OCT16
1870 - Birth of Wallace Rupert Turnbull, Canadian engineer and inventor, noted for his work and inventions in aeronautics.
1888 - Birth of Thomas Montagu Harries, Scottish WWI flying ace
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_M._Harries - http://theaerodrome.com/aces/scotland/harries.php
1895 - Birth of Keith Logan "Grid" Caldwell, New-Zealand WWI fighter ace and WWII RNZAF high ranking officer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Caldwell - http://theaerodrome.com/aces/nzealand/caldwell.php
1908 - 1st flight of The British Army Aeroplane No 1, or sometimes Cody 1, British biplane. 1st recognised powered and sustained flight in the UK made by Samuel Franklin Cody. A 1,391 feet flight before crashing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Army_Aeroplane_No_1 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_military_aircraft_before_1925
1909 - Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin forms Delag (Die Deutsche Luftschiffahrt Aktiengesellschaft), world's 1st commercial airline company
1910 - 1st airship crossing of the English Channel is made by French Maurice Clément in his military dirigible Clément-Bayard N°2. The 244-mile route between Breuil and Wormwood Scrubs is completed in 6 hours with 6 passengers but was damaged during ground transit so extensively that it was judged beyond repair and never flew again.
1912 - 1st Air-dropped bomb. It was designed during the Balkan War and used by the Bulgarian air force pilots Radul Milkov and Prodan Toprakchiev at the Turkish railway station of Karaagac (near Edirne). This was the 1st use of airplane (Albatros F.II) as bomber.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Air-dropped_bomb#Early_history
1912 - Birth of Gertrude Tompkins Silver, American WASP pilot.
http://womenaviators.org/wiki/index.php?title=Gertrude_Tompkins-Silver
1915 - Birth of Nancy Bird Walton, pioneering Australian aviatrix, youngest Australian woman to gain a pilot's licence, founder and patron of the Australian Women Pilots' Association.
1916 - 1st flight of the Aviatik D.I (marked 30.14), Austrian single-engine, single-seater fighter biplane prototype. It crashed unfortunately killing the test pilot.
1916 - Death of Patrick Anthony Langan-Byrne, Irish WWI flying ace, killed in action in his Airco DH.2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Anthony_Langan-Byrne - http://theaerodrome.com/aces/ireland/langan-byrne.php
1917 - Death of Guy Patrick Spence Reid, British WWI flying ace, killed in a flying accident.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Reid - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/england/reid4.php
1918 - Death of Albert Haussmann, German WWI fighter ace, shot down in flames while strafing troops near Romagne. Jumping from the burning plane, he was killed when his parachute failed to open in time.
http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Haussmann - http://theaerodrome.com/aces/germany/haussmann.php
1920 - Birth of William Henry Rankin, USMC WWII and Korean war fighter pilot, only known person to survive a fall from the top of a cumulonimbus thunderstorm cloud.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rankin
1922 - The Royal Aero Club organize the 1st Lympne Light Aircraft Trials at Itford Hill on the South Downs just east of Brighton.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lympne_light_aircraft_trials#The_background
1924 - Emergency use of parachute — Following a mid-air collision over Coronado, California, Gunner William M. Coles, USN, of VF-1, made a successful emergency parachute jump from his Curtiss JN.
1929 - Franciszek Zwirko and Antoni Kocjan set an international FAI altitude record of 4,004 m (13,133 ft) in the light tourist plane class (below 280 kg / 616 lb empty weight) with a RWD-2, Polish single-engine high-wing sports monoplane.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RWD-2#Use
1930 - 1st flight of the Bl-111/4 (the Bl-111/1 modified), French Single engine Low wing monoplane transport prototype, 1st french plane with a retractable landing gear.
http://www.aviafrance.com/aviafrance1.php?ID=1665
1931 - 1st flight of the Gourdou Leseurre GL-430, French single seat parasol wing carrier-borne dive-bomber prototype .
http://aviafrance.com/aviafrance1.php?ID=9318
1931 - 1st flight of the SCA SFR-10, French 3 seat low wing tourer prototype.
http://aviafrance.com/aviafrance1.php?ID=4991
1932 - 1st flight of the Bl-111/5 (the Bl-111/4 modified), French Single engine Low wing monoplane transport prototype with a retractable landing gear.
http://www.aviafrance.com/aviafrance1.php?ID=1666
1936 - Jean Batten lands her Percival Gull VI in Darwin in the record time of 5 days, 21 hr, 3 min from Lympne.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percival_Gull#Racing_and_record-breaking
1937 - 1st flight of The Fokker T.V, Dutch twin-engine bomber, described as an "aerial cruiser".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fokker_T.V
1937 - 1st flight of the Short S.25 Sunderland, British 4 engine flying boat patrol bomber.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Sunderland
1937 - Death of Alfred Montague 'Dasher' Blake, British WWI pilot and chief test pilot for the Blackburn Company.
http://thetartanterror.blogspot.fr/2008/05/lt-alfred-montague-dasher-blake-afc.html
1937 - Death of Benjamin Thomas 'Ben' Epps, American aviation pioneer and aircraft designer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_T._Epps
1939 - The Luftwaffe attacks its 1st British targets - Royal Navy warships in the Firth of Forth. Spitfires of No. 602 Squadron claimed the 1st German aircrafts to be destroyed over the UK in WWII.
1940 - Death of Hans-Karl Mayer, German fighter ace of Spanish war and WWII, disappearing over the English Channel during a test flight with his Me 109 E-7.
http://www.luftwaffe.cz/mayerhk.html - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Karl_Mayer - http://www.cieldegloire.com/001_mayer_h_k.php
1940 - 1st ground-radar-controlled aerial victory at night takes place as the Luftwaffe’s dunkele Nachtjagd (“dark nightfighting, ” abbreviated as Dunaja) technique – In which ground-based radar is used to control night fighters until they come within visual range of a target – has its 1st success. A Freya radar is used to coach the night fighter of Leutnant Ludwig Becker to within visual range of a British Vickers Wellington bomber over the Netherlands, allowing him to shoot it down.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Becker_(pilot) - http://www.cieldegloire.com/001_becker_l.php
1941 - In the 1st phase of Operation Callboy, further Fleet Air Arm torpedo bombers, eleven Fairey Albacores and one Fairey Swordfish, are flown to Malta from the deck of HMS Ark Royal.
1952 - 1st flight of The Sud Aviation (SNCASO) S.O. 4050-01 Vautour IIN, French Two-seat all-weather twin engined jet fighter aircraft.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sud_Aviation_Vautour - http://aviafrance.com/aviafrance1.php?ID=8925
1953 - A world speed record of 728mph over a 100 kilometre closed course is set by Robert O. "Bob" Rahn flying a Douglas XF4D Skyray.
1955 - The Boeing Model 367-80 (Boeing 707 prototype) flies non-stop from Seattle to Washington DC in 3 hours 58 minutes and back in 6 hours 8 minutes, averaging speeds of 957kph (592mph) and 907kph (567mph) respectively.
1956 - Birth of James Hansen Newman, American physicist and NASA astronaut
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_H._Newman
1961 - Cork Airport, (IATA: ORK, ICAO: EICK), one of the three principal international airports of Ireland, opens.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cork_Airport
1963 - Death of Jorma Kalevi Sarvanto, Finnish Air Force pilot and the foremost Finnish fighter ace of the Winter War.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorma_Sarvanto - http://cieldegloire.com/000_sarvanto.php
1963 - Operation Greased Lightning, Maj. Sidney J. Kubesch flew a B-58 Hustler belonging to the 305th Bombardment Wing at Bunker Hill Air Force Base, Ind.,a 8,028 miles flight from Tokyo to London in 8 hours, 35 minutes. The B-58 used five inflight refuelings and flew at an average speed of 938 mph.
http://www.af.mil/information/heritage/spotlight.asp?id=123119695
1964 – Project 596 : The People’s Republic of China detonates its 1st nuclear weapon at the Lop Nur test site.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction#History
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/596_(nuclear_test)
1969 - Soyuz 6 is back on earth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_6
1972 - A twin engine Cessna 310 disappeared during a flight from Anchorage to Juneau. On board were House Majority Leader Hale Boggs of Louisiana and Representative Nick Begich of Alaska. No wreckage or bodies were ever found.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hale_Boggs#Disappearance_in_Alaska - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Begich#Disappearance
1975 - Launch of GOES 1, weather satellite operated by the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 1st Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite to be launched.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOES_1
1976 - Soyuz 23, Soviet manned space flight to the Salyut 5 space station, is back on earth after it failed to dock.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_23
1977 - Death of Jürgen Schumann, German military pilot and commercial pilot. He escaped from his hijacked plane in order to talk to authorities. He later returned and was subsequently murdered by the terrorists.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCrgen_Schumann - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lufthansa_Flight_181
1980 - 1st flight of the Pottier P-100TS, French home building single engine twin seat high-wing cantilever monoplane of conventional design with enclosed cabin and fixed tricycle undercarriage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pottier_P.100 - http://aviafrance.com/aviafrance1.php?ID=3958
1992 - 1st female Royal Air Force helicopter pilot, Flight Lieutenant Nicky Smith, graduates from No.89 Course, No.2 Flying Training School at RAF Shawbury.
1997 - 1st flight of the Boeing 777-300, evolution of the American long-range wide-body twin-engine jet airliner.
http://www.airliners.net/aircraft-data/stats.main?id=107
2004 - 1st autonomous flight (with safety pilot) of The Boeing AH-6 Unmanned Little Bird (ULB) demonstrator, American light helicopter gunship built from a civilian MD 530F and Developed by Boeing Rotorcraft Systems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_AH-6
2005 - Shenzhou 6, 2nd human spaceflight of the People's Republic of China, is back on earth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenzhou_6
2013 - Lao Airlines Flight 301 ATR72-600 crashed into the Mekong River whilst on approach in poor weather to Pakse International Airport, Laos, killing all 49 people on board.