On 26 December 1975, the Tupolev Tu-144, the first supersonic passenger aircraft (also known as the “supersonic transport” – SST), performed its first operational flight, carrying mail cargo from Moscow to Alma-Ata (now Almaty, Kazakhstan). […]
On 19 December 1910, Yoshitoshi Tokugawa performed the first flight of a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft in Japan, flying the Farman III aeroplane. Yoshitoshi Tokugawa was born in 1884, as the son of Count Tokugawa Atsumori. […]
On 12 December 1937, Japanese bomber aircraft sank the river gunboat USS Panay while she was patrolling on the Yangtze River in China. USS Panay was launched on 10 November 1924. She was built as […]
On 5 December 1941, the prototype of the two-seat Japanese floatplane Kawanishi E15K Shiun (Allied reporting name: Norm) made its first flight. In 1939, the Imperial Japanese Navy assigned the Kawanishi Aircraft Company the challenging […]
On 28 November 1938, the first prototype of the Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor (also known as Kurier) transport aircraft began its record flight from Berlin to Tokyo. The journey, which included stops in Basra, Karachi […]
On 21 November 1783, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d’Arlandes made the world´s first untethered flight in a Montgolfier hot air balloon. The aerostat reached an altitude of 3,000 feet and remained airborne […]
On 14 November 1935, the Noorduyn Norseman, a Canadian bush plane, performed its first flight. The aircraft was designed by Robert B.C. Noorduyn, a Dutch-born aviation engineer. His aviation career began in 1913, when Noorduyn […]
On 7 November 1910, an aeroplane designed by Emma Lilian Todd performed a powered hop at the Garden City airfield in New York. Emma Lilian (Lily) Todd was born in Washington, D.C. on 12 June […]
On 31 October 1974, the first flights of prototypes of a new ground-attack aircraft – jointly developed by Romania and Yugoslavia – took place in both respective countries. The Romanian- and Yugoslav-built prototypes both flew […]
On 24 October 1919, Frank Nicholas Piasecki, an American engineer and pioneer of rotorcraft aviation, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Piasecki, the son of Polish immigrants, began his engineering career at a young age. During […]
All content on this page is copyrighted © 2018-2026 Afterburner - The Aviation Magazine