On 13th May 1930, Jean Mermoz, French aviation pioneer, opened the south transatlantic postal line, from Saint-Louis in Senegal to Natal, Brazil, flying in Latécoère 28 floatplane. Jean Mermoz was born on 9th December 1901 […]
On 6th May 1937, German airship Hindenburg caught fire while landing at Naval Air Station Lakehurst, USA and was completely destroyed, killing thirty six people. Rigid and semirigid airships appeared in the late 19th century […]
On 22nd April 1965, PL-12 Airtruk, an agricultural aircraft developed by Australian manufacturer Transavia Corporation, performed its first flight. The story of that quite odd-looking aircraft goes back to Italy and the mid-1940s. At that […]
On 15th April 1965, the first of two prototypes of SA 330 Puma helicopter, registered F-ZWWN, performed its maiden flight. The rotorcraft was flown by Jean Boulet and Roland Coffignot, with an assistance of onboard […]
On 8th April 1950, four Lavochkin La-11 fighters intercepted a US Navy aircraft, performing signal intelligence (SIGNIT) mission off the Soviet coast of the Baltic Sea. That aircraft, a Consolidated PB4Y-2 Privateer, was shot down […]
On the 1st April 1954, a Spitfire Mk. XIX of the No. 81 Squadron RAF performed the last operational sortie of that type of aircraft within the RAF. That final flight was a reconnaissance mission […]
On 25th March 2006, the second successful test flight of HyShot III, a revolutionary supersonic combustion ramjet engine was performed at Woomera, South Australia. In 1947, Charles Yeager, flying the Bell X-1 rocket aircraft, broke […]
On 18th March 1916, Ernst Udet achieved his first of 62 air victories in the Great War, shooting down a French Farman F.40 aircraft. Ernst Udet, born on 26th April 1896 in Frankfurt am Main, […]
On 11th March 1993, Airbus A321, being one of the most successful airliners made by the company, performed a maiden flight. The A321 is a member of a popular A320 family of passenger aircraft, produced […]
On 4th March 1954, Tony LeVier, official test pilot of the Lockheed company, took-off for the first time in a prototype of a new fighter – XF-104, later developed into a well-known F-104 Starfighter. The […]
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