1895 – Birth of Roscoe Turner (shown), American aviator and 3-time winner of the Thompson Trophy, one of the National Air Races of the heyday of airplane racing in the 1930s. 1927 – Death of Georg Wulf, German aviation pioneer, test pilot and aircraft designer; also co-founder of Focke-Wulf Flugzeugbau AG; Wulf is killed in the crash […]

1893 – Birth of Jean Pie Hyacinthe Paul Jerome Casale, French World War I fighter ace and test pilot for Blériot. 1918 – Lt. David Ingalls claims his fifth victory, becoming the only U.S. Navy ace of World War I. 1949 – First flight of the North American T-28 Trojan (A model shown), a piston-engined trainer used by the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy; later, it is used […]

1802 – Frenchman Andre-Jacques Garnerin makes the first parachute descent in England, jumping from a balloon over London. 1945 – Birth of Bjarni Valdimar Tryggvason,  Icelandic-born Canadian engineer, Royal Canadian Air Force pilot and NRC-CSA astronaut. 1953 – North Korean pilot No Kum-Sok defects, bringing his Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 with him to Seoul and collecting a $100,000 (U.S.) reward. 1967 – First flight […]

1912 – Igor Sikorsky made a 90-minute night flight in his S-8 Malyutka, a two-seat biplane trainer. 1916 – Jan Nagórski (Ivan Nagurski) performs the first loop in a flying boat; the aircraft is a Grigorovich M-9 (type shown). 1930 – Birth of Thomas Patten Stafford, an American former U.S. Air Force officer, test pilot, and NASA astronaut. 1952 – Death […]

1893 – Birth of Juan Pablo Aldasoro, Mexican aviation pioneer and aircraft designer. 1939 – First flight of the Bristol Bolingbroke (shown), a maritime patrol aircraft used by the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II. Built by Fairchild-Canada, it is a variant of the Bristol Blenheim MkIV bomber. 1954 – A Tupolev Tu-4 bomber of the USSR drops a 40-kiloton atomic weapon […]