Warbirds Online » Blog Archive » This Week In Military/Aviation History 12

ZZZZZIIIINNNNGGGG!!!! That was the sound of seven days flying by. Ya know its strange, it seems like only a week ago………it was a week ago. While I ponder this, let’s get down to some serious history, shall we? Yes. I think we shall.

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14 October 1905
The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), the world’s air sports federation, is founded in France. It is a non-governmental, non-profit making international organisation with the basic aim of furthering aeronautical and astronautical activities worldwide.

16 October 1905
The Wright brothers complete their current series of test flights. They will not fly again until May 1908.

12-13 October 1907
A.F. Gaudron and two crew members make the first crossing of the North Sea by air in the Mammoth balloon. They travel from Crystal Palace in London to Lake Vänern in Sweden.

16 October 1909
Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin forms Delag (Die Deutsche Luftschiffahrt Aktiengesellschaft), the world’s first commercial airline company. Between 1910 and 1913 the company will carry 34,000 passengers.

15 October 1910
American Walter Wellman attempts to fly across the North Atlantic in his airship ‘America’. The flight fails and the crew is rescued at sea.

17 October 1911
Zee Yee Lee becomes the first Chinese pilot to qualify for a Royal Aero Club certificate (No.148), flying a Bristol Boxkite on Salisbury Plain.

13 October 1913
A Seguin and Farman (of France) establish a new distance record by flying 1,021 kilometers (634 miles). This is the last distance record before the First World War.

15 October 1913
The first official airmail flight in France is made by Lieutenant Ronin, carrying a 22-pound sack of letters to Pauillac in a Morane-Saulnier.

17 October 1913
Zeppelin LZ18 (L2) burns while in the air at Johannistal. All of the 28 crew members die.

13 October 1915
The Wright airplane company is bought by Harry Payne Whitney, T. Frank Manville and William B. Thompson, with Orville Wright remaining as consultant.

14 October 1916
A forced landing wrecks Zeppelin LZ39.

12 October 1918
Pilots of the 185th Aero (Pursuit) Squadron carry out the first United States night fighter operations in France.

15 October 1918
1st Aviation Unit of the Polish Forces is formed.

13 October 1919
The League of Nations sets up the Paris Convention to regulate international flying and system of aircraft registration based on a 5-letter call sign is established.

17 October 1919
The Omando de Aviación Naval Argentina is formed.

12 October 1924
US Navy ZR3 ‘Los Angeles’, a Zeppelin built as part of German reparations, leaves Friedrichshaven for Lakehurst in New Jersey.

14-15 October 1927
Captain Dieudonné and Lieutenant Commander Joseph le Brix make the first non-stop aircraft crossing of the South Atlantic, in a Bréguet 19 Nungesser-Coli. They fly from Saint-Louis in Senegal to Port Natal in Brazil.

14 October 1933
Germany withdraws from the League of Nations ending world attempts for disarmament.

13 October 1936
The first I-15 fighters arrive at Cartagena in Spain. These are the first of 1,500 fighters sold to the Spanish Republican Forces by the Soviet Union.

13 October 1943
Italy declares war on Germany, but there are in fact two Italian factions in the war. Those in Northern Italy continue to fight alongside the Germans.

14 October 1943
A second United States Army Air Force (USAAF) attack is made on the Schweinfurt ball-bearing factories. The Americans lose 60 of the 288 heavy bombers dispatched.

16 October 1943
The 9th United States Army Air Force (USAAF) is reorganized in the United Kingdom to act as a tactical air arm of the USAAF in North-west Europe.

14 October 1947
The Bell X1 rocket-powered aircraft, piloted by Captain Charles ‘Chuck’ Yeager, becomes the first to exceed the speed of sound in level flight. It reaches a speed of Mach 1.015 or 1,078kph (670mph) at an altitude 12,800 meters (42,000 feet).

15 October 1948
The Royal Air Force (RAF) and United States Air Force (USAF) combine their efforts on the Berlin Airlift as an Airlift task force.

16 October 1948
South African Air Force crews join the Berlin Airlift operation.

12 October 1951
Advance parties of a Canadian air division disembark at Liverpool and Southampton. It includes three squadrons of North American F86 Sabre jet fighters.

14 October 1952
The longest flight over water by single a engined jet fighter is completed when 75 Republic F84s flying 2,575 miles from Midway Island to Japan with air refuelling.

12 October 1953
The United States signs an agreement in Athens allowing their armed forces to use Greek air and naval bases.

16 October 1953
A world speed record of 728mph over a 100 kilometer closed course is set by Robert O. Rahn flying a Douglas XF4D Skyray.

14 October 1954
Queen Elizabeth II approves the re-designation of the Southern Rhodesia Air Force as the Royal Rhodesian Air Force.

17 October 1954
A Sikorsky XH39 helicopter sets a new world altitude record for rotary wing aircraft of 7,468 meters (24,500 feet).

15 October 1955
Lieutenant Gordon Gray of United States Navy (USN) flies a Douglas A4D Skyhawk, setting a new world record of 695mph over a 500 kilometer course.

16 October 1955
Boeing Model 367-80 (the prototype the Boeing 707) 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.

15 October 1956
Contracts for the supply of Lockheed F104 Starfighters to the United States Air Force are announced.

16 October 1957
The United States Air Force (USAF) achieves its first successful experiment to boost a man-made object to a velocity at which it can escape the Earth’s gravitational pull. A special Aerobee rocket accomplishes this.

17 October 1963
The United Nation General Assembly confirms earlier unilateral declarations made by the USA and Soviet Union that no weapons will be mounted or used in space.

12 October 1964
The Soviets launch Voskhod 1 into earth orbit. This is the first launch to carry a multiple crew – Vladimir Komarov, Konstantin Feoktistov and Boris Yegorov, who operate without spacesuits during the mission.

16 October 1964
The People’s Republic of China detonates its first atomic weapon.

13 October 1968
A live transmission from space: Apollo 7 crew Walter Schirra, Donn Eisele and Walt Cunningham hold up cards reading “Keep those cards and letters coming in, folks”.

13 October 1969
A joint contract for the development of the RB199 engine is signed by Fiat, MTU and Rolls-Royce.

17 October 1977
86 hostages are freed from a Lufthansa Boeing 737 at Mogadishu in Somalia after the aircraft is stormed by West German and British soldiers, killing four terrorists of the Red Army Faction. The plane was seized in the previous week, while flying from Majorca to Frankfurt.

16 October 1981
McDonnell Douglas finishes construction of the first full-scale AV-8B Harrier II development aircraft at St Louis in Missouri.

13 October 1982
The first General Dynamics F16 fighters for the Pakistan Air Force are delivered.

15 October 1997
A Saturn probe is launched from Cape Canaverel on a 1,499,676 kilometer journey that will take 7 years. The Cassini-Huygens probe will gather data about Saturn and its moon Titan.

17 October 1998
The first of 276 Airbus A319s ordered by United States Airways is delivered. This is the biggest order for aircraft ever placed by an airline.

16 October 2000
Routes between North America and Asia are approved by a year long joint study conducted by Canadian and Russian Federal Aviation Authorities. A flight between New York and Hong Kong would save 5 hours flying across the North Pole and cost $33,000 to run.

18 October 2002
Boeing reveals its Bird of Prey stealth technology demonstrator, which has conducted a number of flights during the period 1996 to 1999.

15 October 2003
Yang Liwei becomes the People’s Republic of China’s first man in space.

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That’s it for this week Folks. See ya in seven.

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