MAY06
1888 - Birth of Johann Frint, Austro-Hungarian WWI flying ace.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Frint - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/austrhun/frint.php
1894 - Birth of George Clifton Peters, Australian WWI flying ace
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Peters_(aviator) - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/australi/peters.php
1894 - Birth of Sir Alan John Cobham, English aviation pioneer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Cobham
1894 - Birth of Richard Raymond-Barker, British WWI flying ace.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Raymond-Barker - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/england/raymond-barker.php
1895 - Birth of Ernest Charles Hoy, Canadian WWI flying ace, and airmail flight pioneer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Charles_Hoy - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/canada/hoy2.php
1896 - Samuel Pierpont Langley flies the unmanned Aerodrome No. 5 after a catapult launch, from a houseboat on the Potomac river a distance of 3,300ft.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Pierpont_Langley
1899 - Birth of Edward Grahame Johnstone, British WWI fighter ace
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Grahame_Johnstone - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/england/johnstone.php
1906 - Death of Carl Berg, German entrepreneur and airship builder.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Berg_(airship_builder)
1912 - Birth of Paul M. Fitts, known as one of the pioneers in improving aviation safety.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Fitts
1917 - Birth of Rex Theodor Barber, American WWII fighter pilot, best known as a member of the top secret mission to intercept the aircraft carrying Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_Barber
1918 - Death of William Lewis Wells, British WWI flying ace from wounds received in action.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lewis_Wells - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/england/wells.php
1918 - Death of Jean Chaput, French WWI fighter ace, killed in action in his SPAD XIII.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Chaput - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/france/chaput.php
1926 - Air Commodore G.H. Boyce is the 1st pilot to carry out a night deck landing, when he landed his Dart aboard HMS Furious with a Blackburn Dart.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackburn_Dart
1930 - 1st flight of the Boeing Model 200 Monomail, American single, low set, all metal cantilever wing. Retractable landing gear and a streamlined fuselage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Monomail
1934 - New Zealander Miss Jean Batten takes off from Lypmne in a De Havilland DH.60 Moth for a new distance record to Australia.
http://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/research/history-of-aviation-timeline/interactive-aviation-timeline/british-civil-aviation/1934.aspx
http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-BatMyL-t1-body1-d3.html
1935 – 1st flight of the Curtiss P-36 Hawk, also known as the Curtiss Hawk Model 75, American Fighter aircraft.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-36_Hawk
1936 - 1st flight of The Latécoère 298 (Laté 298), French seaplane, single-engined, mid-wing cantilever monoplane, designed primarily as a torpedo bomber, but served also as a dive bomber against land and naval targets, and as a maritime reconnaissance aircraft, France's most successful military seaplane.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lat%C3%A9co%C3%A8re_298
1937 - German zeppelin LZ-129 Hindenburg caught fire and was destroyed whilst attempting to dock with its mooring mast at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in Lakehurst, New Jersey.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg_disaster
1937 - Death of Walter Rieseler, German WWI pilot, Instructor and aircraft designer.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Rieseler
1940 - 1st flight of the Dewoitine D-750, French low-winged monoplane twin-engined 3 seat torpedo bomber prototype.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewoitine_D.750 - http://www.aviafrance.com/aviafrance1.php?ID=9185
1941 - Igor Sikorsky sets a world endurance record for helicopter flight of 1 hour 32 minutes, in a Sikorsky VS-300.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vought-Sikorsky_VS-300
1941 – 1st flight of the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, also known as the "Jug", largest, heaviest, and most expensive fighter aircraft in history to be powered by a single reciprocating engine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-47_Thunderbolt
1942 - Flight testing of the 1st of eight prototype/service-test aircraft (single-seat float-equipped interceptor seaplanes) of the Kawanishi N1K Kyofu starts.
http://japaneseaircraft.devhub.com/blog/468096-kawanishi-n1k-kyofu/
1944 - 1st flight of the Douglas XB-42 Mixmaster, American experimental bomber aircraft, designed for a high top speed, with two engines within the fuselage driving a pair of contra-rotating propellers mounted at the tail, leaving the wing and fuselage clean and free of drag-inducing protrusions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_XB-42_Mixmaster
1944 - 1st flight of Mitsubishi A7M1 Reppu, Japanese fighter prototype, designed as the successor to the Imperial Japanese Navy's A6M Zero. Production was disrupted by an earthquake in December 1944 in the Nagoya region.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_A7M
1945 - Royal Air Force sinks its last German submarine (U-320). (British Liberator aircraft Sqdn. 224/T)
http://uboat.net/boats/u3523.htm
1949 - Birth of David Cornell Leestma, American astronaut.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Leestma
1952 - Birth of Chiaki Mukai, Japanese doctor, and JAXA astronaut. She was the 1st Japanese woman in space, and was the 1st Japanese citizen to have 2 spaceflights.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiaki_Mukai
1955 - Birth of Donald Alan Thomas, American engineer and a former NASA astronaut.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_A._Thomas
1957 - Birth of Didier Delsalle , French Helicopter test pilot, 1st pilot to land a Helicopter on Mount Everest.
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didier_Delsalle
1959 - 1st flight of the SNECMA C-450 'Coléoptère', French experimental VTOL jet aircraft featuring an annular wing designed to land vertically, therefore requiring no runway and very little space to take-off.
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snecma_C-450_Col%C3%A9opt%C3%A8re - http://www.aviastar.org/air/france/snecma_coleoptere.php
1960 - Death of Marcel Marc Dhôme, French WWI flying ace, racing car driver, who also served in WWII and during the Korean war.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Marc_Dh%C3%B4me - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/france/dhome.php
1962 - Channel Airways Douglas C-47A Dakota collided with a cloud-covered hill at St Boniface Down near Ventnor on the Isle of Wight, killing 12 over 18.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1962_Channel_Airways_Dakota_accident
1963 - Death of Theodore von Kármán, Hungarian-American mathematician, aerospace engineer and physicist, responsible for many key advances in aerodynamics, notably his work on supersonic and hypersonic airflow characterization. He is regarded as the outstanding aerodynamic theoretician of the 20th century.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_von_K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n
1963 - Death of Paul Ward Spencer 'George' Bulman, British WWI pilot, air racer and chief test pilot for Hawker aircraft.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bulman_(pilot)
1965 - Launch of Intelsat 1 (Early bird), 1st (commercial) communications satellite to be placed in geosynchronous orbit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelsat_I
1966 - Birth of Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Skvortsov, Russian cosmonaut.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Aleksandrovich_Skvortsov
1968 – Astronaut Neil Armstrong ejects from Bell Aerospace Lunar Landing Research Vehicle No. 1 (LLRV-1), known as the "Flying Bedstead", at NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center, Ellington AFB, Houston, Texas, as it goes out of control.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Armstrong#Apollo_program - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Landing_Research_Vehicle#History
1981 - Death of Jens Frederick "Swede" Larson, American WWI flying ace
http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/usa/larson.php
1982 - 2nd prototype (SP-PSB) of the Helicopter PZL Swidnik W-3 "Sokol" makes his 1st flight.
http://www.aviastar.org/helicopters_eng/pzl_sokol.php
1983 - Death of Sergei Petrovich Izotov, Russian aircraft turbine engine designer
1983 - Death of Harris George "Clem" Clements, British WWI flying ace
http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/england/clements.php
1985 - Death of Smith J. DeFrance, Amrican WWI aviator and engineer who played a major role in wind tunnel design and experimentation before and during the birth of the Space Age.
http://www.astronautix.com/astros/defrance.htm
1986 - Death of Albert Forsythe, Early afro-American aviator and raid pilot
1988 - 1st flight of The Extra Flugzeugbau EA300 , German aerobatic two-seat monoplane capable of Unlimited category competition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extra_300
1988 - Widerøe Flight 710 de Havilland Canada Dash 7 crashed in fog into nearby Torghatten mountain on landing, en route from Namsos to Brønnøysund Airport, Brønnøy at Brønnøy, Norway, killing all 36 passengers and crew.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wider%C3%B8e_Flight_710
1991 - STS-39, Space shuttle Discovery mission, is back on earth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-39
1993 - STS 55, 55th overall flight of the US Space Shuttle and the 14th flight of Columbia, lands at Edwards AFB.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-55
1995 - Death of Adriano 'Arrighi' Mantelli, Spanish war italian fighter ace, Glider record breaker and aircraft designer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adriano_Mantelli - http://surfcity.kund.dalnet.se/italy_mantelli.htm
2001 - Soyuz TM-31 is back on earth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_TM-31
2006 – A Westland Lynx AH.7 (Royal Navy) from 847 Squadron is shot down with a SA-14 over Basra, killing five crewmen and crashing into a house, 1st British helicopter and 2nd British aircraft downed due to enemy fire in the Iraqi war.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westland_Lynx#Operational_history
2007 - SkyValue USA, seasonal American low-cost airline, cease operations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyValue
2010 - A PZL-104 (Polish designed and built short-takeoff-and-landing (STOL) Civil Aviation utility aircraft) carrying The former UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage crashed at Hinton-in-the-Hedges Airfield, Northamptonshire.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PZL-104_Wilga
2012 – A CIA unmanned aerial vehicle strike in eastern Yemen kills Fahd al-Quso, the al-Qaeda leader in Yemen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahd_al-Quso#Death
2012 - Death of Russell E. "Russ" Schleeh, American WWII pilot and USAF test pilot who flew and tested virtually every bomber in the American Air Force up through the B- 52 Stratofortress and also fighters up through the Lockheed 104 Starfighter.
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/orangecounty/obituary.aspx?pid=157630245#fbLoggedOut
http://thetartanterror.blogspot.fr/2006/11/col-russell-eschleeh.html