Timeline of military aviation

• 1794 - French Aerostatic Corps use a tethered balloon at the Battle of Fleurus as a vantage point.
• 1849 - The Austrian ship Vulcano launches a manned hot air balloon to bomb Venice; this is the first aerial attack in history.
• 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.^[1]
• 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 May 10, 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.^[2]
• 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 - 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.^[3]
• 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".^[4]
• 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^[5]
• 1980 - The only confirmed air-to-air helicopter battles occur during the Iran–Iraq War.

See also

• List of firsts in aviation

References

1. Colonel Templer and the birth of aviation at Farnborough, RAeS, May 2007
2. Gerard J. De Groot (2005). The bomb: a life. Harvard University Press. pp. 2–. ISBN 978-0-674-01724-5. Retrieved 25 April 2011.
3. Christopher Chant (29 October 2002). A century of triumph: the history of aviation. Simon and Schuster. pp. 68–. ISBN 978-0-7432-3479-5. Retrieved 6 April 2011.
4. 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.
5. 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.