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On This Day: 1933

Aviation events for 1933

February 6: Pioneer Jim Mollison flies a de Havilland Puss Moth from the United Kingdom to Brazil, vwith a stop in Senegal, across the South Atlantic. He becomes the first person to fly solo across the North and South Atlantics.
 
February 8: The first Boeing 247 takes to the air opening a new era in air transport, representing the new age of all-metal monoplane designs.
 
February 25: USS Ranger (CV-4) is launched as the first American ship actually designed to be an aircraft carrier. (Earlier conventional ships had been converted to carriers).
 
March 1: U.S. Air Commerce Regulations are amended to increase the flying time required for a pilot’s license from 10 hours to 50 hours.
 
March 21: Fairey’s TSR.1 torpedo spotter-reconnaissance airplane makes its first flight at Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England.
 
March 21: James L. Kinney makes the first cross-country test of blind flying and landing from College Park, Maryland to Newark, New Jersey.
 
April 3: Two British-built aircraft, the prototype Westland Wapiti V modified into the Wallace (G-ACBR), become the first to fly over the top of Mt. Everest, at 29,802 ft. the highest point of land on earth, and to photograph the summit from above.
 
April 4: The USS Akron, the Navy’s 785-foot-long rigid helium-filled airship, crashes off the coast of New Jersey in a violent storm, killing 73 of the 76 men on board. At the time, it was the most deadly aviation accident in history.
 
May 20: Turkish Airlines is founded.
 
June 22: The Tupolev ANT-25 monoplane, designed to win the world long-distance record for the USSR, makes its first flight.
 
July 9: Flying their Lockheed Sirius built in 1929 and used for the 1931 survey flight of Alaska, the North Pacific and China, Charles Lindbergh and his wife begin a major route-proving tour of the North and South Atlantic. They complete their survey on December 6.
 
July 17: Lithuanian research aircraft Lituanica disappears mysteriously after a successful crossing of the Atlantic.
 
July 22: One-eyed pilot Wiley Post lands after completing the first solo flight around the world. Post pioneers the early development of a pressure suit and proves the value of navigating instruments, especially the automatic pilot.
 
July 28: Dr. Albert Forsythe and Charles Alfred “Chief” Anderson land at Atlantic City to complete the first return flight to the West Coast by African-American pilots.
 
August 5: French Air Force pilots Lts. Paul Codes and Maurice Rossi begin a record-breaking straight-line distance flight (5,657 mi.) between New York and Rayak, Syria in their Blériot 110 monoplane.
 
August 30: Air France, France’s national airline, is formed.
 
October 10: A United Airlines Boeing 247D crashes near Chesterton, Indiana while making a multi-stop transcontinental flight between Newark and Oakland, killing all four passengers and three crew on board. Investigators determine that a nitroglycerin bomb had exploded in the baggage compartment, marking history’s first air sabotage incident. No motive or suspects were ever named.
 
October 31: France’s air minister Pierre Cot formally inaugurates the country’s national airline, Air France.
 
 
 

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