MARCH02
1784 - Jean Pierre Blanchard makes his 1st successful balloon flight in Paris in a hydrogen gas balloon launched from the Champ de Mars.
1819 - Birth of Henry Tracey Coxwell, English aeronaut.
1873 - Death of Charles Ferson Durant, American early aeronaut.
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=12211641
1890 - Birth of Arthur John "Jack" Palliser, Australian WWI flying ace
1890 - Birth of Lorenzo Gaslini, Goal keeper and WWI Italian Pilot.
1895 - Birth of Harold Francis Stackard, British WWI fighter ace
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Stackard - http://theaerodrome.com/aces/england/stackard.php
1900 - Birth of Richard Gordon-Bennett, British WWI flying ace (Observer/Gunner)
1911 - Birth of Wolfgang Schellmann, German fighter ace of spanish war and WWII
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Schellmann - http://www.luftwaffe.cz/schellmann.html
1914 - Birth of Walter Haeussermann, German-American aerospace engineer and member of the "von Braun rocket group".
1915 - Birth of Kaj Birksted, Danish WWII flying ace with the RAF and Danish High ranking officer post WWII.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaj_Birksted - http://cieldegloire.com/002n_birksted.php
1918 - Lloyd Andrews Hamilton becomes the 1st American to receive a commission in the British Royal Flying Corps when he is assigned as lieutenant with No. 3 squadron in France.
1927 - Death of Jan Kašpar, Czech aviator, aircraft constructor, designer and engineer. He is considered as a pioneer of aviation in the Czech lands.
1934 - Birth of Kurt Wahmke, German Rocket pionneer.
1937 - French parachutist Jean Niland (aka James Williams) set a parachute record making 6 falls using 6 parachutes on a single jump of 750m from an airplane.
http://www.lunion.presse.fr/article/a-la-une/les-parachutes-de-lexploit
1944 - Death of Waldemar Geest, early german Aircraft designer.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldemar_Geest
1944 - Death of Egon "Connie" Mayer, German WWII fighter ace, 1st pilot to reach 100 victories on the western front, Killed in his FW-90 A-6 by a P-47 while attacking bombers near Montmédy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egon_Mayer - http://www.luftwaffe.cz/mayer.html
1945 - 1st flight of the development version of The Hispano Aviación HA-1109, spanish licence built Messerschmidt BF-109.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispano_Aviaci%C3%B3n_HA-1112
1945 - 1st flight of the Armstrong Whitworth A.W.52 (as a glider by an Armstrong Whitworth Whitley bomber), British all-metal turbojet-powered flying wing aircraft.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armstrong_Whitworth_A.W.52
1949 - Commanded by Capt. James G. Gallagher, the crew of 14 aboard the Strategic Air Command B-5A Lucky Lady II of the 43rd Bombardment Group, USAF, completes the 1st nonstop round-the-world flight of 94 hours 1 minute. Flying a distance of 23,452 miles the B-50A is refueled 4 times by KB-29 tankers before landing back at Carswell AFB, Texas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/43d_Operations_Group - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_Lady_II
1952 - 1st flight of The Piper PA-23 Apache (later Aztec), US twin-engined monoplane.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piper_PA-23
1953 - 1st flight of The SNCASO SO.9000 Trident I, mixed power French prototype interceptor aircraft
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNCASO_Trident - http://www.aviafrance.com/aviafrance1.php?ID=9363
1954 - Death of José Luis Sánchez Besa, Aviation Pioneer and seaplane designer from Chile.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Luis_S%C3%A1nchez_Besa
1955 - Trans-Canada Airlines introduced the Vickers Viscount airliner into regular service, making it the first North American airline to use turbine power aircraft.
1955 - 1st flight of The Dassault Super Mystère, French fighter-bomber, 1st Western European supersonic aircraft to enter mass production.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dassault_Super_Myst%C3%A8re
1956 - Flight Officer Welters and 3 of his 4 other Canadian Sky Lancer Aerobatic team members (Jake Adams, Fred Axtell and Dale McLarty) lost their lives when their F-86 Sabre crashed straight into the ground as it came out of a loop during routine practice over the Rhine Valley near Strasbourg, France.
http://aerobaticteams.net/rcaf-sky-lancers.html - http://www.rcaf-arc.forces.gc.ca/4w-4e/nr-sp/index-eng.asp?id=8289
http://67.69.104.76:84/Marville/other/maother-22d.html
1957 - 1st flight of The Thruxton Jackaroo , British four-seat cabin biplane converted from a de Havilland Tiger Moth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thruxton_Jackaroo
1960 - Birth of Mikhail Vladislavovich Tyurin, Russian cosmonaut.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Tyurin
1965 - Operation Rolling Thunder begins, a massive air campaign against North Vietnam by the US
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rolling_Thunder
1969 - 1st flight of The Aérospatiale-BAC Concorde, turbojet-powered supersonic passenger airliner, a supersonic transport (SST), with Andre Turcat at the controls.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde
1972 - Launch of Pioneer 10, US robotic space probe, to study the asteroid belt, the environment around Jupiter, solar wind, cosmic rays, and eventually the far reaches of the solar system and heliosphere, 1st spacecraft to achieve escape velocity from the Solar System.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_10
1978 - Launch of Soyuz 28, Soviet manned mission to the orbiting Salyut 6 space station. It was the fourth mission to the station, the third successful docking, and the second visit to the resident crew launched in Soyuz 26.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_28
1981 - Japan Air Lines is the first airline to use a computerised flight simulator to train its crews
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Aviation/Historical_anniversaries/March_in_aviation/March_2
1982 - Death of James Donald Innes Hardman, British WWI flying ace, WWII high ranking officer and Chief of the Air Staff (CAS) of the Royal Australian Air Force post WWII.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Hardman - http://theaerodrome.com/aces/england/hardman.php
1991 - Launch of Astra 1B, 2nd of the European Astra communications satellites, and MeteoSat-5, European Weather satellite.
http://www.astronautix.com/thisday/march02.htm
1995 - Launch of STS-67, Space shuttle Endeavour mission (ASTRO-2) to observe objects ranging from some inside the solar system to individual stars, nebulae, supernova remnants, galaxies and active extragalactic objects using the Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope (HUT), the Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (UIT) and the Wisconsin Ultraviolet Photo-Polarimeter Experiment (WUPPE).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-67
1997 - Soyuz TM-24, Russian space mission to MIR, is back on earth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_TM-24
2004 - Launch of Rosetta, robotic spacecraft of the European Space Agency on a mission to study the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(spacecraft)
2006 - Death of Marcel Charollais, French Aerobatic pilot.
http://charollais.marcel.over-blog.com/article-2251749.html
2010 - Death of Charles B. Moore, Jr., American physicist, engineer and meteorologist, known for his work with gas balloons.