One Hundred Years of Flight USAF Chronology ... - The Air University

1911
July 19: Orville Wright delivered the Navy’s first Wright airplane (a Wright
B land machine) at Annapolis, Maryland. The aircraft was subsequently
converted into a seaplane by the addition of twin floats.
September 23: Earle L. Ovington delivered mail by air from Nassau Aerodrome
to Mineola, New York, for which he was named Airmail Pilot
No. 1 by Postmaster General Frank H. Hitchcock. Ovington was the first
airmail carrier to cover a set route from one regularly established post
office to another.
Postmaster General Frank H. Hitchcock hands Earle L. Ovington a bag of mail for
the first airmail delivery on September 23, 1911. The load consisted of 640 letters
and 1,280 postcards.
October 10: At College Park, Maryland, Lt. Thomas DeWitt Milling tested a
bombsight and bomb-dropping device invented by Riley E. Scott, who
accompanied him in a Wright Flyer. These were the first Army tests of
such devices.
October 18: Capt. George W. McKay of Michigan became the first National
Guard pilot.
October 22: Capt. Carlo Piazza of Italy, piloting a Bleriot XI, conducted the
first wartime military airplane flight, reconnoitering Turkish positions
in Libya. That same day, another Italian airplane became the first to
be hit by ground fire.
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