1927 in aviation

This is a list of aviation-related events from 1927:

Events

• The United States Navy's USS Langley (CV-1) becomes the first aircraft carrier to operate a multi-engine aircraft, the twin-engine Douglas T2D-1.^[1]
• The British
  racecourse and as seaplanes from the Huangpu River.^[2]
• Germany's lead in commercial aviation is such that during the year German airlines fly greater distances with more passengers than the airlines of France, Italy, and the United Kingdom combined.^[3]

January

• January 1 – Prompted by the increase in air traffic over Europe, a regulation goes into effect in the United Kingdom requiring the installation of wireless telegraphy equipment aboard any aircraft capable of carrying 10 or more people including crew and that such aircraft carry a special operator for the equipment. The use of radio telephony is limited to aircraft carrying five to nine people including crew.^[4]
• January 7 – Imperial Airways commences a regular service from Basra to Cairo via Baghdad, the first of its Empire "trunk routes."
• January 15 –
  Boeing Air Transport is formed, to carry airmail between Chicago and San Francisco. It eventually will become United Airlines
  .

• February 13 –
  North Atlantic to recreate the 1919 transatlantic flight of the United States Navy Curtiss NC-4 flying boat before returning to Italy.^[5][6]
• February 16 – After stops at
  Cape Verde Islands instead, where cooler conditions prevail.^[5]
• February 23 – Pinedo, Del Prete, and Zacchetti cross the Atlantic, flying from the Cape Verde Islands to Fernando de Noronha, where the Brazilian Navy protected cruiser Almirante Barroso meets them and tows their flying boat into port. The next day, they fly to Natal, Brazil, to begin the South American phase of their "Four Continents" flight.^[5]

• May 1 – Imperial Airways introduces its luxury "Silver Wing" service between London and Paris.
• May 2 – 30,000 people are on hand for the arrival in
  Bombay to Belgrade. Departing Paris on 20 April, they have followed the route Paris-Belgrade-Aleppo-Basra-Jask-Karachi-Bombay-Karachi-Jask-Basra-Aleppo-Belgrade. They make the flight to spur interest in investment in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia′s first civilian airline, Aeroput. Investment in Aeroput increases greatly, saving the new airline from abolition due a lack of capital.^{[citation needed}
  ]
• May 4 – United States Army Air Corps Captain Hawthorne C. Gray sets an unofficial record for the highest altitude reached by a human being, attaining 42,470 feet (12,940 meters) in a balloon with an open basket over Belleville, Illinois. Because of the rapid descent of the balloon, he parachutes out at 8,000 feet (2,400 meters), disqualifying him from recognition for an official record by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), which requires that a balloonist land with his craft in order to set an official record.^[7][8][9]
• May 5 – The
  Farman F.61 cargo aircraft F-ADFN disappears over the Atlantic Ocean during a flight from Saint-Louis Airport in Saint-Louis, Senegal, to Petrolina Airport in Petrolina, Brazil. Its two crew members are never found.^[13]
• May 7 – Varig is founded. The first airline founded in Brazil, it will begin flight operations in June.
• May 8 – At
  Italian Fascist government to allow them to continue their "Four Continents" flight and identical to the original plane, Santa Maria, which they had flown until it was destroyed in an accidental fire on April 6. Pinedo plans a revised schedule for their North American tour, eliminating all stops west of the Mississippi River.^[5]
• May 8–9 –
  The White Bird
  ), but disappear over the Atlantic.
• May 14 – After stops at
  New Orleans, Louisiana, de Pinedo, Del Prete, and Zacchetti begin a portion of their "Four Continents" flight that takes them north up the Mississippi River into the Midwestern United States.^[5]
• May 17 – After completing their tour of the
  Chicago, Illinois, de Pinedo, Del Prete, and Zacchetti make their first stop in Canada, at Montreal, after an 11-hour flight from Chicago.^[5]
• May 20 – The Dominion of Newfoundland Post Office issues history's first postage stamp honoring an individual aviator. It honors Francesco de Pinedo.^[14]
• May 20–21
  • Flight Lieutenant Roderick Carr sets out for a new flight distance record, attempting to fly from RAF Cranwell in England to India in a modified Hawker Horsley biplane. Forced to ditch in the Persian Gulf
    , the flight nonetheless achieves a nonstop record 3,420 mi (5,500 km) which will be beaten within hours by Lindbergh.
  • Charles Lindbergh flies the Ryan monoplane Spirit of St. Louis across the Atlantic nonstop from Roosevelt Field in New York City to Paris–Le Bourget Airport. It is the first solo transatlantic flight, over a distance of 3,610 mi (5,810 km); 3,137 nmi), and it sets a new nonstop flight distance record. Lindbergh wins the Orteig Prize for the first nonstop flight from New York to Paris.
• May 22–23 – Pinedo, Del Prete, and Zacchetti depart Trepassey Bay in the Dominion of Newfoundland, planning to cross the Atlantic Ocean to the Azores, refuel, and then fly on to Portugal, retracing the transatlantic flight route of the United States Navy Curtiss NC-4 flying boat in 1919, but they run low on fuel due to unfavorable weather. Pinedo is forced to land the Santa Maria II on the ocean and be taken under tow by a Portuguese fishing boat and an Italian steamer for the final 200 miles (320 km) to the Azores, where the plane arrives at Horta on May 30.^[5][15]
• May 27 – France's first aircraft carrier, Béarn, is commissioned
• May 28 – While flying at 1,200 feet (370 meters) near
  2nd Bombardment Group commander Lewis H. Brereton – with shrapnel. The nose gunner is killed, but the other four men aboard parachute to safety. The gasoline
  -soaked wreckage of the aircraft explodes and burns on the ground.

• June 1 – In a flight between turning points at Dessau and Leipzig, Germany, Wilhelm Zimmermann, flying a Junkers G 24L, achieves a new world speed record for an aircraft with a 2,000-kilogram (4,410-pound) payload over a distance of 100 kilometers (62 miles), averaging 207.26 km/h (128.79 mph).^[11]
• June 4–6 – With Charles A. Levine as his passenger,
  Roosevelt Field, Long Island, New York, to Eisleben, Germany
  , a distance of 3,911 miles (6,294 km), in 42 hours and 31 minutes.
• June 5 – The Verein für Raumschiffahrt ("Society for Spaceship Travel") is formed in Germany.
• June 6 – Canadian innovator
  Wallace Turnbull sells the patent for the variable-pitch propeller to Curtiss-Wright in the United States and Bristol in the United Kingdom
  . It will be successfully flight tested on June 29.
• June 15 – U.S. businessman Van Lear Black charters a KLM Fokker F.VIIa for a flight from the Netherlands to Batavia, the first international charter flight.
• June 16 – After repairs in the
  Matto Grosso region of dense jungle, made the first flight into the United States by a foreign airplane, overcome the loss of their original S.55 Santa Maria in an accidental fire, and retraced the transatlantic flight route of the United States Navy Curtiss NC-4 flying boat in 1919.^[5][16]
• June 17 – Yugoslavia's first civilian airline, Aeroput is founded as the flag carrier of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia . It will begin flight operations in February 1928.
• June 22 –
  Dornier Do J Wal
  (registration P-BAAA).
• June 23 –
  Mikhail Gromov makes the first Soviet parachute jump, when he bails out of a Polikarpov I-1 that has entered an unrecoverable spin.^[17]
• June 28
  • Wilhelm Zimmermann, flying a Junkers G 24L, achieves a new world speed record for an aircraft with a 1,000-kilogram (2,205-pound) payload, reaching 209.115 km/h (129.938 mph).[11]
  • The Spanish airline Iberia is incorporated. It will begin flight operations in December.
• June 28–29 – U.S. Army Air Corps
  Wheeler Field, Territory of Hawaii, in 25 hours 50 minutes. They will receive the 1927 Mackay Trophy and the Distinguished Flying Cross for the achievement.^[10]
• June 29 – July 1 -
  Richard Evelyn Byrd with crew flies the Fokker F.VIIa/3m America
  from New York City to France.

• Paul Bäumer, the founder of the German firm Bäumer Aero GmbH, is killed testing a new high-performance monoplane.^[18]
• July 16
  • The
    ANEC II (registration G-EBJO) at an average speed of 73.5 miles per hour (118.3 km/h).^[19][20]
  • Ernie Smith and Emory Bronte complete the first civilian non-stop flight from North America to the Hawaiian Islands when their Travel Air monoplane, the City of Oakland, crashes on Molokai after a flight from Oakland, California. They survive the crash.^[10]
  • de Havilland DH.4 aircraft strafe guerrilla forces of Augusto César Sandino in support of Marines forces on the ground in Nicaragua. It is an early example of Marine Corps close air support.^[21]
• July 17 – U.S. Marine Corps
  de Havilland DH.4s are used to attack bandits in Nicaragua threatening the garrison at Ocotal
  .

• August 4 – A Junkers G 24 belonging to Severa takes off from Norderney, Germany, bound for the Azores on its way to the Western Hemisphere in a quest to make the first east-to-west crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by a heavier-than-air aircraft. The attempt ends when the G 24 crashes in the Azores.
• August 6 – In a single flight, a
  Junkers K 30 sets three world records for seaplanes
  over a distance of 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) with a payload of 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds), averaging a record speed of 171 km/h (106 mph), remaining airborne for a record 10 hours 42 minutes 45 seconds, and flying a record distance of 1,176 kilometers (731 miles).
• August 12 – The Royal Air Force holds a fly-off between four competing flying boat designs, the Supermarine Southampton, Blackburn Iris, Short Singapore, and Saunders-Roe Valkyrie.
• August 16 – The
  Wheeler Field on Oahu, but three other entrants carrying seven persons are missing at sea. The tragedy puts an end to all plans to fly single-engine land aircraft from North America to Hawaii until 1934.^[10]
• August 22 – The KLM Fokker F.VIII H-NADU crashes with 11 people on board at Underriver, England, after a structural failure in its tailfin or rudder. One crewmember dies and eight other people are injured.
• August 25 – A gust of wind catches the tail of the U.S. Navy
  Naval Air Station Lakehurst at Lakehurst, New Jersey, causing her tail to rise until she is at an 85-degree angle. She returns to the horizontal with little damage, the only airship
  known to have survived such a maneuver.
• August 26 – Bert Hinkler sets a new non-stop distance record, flying from Croydon, England to Riga, Latvia.
• On 31 August, the
  Fokker F.VIIA
  .

August 27: Paul Redfern attempts to fly from Georgia to Rio de Janeiro but fails before making it the entire way

September

• September 1 – The first commercial aviation flight started off in Concord, CA flying in a Boeing 40-B2 and landing in New York 32 hours later. Two passengers with mail and other cargo were the first coast to coast commercial passenger flight.^[22]
• September 8 – The
  Cessna Aircraft Company
  is established.
• September 26 – The 1927
  Flight Lieutenant S. N. Webster of the United Kingdom wins in a Supermarine S.5
  at an average speed of 453.2 km/h (281.6 mph).
• September 28 – Lieutenant Dick Bently of the South African Air Force arrives in South Africa, completing the first solo flight there from England. He had left London on September 1.
• September 29 –
  Focke Wulf F 19 Ente
  ("Duck").
• September 30 –
  Farnborough Airfield for delivery to the Royal Aircraft Establishment
  .

• October 10 – The French aviators
  Breguet 19 G.R. Nungesser-Coli. They will complete the trip on April 14, 1928.^[23]
• October 11 –
  Paris – Le Bourget Airport in France. Mechanical problems force them to ditch off the Azores on October 13, and they are rescued by the passing tanker Barendrecht. Although they fail to reach Europe, they set a new world distance record for a flight over water of 2,623 miles (4,221 km).^[24][25]
• October 14–15 – Dieudonne Costes and Joseph Le Brix make the first non-stop aerial crossing of the
  Port Natal, Brazil
  , as a part of their round-the-world trip.
• October 27 – On
  Ford XJR-1 drops nine U.S. Navy parachutists over Washington, D.C.^[26]
• October 28 –
  Key West, Florida, to Havana, Cuba.^[25]

• November 4
  • Flying a
    Mario de Bernardi
    sets a new world airspeed record of 479.290 km/h (297.817 mph).
  • Flying in a balloon with an open basket in an attempt to set an official world altitude record for human flight – his altitude records of March and May having been unofficial –
    hypoxia after his balloon reaches 40,000 feet (12,000 meters). His body is found in his balloon basket in a tree near Sparta, Tennessee, the next day. His balloon's barograph indicates that the balloon reached between 43,000 and 44,000 feet (13,000 and 13,000 meters) before descending.^{[7][8][9][27]} No further high-altitude balloon fights in open baskets will be attempted until the United States Air Force begins Project Manhigh in 1955.^[28]
• November 16 – The United States Navy commissions USS Saratoga (CV-3), its first large aircraft carrier and its first carrier capable of fleet speeds and true combat operations.
• November 17 – Sir Alan Cobham sets out from England in a Short Singapore to make an aerial survey of Africa.
• November 21 – During an air show at Santa Monica, California, parachutist Jean West's parachute becomes entangled on the wing of the plane she jumped from. The pilot manages to land the plane safely, dragging West for several hundred feet, but she nonetheless escapes the incident uninjured.^[29]

December

• December 14
  • The Spanish airline Iberia begins flight operations.
  • The U.S. Navy commissions the aircraft carrier USS Lexington (CV-2).
  • At the controls of the
    Bolling Field in Washington, D.C. The flight begins Lindbergh's goodwill tour of Latin America, which will continue until February 13, 1928.^[30]
• December 20 – Letalski center Maribor is established in Maribor; it will be the oldest surviving operating major flying club in the Balkans.
• December 23 –
  Long Island, New York, to Harbour Grace in the Dominion of Newfoundland, probably going down in the Atlantic Ocean off Nova Scotia in a storm; their remains are never found. They had planned to attempt a transatlantic flight
  from Newfoundland in the Dawn.
• December 31 – While undergoing testing in France, the prototype of the Latécoère 23 flying boat spins into the ground on approach to a landing, killing all five people on board, including Groupe Latécoère test pilot Achille Enderlin. No more Latécoère 23 aircraft are built.