AUG01

1915 - Lt Max Immelmann shoots down his 1st aircraft, a B.E.2c, with his Fokker E.I beginning his career as an ace and the period that will become known as the "Fokker scourge"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Immelmann#Wartime_career - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/germany/immelmann.php

1916 - 1st flight of The Schütte-Lanz SL 11, german airship which will be the 1st German airship to be shot down over Britain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL_11

1918 - Death of Gabriel Fernand Charles Guérin, French WWI fighter ace, killed in a flying accident in his SPAD VII.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Gu%C3%A9rin - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/france/guerin.php

1919 - Death of Aleksandr Alexandrovich Kozakov, most successful Russian WWI fighter ace, Killed in a plane crash during an air show which was performed to boost the morale of the Russian anti-Bolshevik troops during the Russian civil war.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Kazakov - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/russia/kozakov.php

1920 - Birth of Thomas Buchanan McGuire Jr., 2nd highest scoring American ace during WWII.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_McGuire - http://cieldegloire.com/014_mc_guire_t_b.php

1921 - Death of William Ernest Shields, Canadian WWI fighter ace and sub-station superintendent of the Dominion air patrol at High River, Alberta, Killed in a crash.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Ernest_Shields - http://theaerodrome.com/aces/canada/shields.php

1921 - 1st flight of the Curtiss CR, American conventional single-seater biplane with staggered single-bay wings racing aircraft designed for the United States Navy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtiss_CR

1929 - Dr. Hugo Eckener commands the LZ-127 'Graf Zeppelin', 1st airship flight to circumnavigate the globe when the flight leaves Friedrichshafen, Germany.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZ_127_Graf_Zeppelin#Round-the-world_flight

1929 - Death of Joseph Marie Pierre Lebaudy, French industrial, early dirigible pioneer along with his brother Marie Paul Jules Lebaudy.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Lebaudy

1938 - 1st fligth of the Messerschmitt Me 209,German high-speed experimental prototype.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_209

1940 - Death of Stefano Cagna, Italian Pre-wwII raid aviator, Killed in action in his Savoia-Marchetti S.M.79 bomber.

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefano_Cagna

1941 - A pair of Tupolev TB-3s (heavy bomber aircraft in Zveno-SPB configuration), each with 2 Polikarpov I-16 fighters (as parasite fighters) carrying a pair of 250 kilograms (550 lb) bombs, destroyed an oil depot in Romania.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_TB-3#Operational_history - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zveno_project#Zveno_configurations

1943 - Operation Tidal Wave, air attack by bombers of USAAF on nine oil refineries around Ploesti, Romania is made by B-24 Liberators.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tidal_Wave

1943 - Death of Lydia Litvak, one of the world's only two female fighter aces, shot down in her Yak-1b by Bf-109G during an escort mission of Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmoviks

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lydia_Litvak#World_War_II - http://cieldegloire.com/015_litvyak_l_v.php

1943 - 1st Canadian-built four-engined aircraft, the Avro 683 Lancaster X, was flown at Malton, Onatrio.

http://canadianaviationhistory.pbworks.com/w/page/13801115/On-this-day-in-Canadian-Aviation-History-August

1944 - Birth of Yury Viktorovich Romanenko, Soviet pilot and cosmonaut.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yury_Romanenko

1945 - Death of Naoshi Kanno, Japanese WWII fighter ace, Missing in action with his Kawanishi N1K 'George' after technical failure while attacking B-24 over Yaku island.

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%8F%85%E9%87%8E%E7%9B%B4 - http://www.cieldegloire.com/010_kanno_n.php

1946 - British European Airways (BEA) is established under the Civil Aviation Act of 1946, which makes the entire British air transport industry nationalized.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_European_Airways

1946 - Birth of Richard Oswalt Covey, USAF pilot and NASA astronaut.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_O._Covey

1948 - The Latécoère 631-06 'Lionel de Marmier', French large civil transatlantic 6 engine flying boat, disappeared at sea 1200 Miles from Dakar with the lost of 42 on board.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lat%C3%A9co%C3%A8re_631#Accident

1948 - The Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI, or OSI), is formed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Air_Force_Office_of_Special_Investigations

1949 - 1st flight of the Northrop YC-125 Raider, American 3-engined high wing STOL utility transport.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_YC-125_Raider

1951 - Japan Airlines Co., Ltd. (JAL), flag carrier of Japan, is established.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Airlines

1952 - Death of Robert Opie Lindsay, American WWI flying ace and USAAC WWII officer, founding member of the Civil Aeronautics Administration (forerunner to the Federal Aviation Administration)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Opie_Lindsay - http://theaerodrome.com/aces/usa/lindsay.php

1954 - 1st vertical flight tests of The Convair XFY Pogo tailsitter, US experiment in vertical takeoff and landing. The Pogo had delta wings and three-bladed contra-rotating propellers and intended to be a high-performance fighter aircraft capable of operating from small warships.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_XFY#Testing_and_evaluation

1955 - 1st flight of The Lockheed U-2, nicknamed "Dragon Lady", US single-engine, very high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft operated by the USAF and previously flown by the CIA. It provides day and night, very high-altitude (70,000 feet / 21,000 meters), all-weather intelligence gathering. It was only intended to be a high-speed taxi run. The sailplane-like wings were so efficient that the aircraft jumped into the air at 70 knots (130 km/h).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_U-2

1957 - NORAD is formed to co-ordinate US and Canadian air defense

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Aerospace_Defense_Command#Formation

1960 - Death of Ernst Bormann, German WWI flying ace and WWII general major of the Luftwaffe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Bormann - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/germany/bormann.php

1963 - Birth of Koichi Wakata, Japanese engineer and JAXA astronaut.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koichi_Wakata

1963 - 1st flight of the PZL-104 Wilga Mark 2, Variant of the Polish short-takeoff-and-landing (STOL) Civil Aviation utility aircraft

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PZL-104_Wilga#Design_and_development

1965 - 1st flight of the McDonnell-Douglas F-4E Phantom II, most numerous Phantom variant built.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_McDonnell_Douglas_F-4_Phantom_II_variants

1966 - 1st flight of the McDonnell Douglas DC-9-30, Evolution of the American twin-engine, single-aisle jet airliner.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-9-30#Series_30

1967 - Launch of Lunar Orbiter 5, NASA Last of the Lunar Orbiter series, designed to take additional Apollo and Surveyor landing site photography and to take broad survey images of unphotographed parts of the Moon's far side

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Orbiter_5

1972 – Northeast Airlines is integrated into Delta Air Lines.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Airlines

1973 - 1st (glide) flight of the Martin Marietta X-24B, experimental US aircraft developed from a joint USAF-NASA program named PILOT (1963–1975). It was designed and built to test lifting body concepts, experimenting with the concept of unpowered reentry and landing, later used by the Space Shuttle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Marietta_X-24B

1976 - American Donald Taylor takes off in his Home Built Thorp T-18 'Victoria 76' for a round the world flight.

http://www.airventuremuseum.org/virtual/interactive/innovations/thorp/

1977 – Death of Francis Gary Powers (American pilot whose CIA U-2 spy plane was shot down while flying a reconnaissance mission over Soviet Union airspace, causing the 1960 U-2 incident.) in the crash of the news helicopter Bell 206 Jet Ranger he was flying in Los Angeles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Gary_Powers#Fatal_crash

1981 - 1st flight of the Bell Model 222B, Standard production and more powerful model of the twin-engined light helicopter.

http://www.aviastar.org/helicopters_eng/bell_222.php

1981 - Death of Julius Arigi, Austro Hungarian WWI fighter ace, technical innovator responsible for engineering changes in the aircraft he flew, co-founder of Ikarus, one of Czechoslovakia's pioneer civil aviation companie, and WWII Luftwaffe fighter instructor. (2 of his students were aces Walter Nowotny and Hans-Joachim Marseille).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Arigi - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/austrhun/arigi.php

1983 - America West Airlines begins flying, from Phoenix, Arizona.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_West_Airlines

1990 - Launch of Soyuz TM-10, Russian space mission to MIR, Japanese reporter Toyohiro Akiyama making its 1st space flight.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_TM-10

1997 - McDonnell Douglas is merged into the Boeing Company

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas

2002 - 1st flight of The Scaled Composites Model 318 White Knight, American jet-powered carrier aircraft used to launch the SpaceShipOne experimental spacecraft.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaled_Composites_White_Knight

2003 - 1st successful supersonic flight of The HAL Tejas, indian lightweight multirole tailless fighter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_Tejas#Development_history

2010 - The aircraft used for flying scenes in the movie 'Con Air', Fairchild C-123K Provider , former AF Ser. No. 54-0709, FAA registration N709RR (cn: 20158), crashed in Denali National Park while performing a cargo flight for All West Freight. All 3 crew members died.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_C-123_Provider#Accidents_and_incidents