Milestones in Aviation

• Leonardo da Vinci envisions and sketches flying machines such as helicopters.

1809

• September: Sir George Cayley published his seminal paper On Aerial Navigation, setting out for the first time the scientific principles of heavier-than-air flight.

1853

• Late June or early July: Sir George Cayley's coachman became the world's first (uncontrolled) aeroplane pilot, flying a glider designed by his employer for 423ft (130m) across a valley in Brompton, Yorkshire.

1890

• Clement Ader: first powered heavier-than-air flight (but uncontrolled).

1890s

• Otto Lilienthal: first controlled glider flights, in excess of 300m. Numerous repetitions. Lilienthal, often called the first pilot, also performs the first well-documented and photographed flights. Breaks his spine on the 2500th flight. Leaves highly influential notebooks.
• Samuel Pierpont Langley said by some to have flown the heavier-than-air powered unmanned aircraft Aerodrome.

1894

• November: Lawrence Hargrave demonstrates stable flight with a tethered box kite.
• Octave Chanute publishes his book Progress in Flying Machines, the first history of aviation and highly influential on many early pioneers, including the Wright Brothers.

1899

• Percy Pilcher flies various gliders and is close to completing a powered machine when he is tragically killed.

1903

• March 31 : Richard Pearse reputed to have made an uncontrolled powered flight in a heavier-than-air craft, a monoplane of his own construction, that crash lands on a hedge. (This date is computed from circumstantial evidence of eyewitnesses as the flight was not well-documented at the time.)
• August: Karl Jatho flies up to 200 feet in a powered heavier-than-air craft
• December: After years of dedicated research and development, the brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright fly 300 yards in a more practical aeroplane. This is the first controlled powered heavier-than-air flight and the first photographed heavier-than-air flight.

1906

• March: Traian Vuia: first fully self-powered flight (Wright brothers needed headwinds or catapults).
• October: Alberto Santos-Dumont: first official flight.

1907

• Paul Cornu: first helicopter flight (just a hop though)

1908

• May: First heavy-than-air passenger carrying flight - Wilbur Wright flew Charles W. Furnas for a distance of 2.5 miles in a Wright Model B.
• September: Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge became the first person killed in a powered airplane and the first military aviation casualty when Wilbur crashed his two-passenger plane during military tests at Fort Myer in Virginia.

1909

• July: Louis Blériot flew the English Channel.
• August: The first international aviation meeting is held at Reims in France.

1910

• October: Romanian inventor Henri Coanda (1886-1972), constructed the first prototypical jet engine in the world, named the Coanda-1910, exhibited at the International Aeronautical Show in Paris and tested near Paris.

1911

• First coast-to-coast airplane flight across the USA by the Vin Fiz Flyer - taking 49 days, with several crashes en-route.
• July: First ever commercial cargo to be carried by an aircraft, a case of electric lamps, from Shoreham to Hove in England.
• October: First aircraft to be used in war was a Bleriot monoplane flown from Tripoli to Azizia to spy on Turkish positions.

1912

• First all-metal aircraft flies, the Tubavion monoplane built by Ponche and Primard in France.

1914

• Planes at war. Germany builds largest airplane fleet, consisting of 1200 planes. First aerial combats.

1918

• Manfred von Richthofen, a living legend called the "Red Baron" and "ace of aces", claims 80th victory, and finally is shot down

1919

• May: A US Navy flying boat NC-4 flew by short stages from Long Island, New York to Lisbon, Portugal over 19 days.
• June: John Alcock and Arthur Brown completed the first non-stop Atlantic crossing, flying a Vickers Vimy from Newfoundland to Ireland in 16 hours.
• November: Keith and Ross Smith fly another Vickers Vimy, G-EAOU, from England to Australia, the first flight between these two places.

1923

• May: The first non-stop USA coast-to-coast flight.

1927

• May 20-May 21: Charles Lindbergh flew the Atlantic nonstop and solo, direct from New York City to Paris.

1928

• May: Charles Kingsford-Smith, Ulm, Lyon and Warner flew the Southern Cross, a modified Fokker Trimotor from San Francisco to Brisbane - the first crossing of the Pacific Ocean by air.
• June: First rocket-powered plane, the Ente.

1936

• Focke Fa 61: first practical helicopter by Heinrich Focke (Germany)

1937

• Sir Frank Whittle builds the first jet engine designed to power an aircraft.

1939

• Heinkel He 176 and He 178: first functional jetplanes, powered by liquid-fulled rocket and by turbojet respectively. Both private ventures by Ernst Heinkel and test-flown by Erich Warsitz. The rocket used was developed by Hellmuth Walter and the turbojet by Hans von Ohain.

1942

• Messerschmitt Me 262: first jet fighter, test-piloted by Fritz Wendel. Fastest plane of World War II. Mass production started in 1944, too late for a decisive impact.

1947

• October: Chuck Yeager took the rocket-powered Bell X-1 past the speed of sound.

1948

• July 14: Six de Havilland Vampire F3s of RAF No 54 Squadron, commanded by Wg Cdr D S Wilson-MacDonald, DSO, DFC, became the first jet aircraft to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. They went via Stornoway, Iceland and Labrador to Montreal on the first leg of a goodwill tour of Canada and the US where they gave several formation aerobatic displays.

1952

• The British state airline BOAC introduced into service the first jet airliner the De Havilland Comet.
• The first non-stop, unrefuellled flight from England to Australia was completed by an English Electric Canberra bomber in under 24 hours.

1961

• First space flight by Yuri Gagarin, once around the planet within 108 minutes.

1967

• Air speed record of 4,534 mph (Mach 6.1) is established by the North American X-15 research aircraft.

1969

• Boeing 747 is unveiled. At the time the largest passenger carrying aircraft ever built and one which was to revolutionise commercial air travel.
• July: Neil Armstrong is the first man to walk on the moon.

1974

• September: A SR-71 Blackbird crossed the Atlantic Ocean in less than two hours.

1976

• British Airways starts the first supersonic airliner service with the introduction of the Concorde.

1977

• August: Gossamer Condor became the first human-powered aeroplane, flying a figure-8 course to demonstrate sustained, controlled flight.

1986

• December: First non-stop flight around the planet without refueling.

2001

• April: The unmanned aircraft Global Hawk flies automatically from Edwards AFB in the US to Australia non-stop and unrefuelled. This is he longest point-to-point flight ever undertaken by an unmanned aircraft, and took 23 hours and 23 minutes.

2003

• October: First totally autonomous flight across the Atlantic by a computer-controlled model aircraft.
• December: First "centenary" of powered flight (although first powered flight actually dates back 1.5 centuries: in 1852 Henri Giffard flew 15 miles in dirigible with on-board steam engine). Reconstruction of Wright flyer fails to lift off, presumably because the design is not really self-powered but needs a strong headwind.

See also: Aviation history

Referenced By