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

November 1: Lt. Giulio Gavotti of Italy, flying an Etrich Taube aircraft,
dropped bombs from an airplane in war for the first time, attacking
Turkish positions in Libya.
November 5: In 49 days, Calbraith Perry Rodgers, flying a Burgess-Wright
biplane, completed the first transcontinental flight from New York to
Pasadena, California—a distance of 3,390 miles.
November 28: The Signal Corps Army Aviation School moved temporarily
from College Park, Maryland, to Augusta, Georgia, because the climate
there was better for winter flying.
1912
1911–12
February 17: The Army published its first physical examination requirements
for pilots.
February 23: War Department Bulletin no. 2 for 1912 established the rating
“military aviator.”
March 1: Albert Berry made the first attached-type parachute jump over
Jefferson Barracks, Saint Louis, Missouri, at an altitude of 1,500 feet
from a Benoist pusher airplane.
March 21: Lt. Frank P. Lahm flew Signal Corps No. 7, a Wright Model B aircraft,
at Fort William McKinley in the Philippine Islands—the first flight
of an airplane at an overseas base.
May 30: At the age of 45, Wilbur Wright died of typhoid fever at Dayton,
Ohio.
June 14: After training at the Army Air School in the Philippines, Cpl. Vernon
Burge became the Army’s first enlisted pilot.
July 5: Capt. Charles deForest Chandler, 2d Lt. Thomas D. Milling, and 2d
Lt. Henry H. Arnold became the first Army pilots to qualify as military
aviators.
November 5–13: The Army used aircraft for artillery adjustment for the first
time at Fort Riley, Kansas. Capt. Frederick B. Hennessy, Lt. Henry H.
Arnold, and Lt. Thomas DeWitt Milling signaled the ground, using
radiotelegraphy, drop cards, and smoke signals.
November 12: Lt. Theodore G. Ellyson, the Navy’s first pilot, successfully
launched a Curtiss seaplane, using a catapult mounted on a float
anchored in the Anacostia River opposite the Navy Yard in Washington,
D.C. This device was a forerunner of the catapult used on aircraft
carriers.
9