SEP21

1917 - Death of Ralph Luxmore Curtis, British WWI flying ace, from wounds received in action.

http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/england/curtis2.php

1921 - Death of Ernest Joseph Jules Maunoury, French WWI flying ace, killed in his SPAD 220 when his wings broke during a shooting exercise on a captive balloon.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Maunoury - http://theaerodrome.com/aces/france/maunoury.php

1925 - Death of Raymond d'Ecquevilly, French early aviation pioneer and aircraft designer.

http://www.precurseursaviation.com/ecquevilly.htm

1925 - Death of Marcel P. Viallet, French WWI flying ace

http://theaerodrome.com/aces/france/viallet.php

1926 - Attempting a non-stop atlantic crossing, René Fonck's Sikorsky S-35 gathered speed when the auxiliary landing gear broke away, failed to get airborne and plunged down a steep slope at the end of the runway and burst into flames.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_S-35

1928 - Lady Mary Bailey starts a return flight from Cape Town to London in her de Havilland DH60 Moth.

http://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/research/history-of-aviation-timeline/interactive-aviation-timeline/british-civil-aviation/1928.aspx

1937 - 1st fligth of the Hanriot H-220, French Twin engine 3 seat fighter prototype.

http://www.aviastar.org/air/france/hanriot_h-220.php - http://aviafrance.com/aviafrance1.php?ID=50

1938 - Death of Oscar M. Westover, major general and 4th chief of the United States Army Air Corps, His Northrop A-17AS experienced a high-speed stall and crashed in a crosswind short of the runway at Lockheed Aircraft's air field in Burbank, California

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Westover#Death

1939 - 1st flight of The Lockheed Model 18 Lodestar, American twin engine passenger transport aircraft, evolution of the Lockheed Model 14 Super Electra.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Model_18_Lodestar

1942 - Convoy PQ 18 arrives at Archangelsk in the Soviet Union. During its voyage, aircraft from the British aircraft carrier HMS Avenger have attacked 16 German submarines and contributed to the sinking of one, and Avenger’s fighters and the convoy’s antiarcraft guns have shot down 41 German aircraft. Because of these high losses, German aircraft rarely attack Arctic convoys again.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convoy_PQ_18

1942 - 1st flight of The B-29 Superfortress, American four-engine propeller-driven heavy bomber.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-29_Superfortress

1944 - Death of Jozo Iwahashi, Japanese 2nd Sino-Japanese War and WWII fighter ace, missing in action after having straffed Xian airfield with his Nakajima Ki-84 'Hayate'.

http://www.cieldegloire.com/010_iwahashi_j.php

1945 - Birth of Bjarni Valdimar Tryggvason, Icelandic-born Canadian engineer, RCAF pilot and NRC/CSA astronaut.

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

1953 - North Korean pilot No Kum-Sok defects, bringing his MiG-15 with him to Seoul and collecting a $US 100,000 reward.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Kum-Sok

1953 - 1st flight of The DINFIA IA 35 Huanquero, Argentine twin-engined general-purpose monoplane aircraft.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DINFIA_IA_35

1955 - Birth of Richard James Hieb, American engineer and NASA astronaut.

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

1956 - 1st flight of the Kingsford Smith PL.7, Australian unequal span biplane with a tail unit supported by twin booms from the upper wings and a fixed tricycle landing gear agricultural aircraft.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsford_Smith_PL.7

1956 – Grumman company test pilot Tom Attridge shoots himself down in a Grumman F11F Tiger during a Mach 1.0 20 degree dive from 22,000 feet (6,700 m) to 7,000 feet (2,100 m). He fires two bursts from the fighter's 20 mm cannon during the descent and as he reaches 7,000 feet (2,100 m) the jet is struck multiple times, including one shell that is ingested by the engine, shredding the compressor blades

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_F-11_Tiger#Design_and_development

1960 - 1st (glide) flight of the Briffaud GB-80 'Aerovoilier', French experimental tailless single seat motorglider.

http://www.nurflugel.com/Nurflugel/Fauvel/e_GB80.htm - http://aviafrance.com/aviafrance1.php?ID=10023

1961 - 1st flight of The Boeing CH-47 Chinook, American twin-engine, tandem rotor heavy-lift helicopter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CH-47_Chinook

1964 - 1st flight of The North American Aviation XB-70 Valkyrie, prototype version of the proposed B-70 american nuclear-armed deep-penetration strategic bomber

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XB-70_Valkyrie

1967 - 1st flight of The Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne, American single-engine prototype attack helicopter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_AH-56_Cheyenne

1968 - Zond 5 is back on earth with its biological payload intact, proving that it was possible to survive a lunar flyby and safely return to Earth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zond_5

1969 - Mexicana Boeing 727-64 crashed short of the runway 23L at Mexico City International Airport. Of the 118 people on board, 27 died. The aircraft had been cleared for an ILS approach when it suddenly lost altitude and hit the ground. After becoming airborne once again, the plane crashed into a railway embankment

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexicana_de_Aviaci%C3%B3n#Accidents_and_incidents

1973 - 1st flight of the Beechcraft T-34C Turbo-Mentor (YT-34C), American propeller-driven, single-engined, military trainer aircraft derived from the Beechcraft Model 35 Bonanza, Turboprop PT6 reengined version of the T-34.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beechcraft_T-34_Mentor#T-34C_Turbo-Mentor

1982 - Death of Dietrich "Derk" Averes, German WWI fling ace who also served in WWII.

http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/germany/averes.php

1984 - 1st flight of The Dassault Falcon 900, French-built corporate tri-jet aircraft.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dassault_Falcon_900 - http://aviafrance.com/aviafrance1.php?ID=4742

1988 - Death of Harold Harington Balfour, British WWI flying ace, Politician, he was instrumental in the establishment of London Heathrow Airport.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Balfour,_1st_Baron_Balfour_of_Inchrye - http://theaerodrome.com/aces/england/balfour.php

1993 - A Transair Georgia Tupolev 134A aircraft flying from Sochi was hit on approach to Sukhumi-Babusheri Airport by a surface-to-air missile. The plane crashed into the Black Sea, killing all five crew members and 22 passengers.

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

1997 - 1st of World Air Games organized by Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (World Air Sports Federation - FAI) and the 10th FAI World Rally Flying Championship, ends in Selçuk, Turkey. Russia, France und USA takes repectivly 1st, 2nd and 3rd place in the World games and the 10th World rally is won by polish team Krzysztof Wieczorek / Waclaw Wieczorek.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_World_Air_Games - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10th_FAI_World_Rally_Flying_Championship

1998 - 1st flight of the Revolution Helicopter Voyager-500, two-seat development of the Mini-500B, american light helicopter.

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

2001 - Deep Space 1, NASA New Millennium Program spacecraft dedicated to testing its payload of advanced, high risk technologies, flies within 2,200 km of Comet Borrelly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_1

2003 – Galileo mission (NASA unmanned spacecraft) is terminated by sending the probe into Jupiter's atmosphere, where it is crushed by the pressure at the lower altitudes.

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

2005 - JetBlue Airways Flight 292, an Airbus A320-232 makes an emergency landing at Los Angeles International Airport after its nose wheels got stuck at a 90 degree angle. All 145 people on board survived.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JetBlue_Airways_Flight_292

2006 - STS-115, Space Shuttle Atlantis mission to the International Space Station (ISS), 1st assembly mission to the ISS after the Columbia disaster, is back on earth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-115

2012 – A Space Shuttle is airborne for the last time as a Shuttle Carrier Aircraft completes a three-day journey to transport the retired Space Shuttle Endeavour from Cape Canaveral, Florida, to Los Angeles, California.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Endeavour#Decommissioning