On This Day in Aviation History

On This Day in Aviation History

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 mph and wins the Blériot Trophy after becoming the first airplane to maintain a speed of more than 1,200 mph for more than 30 min. in a 669-mile closed circuit.

1972 – U.S. Navy Lts. Randy Cunningham and J.G. William become the first USN aces of the Vietnam War, adding three Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-17s to their tally on this day alone.

1991 – First flight of the Bombardier CRJ100, a regional airliner; more than 1,000 are eventually built before production ends.

2012 – The women’s international record-holder for number of flight hours logged as a pilot in a lifetime, Evelyn Bryan Johnson, dies at the age of 102. Between her first solo flight in 1944 and her retirement from flying in the mid-1990s, she had logged 57,635 hours (about 6½ years) in the air, flying about 5,500,000 miles. Only one person, Ed Long (1915-1999), had logged more hours in the air during a lifetime.

Updated: May 10, 2013 — 1:38 PM
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