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On This Day: 1921

Aviation events for 1921

January 21: The first triple-triplane aircraft, and the first passenger-carrying aircraft designed to carry more than 100 people that actually got off the ground, is launched at Lake Maggiore, Italy. The flight attempt ends in failure when the 55,000 lb. flying boat nosedives into the lake.
 
January 25: Committee on Law of Aviation of the American Bar Association files an initial report on the necessity of aerial legislation.
 
February 12: The U.S. Army Air Service establishes the first in an expending series of airways – routes safely surveyed by the army civilian and commercial users linking towns and cities by air – by leasing land between Washington and Dayton, Ohio to facilitate a stopover.
 
February 23: A team of pilots completes an experimental coast-to-coast mail flight; flying by day and night, they have linked San Francisco and Long Island in a day and half’s flying time.
 
February 24: Lieutenant William D. Coney completes a solo flight from Rockwell Field, San Diego to Jacksonville, in 22 hours and 27 minutes flying time.
 
March 17: The first U. S. Marine airman to serve in the Pacific arrives on Guam with responsibility for supporting U. S. land and sea forces in the region. There, 10 pilots and 90 enlisted men operate seaplanes on reconnaissance duty as Flight L, Fourth Squadron, for 10 years.
 
March 23: Lieutenant Arthur Hamilton sets a new world record when he jumps by parachute from 24,400 feet.
 
April 1: French pilot Adrienne Bollard takes off from Mendoza, Argentina in a Cauldron biplane to become the first woman to fly over the Andes. She completes the historic Andean crossing to the Chilean capital, Santiago in 10 hours.
 
May 15: Laura Bromwell loops in New York State 199 times in I hour, 20 minutes, setting a new women’s record for consecutive loops.
 
June 8: The first flight of a U.S. Army Air Service pressurized cabin airplane is made with a D-9-A aircraft. This allows flying beyond the “comfortable” breathing altitude of about 8,000 feet.
 
July 18: John H. Glenn, Jr., the first American to orbit the earth, is born in Cambridge, Ohio. After being selected by NASA with the first group of astronauts in 1959, he makes his historic orbital flight on February 20, 1962.
 
July 30: Swiss pilot, Francois Durafour, achieves a daring first by landing his airplane on the slopes of Mont Blanc, Europe’s highest mountain in the Alps.
 
August 3: Lieutenant John A. Macready of the U.S. Army Air Corps finds a new use for airplanes when he sprays a patch of ground infested with caterpillars. This practice becomes known as crop dusting.
 
August 24: In the worst airship disaster thus far, 44 people die when the British dirigible R.38 is destroyed during routine operations off the coast of Yorkshire, England, by fire started by electrical sparks that engulfed the airship.
 
September 1: President Warren Harding authorizes the creation of the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics, with Rear Admiral Moffet as its chief.
 
November 12: The 1st air-to-air refueling is made when American Wesley May steps from the wing of one aircraft to that of another carrying a five-gallon can of gasoline strapped to his back.
 
December 5: Western Australia Airways opens the first scheduled regular airline service in the country.
 
December 29: Edward Stinson and Lloyd Bertaud set a world endurance record of 26 hours, 18 minutes and 35 seconds flying a BMW-engined Junkers-Larsen over Roosevelt Field.
 
 
 

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