List of firsts in aviation

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This is a list of firsts in aviation.

The forerunners

Stained glass window showing Eilmer of Malmesbury, installed in Malmesbury Abbey in 1920

Lilienthal in mid-flight, c. 1895

• 559 Yuan Huangtou of Ye, first manned kite glide take off from a tower — 559 ^[1]
• Muslim Andalusian polymath Abbas Ibn Firnas, by account of the historian Ahmed Mohammed al-Maqqari seven centuries later, he made a successful attempt at flying.^[2] He built his own glider, and launched himself from a mountain.
• Possible first hang glider flight: Eilmer of Malmesbury, early 11th century (possibly first decade), English Benedictine monk best known for his early attempt at a gliding flight using wings. "...collecting the breeze upon the summit of a tower, flew for more than a furlong [201 metres]. But agitated by the violence of the wind and the swirling of air, as well as by the awareness of his rash attempt, he fell, broke both his legs and was lame ever after."^[3]
• First person in flight: Bartolomeu de Gusmão in a balloon filled with heated air at the hall of the Casa da India in Lisbon. August 8, 1709. (However, this claim is not generally recognized by aviation historians outside the Portuguese speaking community, in particular the FAI.)
• First recorded manned flight: In a hot air balloon built by the Montgolfier brothers and piloted by Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and Marquis d'Arlandes, from the Château de la Muette to the Butte-aux-Cailles, Paris. November 21, 1783. This was the first free manned flight, however Etienne Montgolfier made a tethered balloon flight on October 15, 1783.
• First manned gas balloon flight: Professor Jacques Charles and Nicolas-Louis Robert, in a hydrogen-filled balloon, from Paris to Nesles-la-Vallée December 1, 1783.
• First women in a flight: The Marchioness and Countess of Montalembert, the Countess of Podenas and Miss de Lagarde, in a tethered balloon in Paris. May 20, 1784.
• First woman in an untethered balloon: Elizabeth Thible, in order to entertain Gustav III of Sweden in Lyon. June 4, 1784.
• First steerable balloon (also known as a dirigible, modern term "airship"). On July 15, 1784 the Robert brothers (Les Frères Robert) flew for 45 minutes from Saint-Cloud to Meudon with M. Collin-Hullin and Louis Philippe II, the Duke of Chartres in their elongated balloon. The steerable craft designed by professor Jacques Charles followed Jean Baptiste Meusnier's proposals (1783–85) for a dirigible balloon, with a rudder, but the use of oars as a means of propulsion was not successful.
• First flight across the English Channel: Jean-Pierre Blanchard and John Jeffries, in a balloon. January 7, 1785.
• First aviation disaster: When the town of Tullamore, County Offaly, Ireland was seriously damaged when the crash of a balloon resulted in a fire that burned down about 100 houses. 10 May 1785.
• First victims of an air crash: Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and Pierre Romain, when their Rozière balloon deflated and crashed to the ground near Wimereux in the Pas-de-Calais. June 15, 1785.
• First woman to pilot her own balloon: Sophie Blanchard, when she flew solo from the garden of the Cloister of the Jacobins in Toulouse. August 18, 1805.
• First woman to be killed in an aviation accident: Sophie Blanchard, when her hydrogen-filled balloon caught fire and crashed to the ground. July 6, 1819.
• First successful steerable powered balloon (also known as a dirigible): By Henri Giffard, 1852
• First balloon mail service allows Paris to pass vital information over Prussian lines during the five month Siege of Paris, 1870.^[4]
• First tethered balloon for passengers: developed by Henri Giffard in the Tuileries Garden in Paris. 1878
• First photographed manned glidder flight : Otto Lilienthal,1891
• First flight in an airship powered by an internal combustion engine: Alberto Santos Dumont, 1898.

Heavier than air era

• First flight in a powered airplane: Gustave Whitehead, May 1899, August 14, 1901, January 1902 (newspaper and eyewitness reports - not officially recognised by mainstream)
• First combined car and airplane: Gustave Whitehead August 14, 1901
• First use of concrete runway: Gustave Whitehead 1901
• First combined boat and airplane: Gustave Whitehead January 1902
• First controlled flight in a powered airplane: Richard Pearse, March 1903 (eyewitness reports - not officially recognised by mainstream).
• First controlled, powered, sustained airplane flight: Wright brothers, December 17, 1903 (photographed, eyewitnesses).
• First circular flight in a powered airplane: Wilbur Wright, September 20, 1904.
• First heavier-than-air flight of more than 25 meters in Europe, winner of the Archdeacon Prize: Alberto Santos-Dumont in his "14 Bis", October 23, 1906 in Paris).
• First flight certified and registered by FAI: Brazilian Alberto Santos Dumont in Paris on November 12, 1906 in his "14 bis".
• First person to die in a crash of a powered airplane: passenger Thomas Selfridge, September 17, 1908; pilot Orville Wright injured.
• First ditching of an airplane in the sea: Hubert Latham, the English Channel, July 19, 1909
• First airplane flight across the English Channel: Louis Blériot, July 25, 1909
• First documented and witnessed seaplane flight under power from water's surface: Henri Fabre, Martigues France, March 28, 1910
• First mid-air collision between two aeroplanes. An Antoinette monoplane, piloted by Rene Thomas, rammed Bertram Dickson's Farman biplane, 1 October 1910.^[5]
• First take-off by an airplane from a ship: Eugene Ely in a Curtiss pusher from a temporary platform aboard light cruiser USS Birmingham, November 14, 1910
• First landing by an airplane on a ship: Eugene Ely in a Curtiss pusher on a temporary platform aboard armored cruiser USS Pennsylvania, January 11, 1911
• First woman to die in a crash of a powered airplane: Denise Moore, July 21, 1911
• First flight across the Continental Divide: Cromwell Dixon in a Curtiss on September 30, 1911 (both directions)
• First Chief of State flying on an airplane: Francisco I. Madero in a Deperdussin on November 30, 1911, Mexico City
• First woman to fly across the English Channel: Harriet Quimby, from Dover, England and landing at Hardelot-Plage, Pas-de-Calais, on April 16, 1912, taking 59 minutes.
• First take-off by an airplane from a moving ship: Commander Charles R. Samson in Short Improved S.27 No. 38 from a temporary platform aboard battleship HMS Hibernia, May 1912
• First bombing attack against a surface ship: Didier Masson and Captain Joaquín Bauche Alcalde, flying for Mexican Revolutionist Venustiano Carranza, dropped dynamite bombs on Federalist gunboats at Guaymas, Mexico on May 10, 1913^[6]
• First air drop of propaganda leaflets from the air: Didier Masson, flying for the Mexican Revolutionist Venustiano Carranza, post May 10, 1913^[6]
• First pilot to fly a loop: Pyotr Nesterov in a Nieuport IV, September 9, 1913.^[7]
• First flight across the Mediterranean Sea: Roland Garros from the South of France to Tunisia, September 23, 1913 ^[8]
• First dogfight: Dean Ivan Lamb, flying a Curtiss Pusher vs Phil Rader in a Christopherson biplane during the Siege of Naco, Mexico, November 30, 1913 (date not confirmed)
• First aircraft to shoot-down another aircraft: Sergeant Joseph Frantz (pilot) and Corporal Louis Quénault (observer) in a Voisin 3 shot down an Aviatik B.I near Rheims, October 5, 1914.^[9]
• First female military pilot: Eugenie Mikhailovna Shakhovskaya in 1914
• First aerial victory for a fighter aircraft armed with a forward-firing synchronized machine gun: Leutnant Kurt Wintgens of the Luftstreitkräfte, flying a production prototype (M.5K/MG) of the Fokker E.I Eindecker, over a French Morane-Saulnier L "Parasol" on July 1, 1915, near Luneville, France.
• First Aerial torpedo attack on a ship: Charles Edmonds in a Short 184 on August 12, 1915.^[10]
• First combat search and rescue: Richard Bell-Davies rescued a comrade who had been shot down in Bulgaria on November 19, 1915.^[11]
• First medical evacuation (medevac) by air: Louis Paulhan evacuated the seriously ill Milan Stefanik from the Serbian front, 1915.^[12]
• First landing by an airplane on a moving ship: Squadron Commander Edwin Dunning in a Sopwith Pup landed on HMS Furious, August 2, 1917.^[13]
• First non-stop trans-Atlantic flight: Alcock and Brown — St. John's, Newfoundland to a bog near Clifden, Ireland, June 14-15, 1919
• First England to Australia flight, by Keith Macpherson Smith and Ross Macpherson Smith, (plus mechanics Sergeant W.H. (Wally) Shiers and J.M. (Jim) Bennett) completed the journey from Hounslow Heath Aerodrome to Darwin in a Vickers Vimy on December 10, 1919
• First flight across the South Atlantic Ocean, and also the first using astronomical navigation only, from Lisbon, Portugal, to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, by Artur de Sacadura Freire Cabral and Gago Coutinho, in 1922.
• First aerial refueling: June 27, 1923 by the United States Army Air Service.
• First solo non-stop trans-Atlantic flight: Charles Lindbergh, May 20-21, 1927.
• First non-stop flight from U.S. mainland to Hawaii: Oakland, California to Honolulu, by U.S. Army lieutenants Albert Francis Hegenberger and Lester J. Maitland, in the "Bird of Paradise," a Fokker F.VII, June 28-29, 1927.
• First trans-Pacific flight: Charles Kingsford Smith and crew in the Southern Cross, between May 31 and June 9, 1928.
• First successful trans-Tasman flight: Charles Kingsford Smith and crew in the Southern Cross, September 9 - 10, 1928.
• First solo trans-Tasman flight: Guy Menzies in an Avro Avian, January 7, 1931.
• First people to reach the stratosphere: Auguste Piccard and Paul Kipfer in a balloon. May 27, 1931.
• First successful single-lift rotor helicopter: Alexei Cheremukhin & Boris Yuriev's TsAGI-1EA, which flew to a record altitude of 605 meters (1,985 ft) on August 14, 1932.
• First flight by a liquid-fueled rocket-powered aircraft: Heinkel He 176, June 20, 1939.
• First flight by a turbojet-powered aircraft: Heinkel He 178, August 27, 1939
• First to break the sound barrier: Chuck Yeager on October 14, 1947
• First supersonic scheduled passenger flights; London to Bahrain and Paris to Rio de Janeiro by Concorde on 21 January 1976
• First non-stop, un-refueled fixed-wing aircraft flight around the Earth: Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, aboard the Rutan Model 76 Voyager, December 14–23, 1986. The flight took 9 days, 3 minutes and 44 seconds.
• First trans-Pacific solo flight in a balloon: Steve Fossett — from South Korea to Leader, Saskatchewan, Canada. February 21, 1995
• First non-stop balloon flight around the Earth: Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones, from Château d'Oex, Switzerland to Egypt, on board the balloon Breitling Orbiter 3. Between March 1, 1999 and March 20, 1999, taking a total time of 19 days, 21 hours and 47 minutes.
• First solo non-stop balloon flight around the Earth: Steve Fossett — from Northam, Western Australia to Queensland, Australia, on a 10-story high balloon Spirit of Freedom. Between June 19, 2002 and July 3, 2002, taking a total time of 13 days, 8 hours, 33 minutes.
• First solo non-stop fixed-wing aircraft flight around the Earth: Steve Fossett — from Salina, Kansas eastbound and back, on a Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer. Between February 28, 2005 and March 3, 2005, taking a total time of 67 hours, 1 minute, 10 seconds.

Notes

References

• Conquistadors of the Sky: A History of Aviation in Latin America. Dan Hagedorn. University Press of Florida, 2008. ISBN 0-8130-3249-0, ISBN 978-0-8130-3249-8.
• Leave No Man Behind: The Saga of Combat Search and Rescue. George Galdorisi, Thomas Phillips. MBI Publishing Company, 2009. ISBN 0-7603-2392-5, ISBN 978-0-7603-2392-2.