraft Company on a test flight with a crew of four prior to delivery to Continental Airlinescollides in mid-air over California's San Fernando Valley with a U.S. Air Force F-89J Scorpion on a test flight with a crew of two to check its radar equipment. The F-89J crashes in La Tuna Canyon in the Verdugo Mountains, killing its pilot and injuring the other crew member, who ejects to a parachute landing in Burbank, California. The DC-7B remains airborne for several minutes, dropping debris into neighborhoods below, before crashing into the grounds of a church and the athletic field of Pacoima Junior High School in the Pacoima district of Los Angeles, California, where 220 boys are gathered; the crash kills all four people on the plane and three boys on the ground, and injures an estimated 74 students. Among the dead on the DC-7B is its copilot, test pilot and actor Archie Twitchell.[8]
April 15 – A TAMSA Consolidated B-24J Liberator bomber (registration XA-KUN) converted for use as a civilian cargo aircraft crashes into a street in Mérida, Mexico, shortly after takeoff from Mérida-Rejón Airport, killing a child on the ground and the plane's entire crew of three. Among the dead is the Mexican actor and singer Pedro Infante, who had been co-piloting the plane.[8][11]
April 28 – The German World War IIaceHeinz Bär dies in the crash of an LF-1 Zaunkönig at Braunschweig-Waggum, West Germany. He had finished World War II in May 1945 as its top jet ace with 16 kills in the Messerschmitt Me 262, the eighth-ranking German ace with 220 total victories, and second only to Hans-Joachim Marseille in the number of British and American aircraft shot down.[13]
June 7 – Executing a zoom climb after a low-altitude pass during a high-speed demonstration flight at Hensley Field in Dallas, Texas, for a graduating class from the Naval Postgraduate School, a Vought F8U-1 Crusader fighter flown by a Chance Vought Aircraft pilot disintegrates, killing the pilot. The aircraft's wreckage explodes violently at low altitude over Main Street in adjacent Grand Prairie, Texas, inflicting minor injuries to several bystanders.[16][17]
June 28 – The Moroccan airline Royal Air Maroc—Compagnie Nationale de Transports Aériens renames itself Royal Air Maroc.
November 6 – A prototype of the Bristol Britanniacrashes in Downend, England, during a test flight, killing all 15 people on board and injuring one person on the ground.
November 7 – The Security Resources Panel of the President's Science Advisory Committee, chaired by Horace Rowan Gaither, submits "Deterrence & Survival in the Nuclear Age" – commonly referred to as the "Gaither Report" – to PresidentDwight D. Eisenhower. Among other things, the report finds that there is "little likelihood of SAC's [i.e., the U.S. Strategic Air Command's] bombers surviving" a Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) attack "since there was no way to detect an incoming attack until the first [ICBM] warhead landed,"[28] and it recommends a significant strengthening of U.S. strategic offensive and defensive military capabilities.
November 15 – After taking off from England's Southampton Water, an Aquila AirwaysShort Solentflying boat develops engine trouble and crashes on the Isle of Wight while attempting to return. Forty-five of the 58 people on board die in what at the time is the second-deadliest aviation accident to have taken place in the United Kingdom and then the worst ever air disaster to occur in England.
^ abCrosby, Francis, The Complete Guide to Fighters & Bombers of the World: An Illustrated History of the World's Greatest Military Aircraft, From the Pioneering Days of Air Fighting in World War I Through the Jet Fighters and Stealth Bombers of the Present Day, London: Anness Publishing Ltd., 2006, ISBN 978-1-84476-917-9, p. 46.
^Crosby, Francis, The Complete Guide to Fighters & Bombers of the World: An Illustrated History of the World's Greatest Military Aircraft, From the Pioneering Days of Air Fighting in World War I Through the Jet Fighters and Stealth Bombers of the Present Day, London: Anness Publishing Ltd., 2006, ISBN 978-1-84476-917-9, p. 35.
^Anonymous, "The Last Word - 1957: Ladies First," American Way, March 2015, p. 130.
^Maxtone-Graham, John, The Only Way to Cross, New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1997, ISBN 0-7607-0637-9, p. 408.
^ abCrosby, Francis, The Complete Guide to Fighters & Bombers of the World: An Illustrated History of the World's Greatest Military Aircraft, From the Pioneering Days of Air Fighting in World War I Through the Jet Fighters and Stealth Bombers of the Present Day, London: Anness Publishing Ltd., 2006, ISBN 978-1-84476-917-9, p. 289.
^Isenberg, Michael T., Shield of the Republic: The United States Navy in an Era of Cold War and Violent Peace, Volume I: 1945-1962, New York: St. Martin's Press, ISBN 0-312-09911-8, p. 709.
^"Accident Revealed After 29 Years: H-Bomb Fell Near Albuquerque in 1957". Los Angeles Times. Associated Press. August 27, 1986. Retrieved 31 August 2014.
^"Historical Records Declassification Guide, CG-HR-3, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY, Appendix B" (PDF). Office of Classification and Information Control, DoE. October 2005.
^Pace, Steve, "Crusader With A Cause", Wings, Granada Hills, California, August 1987, Volume 17, Number 4, page 34.
^ abShapiro, T. Rees, "Obituary: Virgil D. Olson, 93, Marine Copter Pilot First To Fly President," The Washington Post, August 2, 2012, p. B7.
^Polmar, Norman, "Historic Aircraft: The Last Picture Plane," Naval History, October 2010, p. 64.
^Angelucci, Enzo, The American Fighter: The Definitive Guide to American Fighter Aircraft From 1917 to the Present, New York: Orion Books, 1987, ISBN 0-517-56588-9, p. 452.
^"Today in History," The Washington Post Express, July 31, 2012, p. 30.
^Thetford, Owen, British Naval Aircraft Since 1912, Sixth Edition, Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1991, ISBN 1-55750-076-2, pp. 26-27.
^Angelucci, Enzo, The American Fighter: The Definitive Guide to American Fighter Aircraft From 1917 to the Present, New York: Orion Books, 1987, ISBN 0-517-56588-9, p. 407.
^"Narrative Summary of Accidents Involving U.S. Nuclear Weapons 1950–1980" (PDF). United States Department of Defense. April 1981. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-05-28. Retrieved 2009-04-23.
^Guttman, Jon, "Crazy Capronis," Aviation History, July 2008, p. 55.
^Freeman, Maj Steve (September 1997). "Visionaries, Cold War, hard work built the foundations of Air Force Space Command". Guardian Magazine…funded Air Force newspaper. Vol. 5, no. 6: Special Anniversary Edition. p. 6.
^Gardiner, Robert, Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1947–1982, Part One: The Western Powers, <Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1983, ISBN 0-87021-418-7, p. 28.
^Donald, David, ed., The Complete Encyclopedia of World Aircraft, New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1997, ISBN 0-7607-0592-5, p. 11.
^Angelucci, Enzo, The American Fighter: The Definitive Guide to American Fighter Aircraft From 1917 to the Present, New York: Orion Books, 1987, ISBN 0-517-56588-9, p. 249.
^Polmar, Norman, "A Limited Success," Naval History, August 2015, p. 65.
^Bernier, Robert, "Ensign Eliminator," Aviation History, July 2012, p. 15.
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