1892 – Birth of Edwin Harris Dunning, who later flies for Britain’s Royal Naval Air Service and becomes the first pilot to land an aircraft on a moving ship.
1914 – First flight of the Vickers F.B.5 (Fighting Biplane 5 and known as the “Gunbus”), a British two-seat, World War I military biplane. It is the first aircraft purpose-built for air-to-air combat to see service, making it the world’s first operational fighter.
1938 – After filing a flight plan to fly nonstop from Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, N.Y., west to California, Douglas Corrigan (shown above) instead heads east after takeoff and makes a 28-hour 13-minute solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean to Ireland, claiming to have made a gross navigational error. He goes down in history as “Wrong Way” Corrigan.
1953 – Lt. Guy P. Bordelon scores his fifth aerial victory, becoming the U.S. Navy’s only ace of the Korean War. He had scored all five victories since June 29, using an Chance Vought F4U-5N Corsair to shoot down North Korean light aircraft making night harassment raids.
1991 – Death of Arthur Raymond “Ray” Brooks, American World War I flying ace, pioneer in the development of radio navigational aids and one of the earliest commercial pilots involved with carrying air mail for the U.S. Postal Service.
1996 – TWA Flight 800, a Boeing 747, explodes in mid-air above the ocean off East Moriches, N.Y., killing all 230 people on board.
