1916 in aviation
Years in aviation :
|
1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 |
| Centuries: | 19th century · 20th century · 21st century |
| Decades: | |
| Years: | 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 |
This is a list of aviation-related events from 1916:
Events
- Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft simulate night torpedo attacks for the first time against Japanese fleet units in Tateyama Bay during annual fleet maneuvers, although no torpedoes are dropped.[1]
- The hydraulic, and compressed air catapults. It does not pursue electric or hydraulic types, but two compressed-air types are produced.[2]
- Officers of the Chilean Navy begin flight training in Chile. It is the beginning of a Chilean naval aviation arm - the first Latin American naval air arm - which is subordinated to the Chilean Army's Military Aviation Service of Chile.[3]
- Spring – British officials order one million rounds of .303-caliber (7.7-mm) explosive and incendiary ammunition for use by aircraft against German airships. The ammunition will be issued to Royal Flying Corps home air defense squadrons during the summer.[4]
January
- On a single evening, 10 of the 16 Royal Flying Corps aircraft which take off to defend England against German air attack crash, killing three pilots. By May, RFC night flying skills will have improved to the point that 10 aircraft that take off on a single evening all land safely.[5]
- January 12 – German aces Max Immelmann and Oswald Boelcke, each with eight kills, are the first pilots awarded the Pour le Mérite ("Blue Max").
- January 13 – The Curtiss Motor Company, Curtiss Engineering Company, and Burgess and Curtis merge to form the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company.[6]
- January 14 – In response to high losses German Fokker Eindecker fighters are inflicting on Allied reconnaissance aircraft flying over the Western Front, Royal Flying Corps Headquarters orders that reconnaissance planes have an escort of at least three fighters flying in close formation with them, and that a reconnaissance aircraft must abort its flight if even one of the three fighters becomes detached from the formation for any reason.[7]
- January 18 – The world's first practical all-metal aircraft, the Junkers J 1, makes its first true flight.
- January 29 – The second and last Zeppelin raid on Paris inflicts 54 casualties.
- January 31-February 1 (overnight) – German
February
- The Imperial German Flying Corps, takes the first step toward forming separate fighter squadrons by establishing Kampfeinsitzer Kommando ("single-seat battle unit," abbreviated as KEK) formations consisting only of fighter aircraft. KEK units form in France at Vaux-en-Vermandois, Avillers, Jametz, Cunel, and other strategic locations along the Western Frontto act as Luftwachtdienst (aerial guard force) units.
- Command of all pilots, airplanes, and searchlights devoted to the defense of London from air attack is consolidated under a single commander – Major T. C. Higgins, the commanding officer of the Royal Flying Corps's No. 19 Reserve Squadron at Hounslow – for the first time.[9]
- February 6 – Aircraft from the grt). Irmingard is the largest ship sunk by air attack in World War I.[10]
- February 21 – The Battle of Verdun begins. The Germans deploy 168 aircraft. To support the morale of French troops defending against the German offensive, the future French ace Jean Navarre soon begins daily aerobatic flights over the front line in a Nieuport 11 Bébé ("Baby") fighter with its fuselage painted in French red, white, and blue.[11]
- February 26 – Merely by appearing behind a German two-seat aircraft over the Verdun battlefield, Jean Navarre induces its crew to land in French-held territory and surrender without ever firing a shot. Later that morning he shoots down a German bomber for his fifth victory.[12]
March
- Air defense of the United Kingdom becomes solely the responsibility of the Royal Flying Corps; previously, it has shared the responsibility with the Royal Naval Air Service. The RFC is also authorized to form its first ten Home Defense squadrons.[13]
- March 16 – 1st Aero Squadron carry out reconnaissance over Mexico.
- March 18 – German ace Ernst Udet scores his first kill.
- March 21 – Elmer F. Stone to begin flight training. It is the birth of U.S. Coast Guard aviation.[14]
- March 24 – Royal Flying Corps receives its first of many Nieuport fighters, a Nieuport 16.[15]
- March 31–April 1 (overnight) – Seven German Navy Zeppelins attempt to bomb London. Two turn back with engine trouble, and
April
- A new French "balloon-busting" weapon, the Le Prieur rocket, is tested for the first time.
- The German Army's air service, the Jagdstaffeln (fighter squadrons) in service by April 1917.
- The Royal Flying Corps establishes its first Home Defense squadron, No. 39 Home Defense Squadron, at Hounslow.[9]
- The Imperial Japanese Navy establishes its first land-based air group (Kōkūtai), the Yokosuka Naval Air Group.[17]
- April 1
- The Royal Naval Air Service Training Establishment, Cranwell, is founded at Cranwell, Lincolnshire, England. It later will become RAF Cranwell.
- Elmer F. Stone begins flight training at Naval Air Station Pensacola in Pensacola, Florida. He is the first U.S. Coast Guard aviator.[14]
- April 1–2 (overnight) through April 5–6 (overnight) – German Navy airships raid England for five more nights straight.[18]
- April 15 – Royal Flying Corps and Royal Naval Air Service aircraft deliver 13 tons of stores into Kut el Amara, Mesopotamia, while it is besieged by the Turks. It is the first time aircraft are used for such a purpose.
- April 20 – The Escadrille Américaine ("American Squadron"), later to be known as the Lafayette Squadron"), is established as an American volunteer unit in France, equipped with Nieuport 11s.
May
- May 1 – Lydia Zvereva, the first Russian woman and eighth woman worldwide to earn a pilot's certificate, dies of typhoid fever at the age of 26.[19]
- May 2 – Eight German Zeppelins raid the east coast of England, causing 39 casualties. The Zeppelin LZ 59 (L 20) is wrecked in a storm off Stavanger, Norway on the return journey.
- May 17 –
- May 18 – Kiffin Rockwell shoots down a German two-seater aircraft, the first aerial victory claimed by the Lafayette Escadrille, an American-manned squadron of the French Air Service.[21]
- May 19 – French ace Jean Navarre shoots down a German Aviatik C over Chattancourt, France, becoming the first Allied ace credited with 10 victories.[22]
- May 22 – First operational deployment of rockets from aircraft when eight aces including Nungesser, Guiguet and Chaput flying Nieuport 16s made an early morning attack that downed six balloons using Le Prieur rockets.[23]
- May 31 – A seaplane carrier Engadine achieves the only British aerial reconnaissance flight of the Battle of Jutland, reporting the sighting of three cruisers and ten destroyers of the German High Seas Fleet before a broken fuel pipe forces it to end the mission.[24]
June
- Oswald Boelcke's Dicta Boelcke, the first pamphlet on tactics for aerial warfare, is distributed to the German Air Service.
- June 9 – American naval aviation pioneer Santa Rosa Island on a flight out of the Naval Aeronautic Station, Pensacola, Florida when his Curtiss Model E hydroplane AH-8 goes down at the 8-hour-51-minute mark of his flight.[25]
- June 15 – The Boeing Model 1 or B & W Seaplane takes first flight.
- June 17 – The first French ace, Jean Navarre, is shot down and wounded, ending his combat career with 12 confirmed kills.
- June 18 – The first German ace, ". He had scored 15 kills.
- June 24 – Verdun-sur-Meuse.
- June 24 – .
- June 25 – Aviator Charles Franklin Niles crashes while performing ground loops at Oshkosh, Wisconsin and dies from his injuries.
- June 30
- The first flight of an aircraft with all-metal stressed skin construction, the Zeppelin-Lindau Rs.II, takes place.[26]
- Since January 1, 46 German antiaircraft guns) to the shooting down of only one German airship.[9]
July
- The Royal Naval Air Service's No. 3 Wing becomes Britain's first strategic bombing unit, equipped with Sopwith 1½ Strutters.
- July 1 – The air superiorityover the battlefield.
- July 12 – The United States Navy armored cruiser North Carolina becomes the first ship to launch an aircraft by catapult while underway, launching a Curtiss flying boat piloted by Lieutenant Godfrey Chevalier.[27]
- July 15 – Boeing Airplane Company.[28]
- July 18 – Morane-Saulnier monoplanes in French service have all their metal parts (spinners, struts, and cowlings) painted red to avoid confusion with German Fokker monoplanes, the first time markings are used to identify a type of aircraft.
August
- The Imperial German Flying Corps (Fliegertruppen des Deutschen Kaiserreiches) creates its first single-seat fighter squadrons, or Jagdstaffeln.[29]
- The seaplane carrier-battleship force.[30]
- August 2 – A
- August 6 – French Capitaine René Fonck gains his first confirmed victory. He will become the highest-scoring Alliedand second-highest-scoring ace overall of World War I.
- August 23 – The Brazilian Navy establishes a naval aviation arm with the creation of a naval aviation school.[32]
- August 24–25 (overnight) – Led by the commander of the Imperial German Navy's airship force, Peter Strasser, aboard the Zeppelin L 32, 13 German naval airships attack England. Several are damaged by British antiaircraft fire and a British seaplane and most of their bombs miss their targets widely, but L 31 under Kapitänleutnant Heinrich Mathy bombs southeast London, inflicting £130,000 in damage, including damage to a power station at Deptford, and killing nine and injuring 40 civilians.[33]
- August 27
- Romania enters World War I on the Allied side, declaring war on Austria-Hungary.
- Oswald Boelcke creates the first German special fighter squadron, Jagdstaffel 2 (or Jasta 2).
September
- The Wright-Martin Corporation.[34]
- A formation of German .
- September 2–3 (overnight) – 12 German Navy and four German Army William Leefe-Robinson, flying a B.E.2c, shoots down the German Army Schütte-Lanz airship SL 11, which falls spectacularly in flames near London, killing her entire crew of 16. Leefe-Robinson becomes the second pilot to shoot down an airship and the first to do it over the United Kingdom, and the German Army Airship Service withdraws from future bombing raids on England, leaving the bombing campaign to German naval airships. It is considered the turning point in the defense of the United Kingdom against German airship raids.[35]
- September 5 – It is announced that Lieutenant William Leefe-Robinson has received the Victoria Cross for shooting down SL-11.[36]
- September 15 – Two B-10 and the French submarine Foucault. B10 is the first submarine sunk by aircraft, and Foucault is the first submarine sunk at sea by aircraft.
- September 16
- Two Imperial German Navy airships, the Zeppelins L 6 and L 9, are destroyed by fire in their hangar due to an inflation accident.[37]
- The future Schiphol Airport opens as a Dutch military airfield southwest of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
- September 17
- Flying an No. 11 Squadron over Villers-Plouich, France, and mortally wounding its two-man crew. He will go on to become the highest-scoring ace of World War I, with 80 victories.[38]
- Flying a loop a flying boat. After this success, he loops an M-9 twice the following day.
- Flying an
- September 23–24 (overnight) – Twelve German Navy Zeppelins attack tramcar, damaging houses and shops, and killing 13 and injuring 33 people. Two of the newest Zeppelins are shot down, L 33 by ground fire and L 32 by Royal Air Force Lieutenant Frederick Sowrey; L 33's crew is captured at Little Wigborough (the only armed enemy personnel to set foot in England during the War) and L 32's is killed. Their loss shocks the German naval airship commander Peter Strasser.[39]
- September 25–26 (overnight) – Nine German Navy Zeppelins set out to attack England. Some turn back and the rest scatter their bombs widely over the countryside and sea. L 22, however, bombs an armament factory complex in Sheffield, killing 28 and injuring 19 people, and L 21 drops several bombs on Bolton.[40]
October
- October 1–2 (overnight) – Eleven German Navy Zeppelins set out to attack England. Three turn back and the others fail to drop their bombs or scatter their bombs widely, killing one British soldier. Royal Flying Corps
- October 5 – Concerned that civil aviation might not be taken seriously after World War I and anticipating the growth of civil air transport after the war, the British aviation pioneer George Holt Thomas registers Aircraft Transport & Travel Limited.[42] In 1919, the company will become the first to operate a London-Paris airline service.
- October 8 – The Imperial German Flying Corps (Fliegertruppen des Deutschen Kaiserreiches) air arm of the Deutsches Heer is reorganized and renamed the German Air Force (Luftstreitkräfte).[29]
- October 12
- Canadian Royal Naval Air Service ace Raymond Collishaw claims his first victory.
- American aviation pioneer Tony Jannus and two crewmen are killed near Sevastopol in the Russian Empire when the Curtiss Model H-7 flying boat he is using to train Russian pilots has engine problems and crashes into the Black Sea.[43]
- October 18 – Italian future ace Pier Ruggero Piccio scores his first aerial victory, shooting down an enemy observation balloon.
- October 19 – German Navy Zeppelins participate in a High Seas Fleet sortie into the North Sea, but German and British ships do not come into contact with one another, although the Zeppelin L 14 sights part of the Royal Navy's Harwich Force. Five Zeppelins suffer serious mechanical breakdowns during the operation.[44]
- October 28 – German ace Franz Buchner as the 10th-highest-scoring German aces of the conflict.[45]
November
- November 16 – Samuel Waring forms the Nieuport & General Aircraft Company in Cricklewood, London, to build Nieuport 11 fighters in the United Kingdom under license. It later will build Nieuport 17bis, Sopwith Camel, and Sopwith Snipe fighters.
- November 19 – New York State. She flies on to New York Citythe next day.
- November 23 – After a lengthy dogfight British ace Lanoe Hawker VC, flying an Airco DH.2, is shot down and killed by Manfred von Richthofen in an Albatros D.II. Lanoe's score stands at seven kills at the time of his death, and he is von Richthofen's 11th victory.
- November 27–28 (overnight) – Eight German Navy Zeppelins set out to attack industrial targets in the
- November 28 – The first bombing of central London by a fixed-wing aircraft takes place when a German LVG C.II biplane flown by R. Brandt drops six bombs near Victoria station.[48]
December
- December 26–27 (overnight) – In on December 29.
- December 28 – While ground crewman are walking the German Navy Zeppelin L 24 to her shed at Tondern, Germany, she is slammed against her hangar by wind and catches fire. She and the Zeppelin L 17, which is in the hangar, are destroyed in the resulting blaze.[50]
- December 28–29 (overnight) – Six German Navy airships – five Zeppelins and the Schütte-Lanz SL12 – attempt a raid on England but are recalled due to bad weather. SL12 is unable to return to base and lands nearby, where she is battered to pieces by wind.[50]
- December 31 – 17,341 antiaircraft guns and 2,200 officers and men assigned to the 12 Royal Flying Corps squadrons assigned to home air defense, operating 110 aeroplanes.[51]
First flights
- Airco DH.6
- Avro 519
- Avro 522
- Gotha G.III
- Grigorovich M-11
- Grigorovich M-20
- Hansa-Brandenburg D.I
- Letord Let.1
- Siemens-Schuckert D.I
- Voisin VIII
- Early 1916 – Avro 527
- Early 1916 – Nieuport 16
- Spring 1916 – Siemens-Schuckert Forssman
January
- Nieuport 17
- ca. January – Siemens-Schuckert R.IV
- January 9 – Grigorovich M-9
- January 18 – Junkers J.1
February
- February 9 - Sopwith Pup flown by Harry Hawker
March
April
May
- Armstrong Whitworth F.K.8[52]
- Avro 523 Pike
- May 28 - Sopwith Triplane flown by Harry Hawker
June
- ca. June – Siemens-Schuckert R.V
- June 15 - William Boeing's first aircraft.
- June 16 - Port Victoria P.V.2
- June 17 - Royal Aircraft Factory R.E.8
July
- Felixstowe F.2
- ca. July – Siemens-Schuckert R.VI
- July 25 - Anatra DS
August
September
- September 9 - Bristol F.2A
- September 12 - Hewitt-Sperry Automatic Airplane
October
- October 25 - Bristol F.2B Fighter
November
- Nieuport 15
- November 21 - Breguet 14[53]
- November 22 - Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5
- November 27 - British airship R,9[54]
December
- December 10 – Avro 528
- December 24 – Sopwith Camel
Entered service
- Albatros C.V[55]
- Grigorovich M-16 with the Imperial Russian Navy
- Nieuport 14
- Early 1916 – Imperial German Flying Corps
- Autumn 1916 – Imperial and Royal Aviation Troops
- Late 1916 – Albatros C.III[55]
January
- January 29 – Siemens-Schuckert R.IV with the German Luftstreitkräfte
February
- No. 24 Squadron RFC
- Gotha UWD with the Imperial German Navy
March
April
- Siemens-Schuckert Forssman with the German Luftstreitkräfte
- Sopwith 1½ Strutter
July
- July 20 – Siemens-Schuckert R.VI with the German Luftstreitkräfte
August
- Imperial German Flying Corps
- Service Aeronautique
- August 13 – Siemens-Schuckert R.V with the German Luftstreitkräfte
November
December
- December 24 - No. 54 Squadron RFC
Retirements
March
- Avro 510 by the Royal Naval Air Service
April
October
- October 2 – Gotha UWD by the Imperial German Navy
References
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- ISBN 0-87021-210-9, p. 78.
- ISBN 0-87021-295-8, pp. 198–199.
- ^ Whitehouse, Arch, The Zeppelin Fighters, New York: Ace Books, 1966, p. 139.
- ^ Whitehouse, Arch, The Zeppelin Fighters, New York: Ace Books, 1966, p. 138.
- ^ Angelucci, Enzo, The American Fighter: The Definitive Guide to American Fighter Aircraft From 1917 to the Present, New York: Orion Books, 1987, p. 108.
- ISBN 1-902304-04-7, p. 20.
- ^ Whitehouse, Arch, The Zeppelin Fighters, New York: Ace Books, 1966, p. 131–133.
- ^ a b c Whitehouse, Arch, The Zeppelin Fighters, New York: Ace Books, 1966, no ISBN, p. 130.
- ISBN 0-87021-210-9, p. 101.
- ^ Hollway, Don, "The Sentinel of Verdun," Aviation History, November 2012, p. 38.
- ^ Hollway, Don, "The Sentinel of Verdun," Aviation History, November 2012, pp. 38–39.
- ^ Whitehouse, Arch (1966). The Zeppelin Fighters. New York: Ace Books. No ISBN. pp.129–130.
- ^ a b United States Coast Guard (2016). "Commander Elmer Fowler Stone, USCG". United States Coast Guard. Retrieved March 21, 2016.
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- ^ Whitehouse, Arch, The Zeppelin Fighters, New York: Ace Books, 1966, p. 137.
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- ^ Johnsen, Frederick A., "Mother Ships," Aviation History, January 2018, p. 48.
- ISBN 1-902304-04-7, p. 29.
- ^ Hollway, Don (2016). "The Sentinel of Verdun". Aviation History. Retrieved May 18, 2016.
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- ISBN 0-87021-210-9, p. 113.
- ^ Angelucci, Enzo, The American Fighter: The Definitive Guide to American Fighter Aircraft From 1917 to the Present, New York: Orion Books, 1987, p. 63.
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- ^ Whitehouse, Arch, The Zeppelin Fighters, New York: Ace Books, 1966, pp. 140–146, 165.
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- ISBN 0-89009-771-2, p. 27.
- ^ "Tony Jannus, an enduring legacy of aviation". Tony Jannus Distinguished Aviation Society. Archived from the original on 2011-07-17. Retrieved 2015-05-22.
- ^ Whitehouse, Arch, The Zeppelin Fighters, New York: Ace Books, 1966, no ISBN, p. 178.
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- ISBN 1-85605-375-X.
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