Timeline of military aviation

• 1794 – French Aerostatic Corps use a tethered balloon at the Battle of Fleurus as a vantage point.
• 1849 – In 1849, Austrian forces besieging Venice launched some 200 incendiary balloons, each carrying a 24- to 30-pound bomb that was to be dropped from the balloon with a time fuse over the besieged city. The balloons were launched from land and from the Austrian navy ship SMS Vulcano that acted as a balloon carrier.[1][2]
• 1861 – The Union Army Balloon Corps is established during the American Civil War.
• 1878 – The British Army Balloon Equipment Store is established at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich by the Royal Engineers.
• 1885 – Balloons are deployed by the British Army to Bechuanaland and Suakin.
• 1888 – The British Army School of Ballooning is established.
• 1907 – The first military air organization, the Aeronautical Division of the U.S. Army Signal Corps, is formed 1 August
• 1907 – British Colonel John Capper flies the military airship Nulli Secundus from Farnborough to Crystal Palace in London.[3]
• 1909 – Heavier-than-air military aviation is born with the US Army's purchase of Signal Corps Aeroplane No. 1.
• 1910 – The first experimental take-off of a heavier-than-air craft from the deck of a US Navy vessel, the cruiser USS Birmingham
• 1910 – 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 10 May 1913.
• 1910 – The Aviation Militaire of the French Army is formed 22 October.
• 1911 – The Air Battalion of the Royal Engineers is formed, the first British heavier-than-air unit.
• 1911 – Heavier-than-air aircraft are used in war for the first time during the Italo-Turkish War.[4]
• 1912 - The Royal Flying Corps is formed. A few months later the Dominion of Australia also formed the Australian Flying Corps.
• 1914 - The Royal Naval Air Service is formed by splitting airship squadrons away from the Royal Flying Corps.
• 1914 – In August, Russian Staff-Captain Pyotr Nesterov becomes the first pilot to ram his plane into an enemy spotter aircraft.
• 1914 – 6 September, the first aircraft raid was launched by the Japanese seaplane carrier Wakamiya on Qingdao.
• 1914 – In October, a plane is shot down by another aircraft with a handgun over Rheims, France.
• 1914 – The first conventional air-to-air kill occurs on 5 October when a gunner on a French Voisin machine-guns a German Aviatik reconnaissance aircraft in World War I.[5]
• 1918 - The Royal Air Force, the world's first independent air force is formed.
• 1918 - HMS Argus (I49) became "the world's first carrier capable of launching and landing naval aircraft".[6]
• 1940 - The Battle of Britain, the first major campaign to be fought entirely by air forces, was fought.
• 1958 - The first ever air-to-air kill with a missile, when a Chinese Nationalist North American F-86 Sabre kills a Chinese PLAAF Mikoyan-Guryevich MiG-15 during the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis[7]
• 1980 - The only confirmed air-to-air helicopter battles occur during the Iran–Iraq War.

See also

• List of firsts in aviation

References

1. Military Aircraft, Origins to 1918: An Illustrated History of Their Impact, Justin D. Murphy, page 9-10
2. Mikesh, Robert C. "Japan's World War II balloon bomb attacks on North America." (1973).
3. Colonel Templer and the birth of aviation at Farnborough, RAeS, May 2007
4. Gerard J. De Groot (2005). The bomb: a life. Harvard University Press. pp. 2–. ISBN 978-0-674-01724-5. Retrieved 25 April 2011.
5. Christopher Chant (2002). A century of triumph: the history of aviation. Simon and Schuster. p. 68. ISBN 978-0-7432-3479-5.
6. Geoffrey Till, "Adopting the Aircraft Carrier: The British, Japanese, and American Case Studies" in Murray, Williamson; Millet, Allan R, eds. (1996). Military Innovation in the Interwar Period. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 194. ISBN 0-521-63760-0.
7. David R. Mets (December 2008). Airpower and Technology: Smart and Unmanned Weapons. ABC-CLIO. pp. 85–86. ISBN 978-0-275-99314-6. Retrieved 6 April 2011.