AUG07
1890 - Birth of Joseph Frantz, French WWI pilot, 1st pilot to shoot down an airplane in a dogfight.
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Frantz
1892 - Birth of Karl Schattauer, German WWI flying ace
http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/germany/schattauer.php
1892 - Birth of Tom Falcon Hazell, Irish WWI fighter ace, 5th most successful British “flying ace” during the war, and the 3rd most successful Irish-born pilot, behind Edward Mannock and George McElroy, as well the only pilot to survive the war from both groups.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_F._Hazell - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/ireland/hazell.php
1893 - Birth of Hans-Georg von der Marwitz, German WWI fighter ace.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Georg_von_der_Marwitz - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/germany/marwitz.php
1894 - Birth of Austin Lloyd Fleming, Canadian WWI flying ace who also served in WWII.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_Lloyd_Fleming - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/canada/fleming.php
1896 - Birth of René Montrion, French WWI flying ace.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Montrion - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/france/montrion.php
1913 - Death of Samuel Franklin Cowdery (later known as Samuel Franklin Cody), American early pioneer of manned flight. While testing his latest design, the 'Cody Floatplane' broke up at 500 ft killing his pilot and a passenger. Cody was most famous for his work on the large kites known as Cody War-Kites that were used in WWI as a smaller alternative to balloons for artillery spotting. He was also the 1st man to conduct a powered flight in Britain.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Cody
1916 - 1st flight of The Anatra DS (or Anasal), Russian two-seat reconnaissance aircraft developed from the Anatra D.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatra_DS
1917 - 1st flight tests of the Morane-Saulnier A. I. Parasol, French high wing monoplane fighter (official designation MoS 27.C1)
http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/weapons_morane_saulnier_Type_AI.html
1917 - Death of Squadron Commander Edwin Harris Dunning, British Royal Naval Air Service, 1st pilot to land an aircraft on a moving ship. During his second landing attempt of the day, when an updraft caught his port wing, throwing his plane overboard. Knocked unconscious, he drowned in the cockpit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Harris_Dunning
1918 - 1st flight of The Blériot-SPAD S.20 (originally known as the SPAD S.XX), French 2 seat fighter aircraft.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPAD_S.XX - http://aviafrance.com/aviafrance1.php?ID=142
1919 - As the aviators were not to be present at the National parade, French Charles Godefroy makes a spectacular flight passing through the Arc de Triomphe in Paris with a biplane “Nieuport 11 Bébé”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Godefroy#The_flight
1919 - Capt. Ernest C. Hoy becomes the 1st pilot to fly over the Canadian Rockies when he carries mail from Vancouver, British Columbia to Calgary, Alberta in a Curtiss JN-4 'Jenny' biplane. Unable to climb above 7,000 feet, he has to fly between mountain peaks, with vicious updrafts and downdrafts pulling at his plane and only 150 feet between him and the craggy peaks of Crawford Pass.
http://www.abheritage.ca/aviation/people/between_earnest_hoy.html
1925 - French Landry and Drouhin set a closed circuit record of 4400 km in 45 hrs 11 mins an 59 secs with a Farman F-62 biplane.
http://www.aviafrance.com/aviafrance1.php?ID=4533
1926 - The Ford Reliability Tour (or National Air Tour) begins at Ford Field with 25 contestants. It will be won by Walter Beech in a Travel Air .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_National_Reliability_Air_Tour#1926_National_Air_Tour
1928 - 1st flight of The Rohrbach Ro X Romar, German long-range commercial flying-boat and last aircraft designed and built by Rohrbach Metall Flugzeugbau GmbH.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohrbach_Romar
1928 - 1st flight of The Curtiss Robin, American high-wing 3 seats touring monoplane.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtiss_Robin
1930 - Death of William Langanke, German sport and airliner pilot, disappearing at sea while flying a Lufthansa Junkers W 33.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Langanke
1930 - 1st flight of the Potez 42, French low wing monoplane air ambulance prototype.
http://aviafrance.com/aviafrance1.php?ID=9989
1931 - 1st flight of The RWD-5, Polish two-seat high-wing monoplane touring and sports plane, famous by its transatlantic flight, being the smallest aircraft to cross the Atlantic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RWD-5
1933 - Death of Park Kyung-won, one of the earliest Korean female aviators, killed in a crash near Hakone, Kanagawa.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Kyung-won
1933 - French Paul Codos and Maurice Rossi land the Blériot Bl-110 'Joseph Le Brix' at Rayak, Algeria setting a world distance record of 9100km in 55hrs from New-York.
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Codos - http://www.aviafrance.com/aviafrance1.php?ID=1678
1941 - Death of Bruno Mussolini, second son of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, flying in one of the prototypes of a "secret" bomber (Piaggio P.108) near the San Giusto Airport in Pisa.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaggio_P.108#Design_and_development - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Mussolini
1941 - 1st flight of The Grumman TBF Avenger (XTBF-1), American torpedo bomber carrier capable aircraft.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_TBF_Avenger#Design_and_development
1942 – Operation Watchtower: the U. S. invasion of Guadalcanal, Tulagi, Gavutu, and Tanambogo, begins. The aircraft carriers USS Enterprise (CV-6) and USS Saratoga (CV-3) cover the landings with airstrikes, and U. S. Army Air Forces B-17 Flying Fortresses bomb Japanese airfields at Rabaul. Rabaul-based Japanese aircraft attack U. S. transports and their escorts off Guadalcanal, and dogfights with aircraft from Enterprise and Saratoga ensue.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guadalcanal_Campaign
1942 - Death of Mototsuna Yoshida, Japanese WWII fighter ace, killed in action.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_aces_from_Japan
1943 - 1st flight of The Ilyushin Il-6, Soviet long-range bomber prototype developed from the Ilyushin Il-4
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilyushin_Il-6
1944 - Death of Susumu Kajinami, Japanese WWII fighter ace, killed in action.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_aces_from_Japan#K
1944 - Death of Horst Ademeit, German WWII fighter ace, Missing in action over Russian lines flying his Focke Wulf Fw 190 A-5.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horst_Ademeit - http://cieldegloire.com/001_ademeit_horst.php
1944 - 1st flight of The Kellett XR-8 (later redesignated XH-8), US helicopter, two-seat machine intended to demonstrate the feasibility of a twin-rotor system, and while it accomplished this, it also demonstrated a number of problems that prevented further development of this particular design.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kellett_XR-8
1945 - 1st flight of The Nakajima Kikka, Japan's 1st jet-powered prototype aircraft, to be used as a fast attack bomber.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakajima_Kikka
1948 - Death of Frederick Walker Baldwin, also known as Casey Baldwin, Canadian engineer, hydrofoil and aviation pioneer, 1st Canadian to pilot an heavier-than-air flying machine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Walker_Baldwin
1949 - A Gloster Meteor III, on loan from the RAF and flown by Flight Refuelling Ltd (FRL) test pilot Patrick Hornidge, takes off from Tarrant Rushton and, refuelled 10 times by the Lancaster tanker, remains airborne for 12 hours and 3 minutes, receiving 2,352 gallons of fuel from the tanker in 10 tanker contacts and flying an overall distance of 3,600 miles (5,800 km), achieving a new jet endurance record.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloster_Meteor#Record_setting
1951 - William 'Bill' Bridgeman sets a new airspeed record in the Douglas Skyrocket of Mach 1.88 (1,245 mph, 1,992 km/h).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Skyrocket#Operational_history
1951 - 1st flight of The McDonnell F3H Demon, US subsonic swept-wing carrier-based jet fighter aircraft.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_F3H_Demon
1953 - 1st flight of The Leduc 0.21 French research aircraft to refine the practicalities of ramjet propulsion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leduc_0.21
1955 - Test pilot Tex Johnston performed a barrel-roll in the Boing 367-80 prototype.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_707#Model_367-80_origins
1956 - Death of Jacob Earl "Jake" Fickel, USAF Major General usually associated with being an instructor of aviation. He is credited with firing the 1st recorded gunshot ever from an airplane.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Earl_Fickel
1956 - Birth of Kent Vernon "Rommel" Rominger, USN test pilot and NASA Astronaut.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_Rominger
1959 - Launch of Explorer 6, US small, spheroidal satellite designed to study trapped radiation of various energies, galactic cosmic rays, geomagnetism, radio propagation in the upper atmosphere, and the flux of micrometeorites. It also tested a scanning device designed for photographing the Earth's cloud cover, and transmitted the 1st pictures of Earth from orbit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explorer_6
1961 - Vostok 2 with cosmonaut Gherman Titov returns on earth after a full day orbit in order to study the effects of a more prolonged period of weightlessness on the human body
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vostok_2
1962 - Birth of José Moreno Hernández, American engineer of Mexican descent and NASA astronaut.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Hern%C3%A1ndez_(astronaut)
1963 - 1st flight of The Lockheed YF-12, American prototype interceptor aircraft, which the USAF evaluated as a development of the highly-secret Lockheed A-12.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_YF-12
1965 - Death of Ralph Royce, WWI Pilot and USAAF general during WWII.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Royce
1971 - Apollo 15, American manned mission to the moon, is back on earth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_15
1976 - Viking 2, NASA spacecraft, enters orbit around Mars. It will return almost 16,000 images in 706 orbits around Mars.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_2#Mission_profile
1977 - Death of Wilfred Austin 'Will' Curtis, Canadian WWI flying ace who served in the RCAF during WWII and ended as Chief of the Air Staff of the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) post WWII.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfred_Curtis - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/canada/curtis3.php
1980 - Aerolineas Argentinas and Iberia jointly inaugurate the world's longest non-stop air route, between Buenos Aires and Madrid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Aviation/Historical_anniversaries/August_in_aviation/August_7
1980 - Janice Brown pilots the MacCready Gossamer Penguin on its 1st solar powered flight.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacCready_Gossamer_Penguin
1989 - RRC Air Services de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter 300 crashed on a mountain side near Gambella (Ethiopia), killing all 16 on board, including George Thomas "Mickey" Leland, American anti-poverty activist who later became a congressman from the Texas 18th District and chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.
http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19890807-0 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Leland
1990 - Operation Desert Shield begins, as the first American air patrols, troops and equipment land in Saudi Arabia to discourage an Iraqi invasion. Iraq had annexed neighboring Kuwait five days earlier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War#Military_means
1997 - Launch of STS-85, Space Shuttle Discovery mission to perform multiple space science packages.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-85
1999 - TACV Flight 5002 Dornier Do 228 crashed into the wooded mountainside of the island of Santo Antão, Cape Verde at an altitude of 1370 metres due to bad weather. The aircraft burst into flames, killing all 18 passengers and crew on board.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TACV_Flight_5002
2003 - 1st glide flight for SpaceShipOne, american suborbital air-launched spaceplane.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceShipOne#Development_and_winning_the_X_Prize
2009 - Island Express Air, small Canadian airline, begins operations.