OCT11

1919 - Belvin W. Maynard flying a De Havilland DH-4 wins the 1st (and only) transcontinental reliability and endurance test, air race between Roosevelt Field, Long Island, New York and the Presidio of San Francisco, California, in 3 days, 3 hours, 5 minutes. On the 1st leg, it saw 33 planes cross the U.S. with 8 completing the round-trip (out of 67 which began the trip). Nine deaths occurred.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-America_flight_air_speed_record

1922 - 1st flight of The Navy-Wright NW , also called the Mystery Racer , American racing aircraft, sesquiplane with main wheels faired into the lower wing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navy-Wright_NW

1924 - 1st flight of the Martinsyde A.D.C.1, Single-seat fighter version of the American Martinsyde F.4 Buzzard.

http://www.aviastar.org/air/england/martinsyde_adc-1.php

1926 - French Jean Mermoz lands his Laté 26 (Mail-carrying monoplane) at Saint Louis du Sénégal after a non stop flight from Toulouse France but damaged the aircraft on landing, His South atlantic crossing is thus cancelled.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Mermoz#Le_d.C3.A9sert

1927 - 1st flight of The Arado SD I, German fighter biplane which was intended to equip the clandestine air force that Germany was assembling at Lipetsk.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arado_Ar_64#Arado_SD_I - http://www.aviastar.org/air/germany/arado_sd-1.php

1928 - Dr. Eckener, commanding the Graf Zeppelin LZ-127 airship as part of DELAG's operations, begins the 1st non-stop transatlantic passenger flights, leaving Friedrichshafen, Germany to NAS Lakehurst, New Jersey.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_flight#By_zeppelin

1933 - Death of Reinhold Tiling, German engineer, WWI pilot and a rocket pioneer.

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

1933 - 1st flight of The Blackburn Perth, British flying-boat, essentially an upgraded Iris, largest biplane flying boat ever to serve with the RAF.

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

1933 - Charles Kingsford Smith in his Percival Gull IV , sets a new solo flight record between England and Australia, a new record time of 7 days 4 hours 44 minutes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percival_Gull#Racing_and_record-breaking

1936 - Birth of Charles Gordon Fullerton, USAF test pilot and NASA astronaut

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Gordon_Fullerton

1938 - The 1st Dornier Do 217, German Twin engine bomber, crashed during a single-engine flying test.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dornier_Do_217#Development_and_design

1938 - 1st flight of The Westland Whirlwind, British twin-engined heavy fighter, Royal Air Force's 1st single-seat, twin-engined, cannon-armed fighter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westland_Whirlwind_(fighter)

1940 - Erich Klöckner, in a DFS Kranich D-11 (German glider), achieved the record height in a glider of 11,460 m.

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

1943 - Erich Rudorffer, German WWII fighter ace scores 13 victories in 17 minutes with his Fw 190A-6.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Rudorffer - http://www.luftwaffe.cz/rudorffer.html

1952 - 1st flight of the definitive version rocket-armed Avro Canada CF-100 Canuck Mk 4A, Canadian jet interceptor/fighter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_CF-100_Canuck#Design_and_development

1956 - A Vickers-Armstrongs Valiant of No. 49 Squadron RAF drops Britain's 1st air-dropped atomic bomb 'Blue Danube', over Maralinga, South Australia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickers_Valiant#Nuclear_deterrent

1956 - 1st flight of The Lockheed L-1649 Starliner, American 4 engine airliner, last model of the Lockheed Constellation line

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_L-1649A_Starliner#Operational_history

1958 - NASA launches the lunar probe Pioneer 1 (the probe falls back to Earth and burns up).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_1

1960 - Launch of Samos I, American reconnaissance satellite, 1st generation photo surveillance; radio relay of images; Satellite and Missile Observation Satellite which sustained a Second stage failure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samos_(satellite)#Vehicle_missions

1968 - NASA launches Apollo 7, the 1st successful manned Apollo mission, with astronauts Wally Schirra, Donn F. Eisele and Walter Cunningham aboard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_7

1969 - Launch of Soyuz 6, Soviet joint mission with Soyuz 7 and Soyuz 8 that saw three Soyuz spacecraft in orbit together at the same time, carrying seven cosmonauts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_6

1971 - Salyut 1, 1st space station of any kind, launched by the Soviet Union, is intentionally destroyed by de-orbiting it after six months in orbit, because it ran out of fuel before a redesigned Soyuz spacecraft could be launched to it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salyut_1

1976 - 1st fligth of the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-105, manned test vehicle to explore low-speed handling and landing of a Soviet project to create an orbital spaceplane.

http://www.astronautix.com/craft/mig10511.htm

1977 - Soyuz 25, Soviet manned space flight, 1st to the new Salyut 6 space station, is back on earth. Mission was aborted when cosmonauts failed to engage the docking latches of the station despite 5 attempts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_25

1980 - Soyuz 37, Soviet manned space flight to the Salyut 6 space station, is back on earth with Cosmonauts Valeri Ryumin and Leonid Popov. They spent 185 days in space aboard the Salyut 6 laboratory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_37

1980 - 1st flight of the Dassault Mirage 2000B, two-seat operational conversion trainer variant of the French multirole, single-engine fourth-generation jet fighter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dassault_Mirage_2000#Mirage_2000B - http://aviafrance.com/aviafrance1.php?ID=6331

1981 - Superchicken III, a helium-filled balloon piloted by Fred Gorrell and John Shoecroft, makes the 1st non-stop trans-America balloon flight. A 2,515 mile journey from Costa Mesa, California to Blackbeard Island in Georgia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_1981#October_11.2C_1981_.28Sunday.29

1983 - Air Illinois Flight 710 Hawker Siddeley HS 748 crashed due to an electrical problem near Hillsboro Municipal Airport, Illinois, killing all 10.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Illinois_Flight_710

1984 - Aeroflot Flight 3352 Tupolev Tu-154B-1 crashed into maintenance vehicles on the runway, killing 174 people on board and 4 on the ground While landing at Omsk Airport. Flight was cleared to land but the ground controller on duty gave permission to ground maintenance crew to dry the runway and proceeded to fall asleep soon after, in the process forgetting to switch on the "runway occupied" warning.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_3352

1984 – Aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger on mission STS-41-G, astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan becomes the 1st American woman to perform a space walk.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-41-G#Mission_summary

1990 - 1st flight of the Rockwell-Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm X-31, part of the Enhanced Fighter Maneuverability program , designed to test fighter thrust vectoring technology. Thrust vectoring allows the X-31 to fly in a direction other than where the nose is pointing, resulting in significantly more maneuverability than most conventional fighters. An advanced flight control system provides controlled flight at high angles of attack where conventional aircraft would stall.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockwell-MBB_X-31

1994 - STS-68, Space Shuttle Endeavour mission, is back on earth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-68

1999 - Chris Phatswe, an Air Botswana airline pilot, committed suicide by crashing an ATR-42 into the tarmac and a group of aircraft at Sir Seretse Khama International Airport in Gaborone, Botswana.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Air_Botswana_incident

2000 – NASA launches STS-92, the 100th Space Shuttle mission, using Space Shuttle Discovery.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-92

2005 - Soyuz TMA-6, Russian Soyuz mission to the ISS, is back on earth

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_TMA-6

2006 - A Cirrus SR20 general aviation, fixed-wing, single-engine light aircraft flown by baseball player Cory Fulton Lidle, crashed into the Belaire Apartments in New York City, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_New_York_City_plane_crash

2007 - Death of David Lee "Tex" Hill, American WWII fighter ace and Korean War fighter pilot. One of the 1st pilots of 1st American Volunteer Group (better known by its later nickname of the Flying Tigers)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lee_%22Tex%22_Hill - http://cieldegloire.com/014_hill_d_l.php

2009 - Soyuz TMA-14, russian space mission to the ISS, is back on earth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_TMA-14

2011 – Flying a modified Yak-3U (Soviet WWII fighter aircraft), William Whiteside sets an unofficial speed record for piston-engined aircraft in the under-3,000 kg (6,615-pound) category of 670 km/hr (416 mph) over the same 3-km (1.863-mile) course at the Bonneville Salt Flats, thus beating his record of the previous day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakovlev_Yak-3#Variants