NOV01
1885 - Birth of Anton Flettner, German aviation engineer and inventor.
1890 - Birth of Desmond Fitzgerald Fitzgibbon, British WWI flying ace
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Fitzgibbon - http://theaerodrome.com/aces/england/fitzgibbon.php
1893 - Birth of Roman Schmidt, Austro hungarian WWI flying ace
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Schmidt - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/austrhun/schmidt3.php
1893 - Birth of Cristoffel Johannes "Boetie" Venter, South African WWI fighter ace, Director-General of the SAAF durin WWI and later, director of South African Airways.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christoffel_Venter - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/safrica/venter.php
1894 - Birth of George Searle Lomax Haywar, British WWI fighter ace (as a gunner/observer).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_S._L._Hayward - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/england/hayward.php
1895 - Birth of Arthur Raymond "Ray" Brooks, American WWI flying ace, pioneer in the development of radio navigational aids (NAVAIDs) and one of the earliest commercial pilots involved with carrying mail (air mail) for the US Post Office Department.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Raymond_Brooks - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/usa/brooks.php
1897 - Birth of Thomas Colvill-Jones, British WWI flying ace.
1897 - Birth 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
1911 - 1st use of a bomb dropped from a heavier-than-air aircraft (grenades or grenade-like devices) is made by Giulio Gavotti from his Etrich Taube monoplane during the Italo-Turkish War at Taguira Oasis and Ain Zara.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Air-dropped_bomb#Early_history - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giulio_Gavotti
1915 - Birth of Major General Marion Eugene Carl, USMC, American WWII fighter ace, record setting test pilot, and a notable naval aviator, 1st Marine Corps ace in WWII.
1917 - Birth of Erich Rudorffer, German WWII fighter ace and one of the 1st jet fighter ace in the world, 7th most successful fighter pilot in the history of air warfare and postwar airliner pilot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Rudorffer - http://www.luftwaffe.cz/rudorffer.html
1918 – French fighter ace René Fonck scores his 75th and final aerial victory, an Halberstadt C. He ends the war as the highest-scoring Allied ace of WWI.
1919 - Birth of Russell "Russ" Bannock, Canadian WWII Fighter ace and chief test pilot for de Havilland Canada.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Bannock - http://cieldegloire.com/003_bannock_r.php
1920 - US Post Office awards a contract for international air mail to Aeromarine West Indies Airways which flies the 1st U.S. international air mail service and 1st scheduled U.S. international passenger service (Key West to Havana).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeromarine_West_Indies_Airways
1921 - Birth of Harald Quandt, German WWII pilot and industrialist, stepson of Joseph Goebbels.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harald_Quandt
1927 - Death of Karl Plauth, German WWI pilot and test pilot for Junkers, in the crash of the 1st Junkers A32 prototype.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Plauth
1929 - 1st production Tupolev TB-1(development name ANT-4) 'Strana Sovyetov', Soviet angular monoplane bomber aircraft, ends its propaganda flight from Moscow to New York, taking an eastward course via Siberia, reaching its destination having flown 21,242 km (13,194 mi) in 137 flying hours.
http://www.aviastar.org/air/russia/ant-4.php
1939 - 1st Chain Home Low radar station becomes operational in Fifeness.
1940 - Death of Guy Lambton Menzies, Australian aviator who flew the 1st solo trans-Tasman flight, from Sydney, Australia to the West Coast of New Zealand, killed when his flying boat was shot down over Italy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Menzies
1940 - Birth of Lawrence David 'Larry' Kusche, American commercial pilot, instructor and Author ('The Bermuda Triangle Mystery - Solved' and 'The Disappearance of Flight 19')
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Kusche
1940 - Hawaiian Air Force is established as a part of the general United States Army Air Corps expansion program of 1939/1940. It was organized and activated with headquarters at Fort Shafter - the 1st Army Air Forces outside the continental United States.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh_Air_Force#Formation_of_the_Hawaiian_Air_Force
1942 - 1st flight of The Westland Welkin, British twin-engine heavy fighter designed to fight at extremely high altitudes, in the stratosphere.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westland_Welkin
1944 - A Boeing F-13, photo reconnaissance variant of the B-29 Superfortress from the 3d Photographic Reconnaissance Squadron, overflew Tokyo, 1st American aircraft to fly over the city since the Doolittle Raid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raids_on_Japan#Initial_attacks_from_the_Mariana_Islands
1944 - Death of Hiroshi Takiguchi, Japanese WWII flying ace, Killed in action over the Bay of Omoc (Philippines) by P-38s.
http://www.cieldegloire.com/010_takigushi_h.php
1945 - Death of Edwin Woodward Burke, American WWII naval aviator and McDonnell test pilot, Killed in the crash of the 1st prototype McDonnell XFD-1 Phantom he was test flying, due to aileron failure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_XFD-1_Phantom#Design_and_development - http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=57717112
1946 - US Navy non-rigid airship XM1 completes a flight of 170 hours 3 minutes establishing a world record for a flight un-sustained by any form of refuelling.
1949 - Eastern Air Lines Flight 537 Douglas DC-4 collided in mid-air at an altitude of 300 feet about half a mile southwest of the threshold of Runway 3 at Washington National Airport with a Lockheed P-38 Lightning being test-flown for acceptance by the Government of Bolivia by Erick Rios Bridoux of the Bolivian Air Force. All 55 passengers on the DC-4 were killed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Air_Lines_Flight_537
1950 - 1st victory by a jet over another jet, Lt Semyon Fiodorovich Jominich shoots down a F-80 Shooting Star from his MiG-15.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-15#Operational_history
1953 - Birth of Nancy Jan Davis (born Nancy Jan Smotherman), American enginner and NASA astronaut
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Davis
1955 - United Airlines Flight 629, a Douglas DC-6B 'Mainliner Denver', is destroyed by a bomb planted by a man attempting to cash in his mother's life insurance policies. 58 people are killed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_629
1956 - Operation Revise : British Fleet Air Arm de Havilland Sea Venoms, Chance Vought Corsairs, and Hawker Sea Hawks from the aircraft carriers HMS Eagle, HMS Albion, and HMS Bulwark conduct a series of daylight strikes against Egyptian airbases, destroying 200 aircraft by nightfall and knocking the Egyptian Air Force out of action. It begins the 1st large-scale action by the Fleet Air Arm since the end of WWII. The Egyptian President Abdel Nasser orders Egyptian pilots to fly all surviving aircraft to southern Egypt and avoid further action against British, French, and Israeli forces.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis#Revise:_Phases_I_and_II
1958 - Chilean Airline Ladeco is formed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladeco
1961 - Launch of Mercury-Scout 1, or MS-1, US spacecraft intended to test tracking stations for Project Mercury flights, but it failed to achieve orbit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury-Scout_1
1962 - Launch of Mars 1, also known as 1962 Beta Nu 1, Mars 2MV-4 and Sputnik 23,automatic interplanetary station launched in the direction of Mars, 1st of the Soviet Mars probe program.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_1
1962 - Death of Pyotr Ivanovich Dolgov, colonel in the Soviet Air Force, killed while carrying out a high-altitude parachute jump from a Volga balloon gondola from a height of 28,640 meters (93,970 ft).The helmet visor of Dolgov's pressure suit hit part of the gondola as he exited, and the suit depressurized, killing him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyotr_Dolgov
1962 - Eugene Andreev (USSR) sets an official FAI record for the longest free-fall parachute jump (without drogue chute) after falling for 80,380 ft (24,500 m) from an altitude of 83,523 ft (25,457 m) near the city of Saratov, Russia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parachute#Records
1963 - Launch of Polyot 1, Soviet artificial satellite used as a test bed to evaluate the functioning of the technology.
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/polyot.htm - http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyot
1964 – Viet Cong infiltrators stage a mortar attack on Bien Hoa Air Base in South Vietnam, destroying five U. S. Air Force B-57 Canberra bombers, a U. S. Air Force HH-43 F helicopter, and four South Vietnamese Air Force A-1 Skyraider attack aircraft, and damaging 15 B-57 s and some HH-43Fs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bien_Hoa_Air_Base#Mortar_attack
1968 - 1st flight of The Cessna 414 Chancellor, American light, pressurized, twin-engine transport aircraft.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessna_414
1968 - Força Aérea Brasileira Aerotec A-122 Uirapuru pre-production two-place trainer crashes, killing Centro Técnico Aeroespacial test pilot José Mariotto Ferreira, one of the Centre's most experienced pilots.
1983 - Death of Alois Heldmann, German WWI flying ace.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alois_Heldmann - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/germany/heldmann.php
1984 - American Eagle Airlines Inc. (formerly Simmons Airlines), begins operations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Eagle_Airlines
1986 - Concorde makes a Round-the-world flight in 31 hours 51 minutes
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde_(avion)
1992 - STS-52, NASA Space Shuttle mission Columbia to deploy satellites, is back on earth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-52
1993 - STS-58, Space Shuttle Columbia mission dedicated to life sciences research, is back on earth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-58
1994 - Launch of Astra 1D, Société Européenne des Satellites (SES) geostationary communications satellite.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astra_1D
1994 - Launch of The Global Geospace Science (GGS) WIND satellite , NASA science spacecraft to study radio and plasma that occur in the solar wind and in the Earth's magnetosphere before the solar wind reaches the Earth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIND_(spacecraft)
2004 - Pan American Airways, or Pan Am III, turn down operations once again, but give operations to Boston-Maine Airways.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_American_Airways_(1998%E2%80%932004)
2007 - Death of Paul Warfield Tibbets, Jr., WWII USAF bomber pilot, best known for being the pilot of the 'Enola Gay', the 1st aircraft to drop an atomic bomb in the history of warfare.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Tibbets
2009 - A Russian Military Ilyushin Il-76 crashed shortly after takeoff from Mirny Airport in Yakutia, 150 km southeast of Moscow, killing all 11.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Ilyushin_Il-76_crash
2011 - LOT Polish airlines flight 16 Boeing 767-300ER traveling from Newark, N.J., to Warsaw, Poland, crash landed after its landing gear failed to deploy.