OCT18

1908 - Birth of Nikolai Petrovich Kamanin, Soviet aviator, awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union in 1934 for the rescue of SS Chelyuskin crew from an improvised airfield on the frozen surface of the Chukchi Sea near Kolyuchin Island. In World War II he successfully commanded air brigade, air division and an air corps. General Kamanin was also head of cosmonaut training in Soviet space program. He recruited and trained the 1st generation of cosmonauts, including Yuri Gagarin, Gherman Titov and Alexei Leonov

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

1909 - French Charles de Lambert, Wilbur Wright's 1st aviation pupil, flies around the Eiffel Tower in Paris with his Wright Model A.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_de_Lambert

1918 - Death of Fritz Otto Bernert, German WWI fighter ace.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Otto_Bernert - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/germany/bernert.php

1924 - Death of Giovanni "Giannino" Ancillotto, italian WWI flying ace, killed in a car accident.

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giannino_Ancillotto - http://theaerodrome.com/aces/italy/ancillotto.php

1925 - Sadi Lecointe wins the Beaumont Cup. Last entrant in list, he reached a speed of 194 mph (312 km/h) with his Nieuport-Delage NiD.42S

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nieuport-Delage_NiD.42#Nieuport-Delage_NiD.42S

1927 - Death of Jacques Benjamin de Lesseps, French aviator and 2nd man to fly the English Channel by airplane. Killed in his Schreck flying boat lost at sea during air photography operations along the Gaspé coastline in the Gulf of St. Lawrence near St. Felicite, Quebec.

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

1929 - 1st flight of The Kalinin K-5, Soviet conventional, high-wing, strut-braced monoplane with a fully enclosed cabin and cockpit airliner.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalinin_K-5

1933 - 1st flight of The Grumman F2F, American single-engine, biplane fighter aircraft with retractable undercarriage designed for both carrier- and land-based operations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_F2F

1936 - 1st flight of the Hawks Miller HM-1, American Racer Aircraft prototype.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Hawks#Designing_his_own_aircraft - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawks_Miller_HM-1

1937 - Jean Batten establishes a new solo record, flying from Darwin in Australia to Lympne in Kent in 5 days 18 hours 15 minutes, in a Percival Gull Six.

http://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/research/history-of-aviation-timeline/interactive-aviation-timeline/british-civil-aviation/1937.aspx

1941 - German fighter ace Gordon M. Gollob shoot down 9 Russian Mig-3 with his Bf 109F on that single day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Gollob#World_War_2 - http://www.cieldegloire.com/001_gollob_g.php

1942 - Death of Manuel Zarauza Clavero, Spanish Republican fighter ace of the spanish civil war and WWII along with the Soviets, killed in a flying accident with his I-16 over Baku, Romania.

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuel_Zarauza_Clavero - http://adar.es/index/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=73

1948 - Death of Karl Gustav Vollmöller, German playwright, screenwriter and early aircraft designer

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Gustav_Vollmoeller

1955 - A 6 hour 45 minute record flight at an average 579km/h was accomplished between Honolulu and NAS Alameda, California by a Convair R3Y Tradewind turboprop-powered flying boat.

http://www.aviastar.org/air/usa/convair_tradewind.php

1956 - Death of Paul Hamot, French WWI flying ace

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

1960 - 1st flight, with the final sweep setting of 69° of The Short SB5 (serial WG768), "highly unorthodox, adjustable wing" British research aircraft. This was, at the time, the greatest degree of wing-sweep in the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_SB5#History

1962 - 1st free hovering flight of the Dassault Balzac V, French vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) testbed.

http://www.dassault-aviation.com/fr/passion/avions/dassault-militaires/balzac/

1962 - Launch of Ranger 5, NASA spacecraft designed to transmit pictures of the lunar surface to Earth stations during a period of 10 minutes of flight prior to impacting on the Moon, to rough-land a seismometer capsule on the Moon, to collect gamma-ray data in flight, to study radar reflectivity of the lunar surface, and to continue testing of the Ranger program for development of lunar and interplanetary spacecraft. Due to an unknown malfunction, the spacecraft ran out of power and ceased operation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranger_5

1967 – The Soviet probe Venera 4 reaches Venus and becomes the 1st spacecraft to measure the atmosphere of another planet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera_4#The_mission

1969 - Soyuz 8 is back on earth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_8

1969 - Death of Spencer Bertram "Nigger" Horn, British WWI flying ace

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_B._Horn - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/england/horn.php

1975 - Death of Roby Lewis Manuel, Australian WWI flying ace who served also in WWII

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roby_Lewis_Manuel - http://theaerodrome.com/aces/australi/manuel2.php

1979 - 1st flight of The McDonnell Douglas MD-80, American twin-engine, short- to medium-range, single-aisle commercial jet airliner, developed from the McDonnell Douglas DC-9.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_MD-80

1982 - Death of Franz "Locken" Hemer, German WWI fighter ace

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Hemer - http://theaerodrome.com/aces/germany/hemer.php

1986 - Death of Earl Frederick Crabb, Canadian WWI flying ace, Airmail pilot, WWII instructor, Chief Pilot with the Forest Service.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Frederick_Crabb - http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/canada/crabb.php

1989 - Launch of STS-34, Space Shuttle Atlantis mission carrying Galileo, NASA unmanned spacecraft to study the planet Jupiter and its moons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-34 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_spacecraft

1993 - Launch of STS-58, Space Shuttle Columbia mission dedicated to life sciences research.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-58

2001 - Launch of QuickBird, American high-resolution commercial earth observation satellite.

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

2002 - STS-112, space shuttle mission Atlantis to the International Space Station (ISS), is back on earth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-112

2003 - Launch of Soyuz TMA-3, Russian mission to the ISS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_TMA-3