Military

1909 – Birth of Valentina Stepanovna Grizodubova, one of the first female pilots in the Soviet Union and a World War II pilot. 1913 – First bombing attack against a surface ship: Didier Masson and Captain Joaquín Bauche Alcalde, flying for Mexican Revolutionist Venustiano Carranza, dropped dynamite bombs on Federalist gunboats at Guaymas, Mexico. 1961 – A Convair B-58 Hustler (shown above) cruises at a speed of 1,302 […]

1888 – Birth of Francesco Baracca, Italy’s top fighter ace of World War I, credited with 34 aerial victories. 1926 – Richard Byrd and Floyd Bennett make the first flight over the North Pole in a Fokker F.VIIa-3 m. Their total distance from Spitzbergen, Norway, is 1,600 miles. 1943 – A German night fighter crew defects to the U.K., flying a Junkers Ju 88R-1. The defection gives British scientists and tacticians access to a Lichtenstein airborne interception radar for […]

The sequester won’t stop a beloved tradition after all. For a time, it was looking like this year’s U.S. Air Force Academy’s graduating cadets would not get to have a flyover at their commencement ceremony in Colorado Springs, Colo., due to the sequester grounding the Thunderbirds demonstration team. But now two museums, one local and one […]

1891 – Birth of James Robert Smith, Canadian World War I flying ace. 1914 – A civilian pilot, René Caudron, makes the first French shipboard takeoff in an airplane from a ramp constructed over the foredeck of the seaplane carrier Foudre, using a Caudron G.3 amphibian floatplane. 1937 – Lt. Col. Mario Pezzi of Italy’s Regia Aeronautica […]