1941 in aviation

This is a list of aviation-related events from 1941:

Events

• Jackie Cochran became the first woman to fly a bomber across the Atlantic Ocean.
• During the spring and summer, the
  Chungking.^[1]
• By early autumn, the Imperial Japanese Navy has turned all air operations on the Chinese mainland over to the Imperial Japanese Army.^[2]
• The Aeronautical Corporation of America renames itself
  Aeronca.^[3]

• The
  fighters from the Corpo Aereo Italiano (Italian Air Corps)—its expeditionary force based in Belgium for operations against the United Kingdom—leaving only Fiat G.50 Freccia monoplane fighters in the Corpo.^[4]
• The Imperial Japanese Navy forms its first air fleet, the Eleventh Air Fleet.^[5]
• Imperial Japanese Navy
  bombers and flying boats had become so potent that the aircraft carrier has become obsolete.^[6]
• January 5 – Ferrying an
  RAF Kidlington, England, pioneering English aviator Amy Johnson goes off course in poor weather, runs out of fuel, and bails out as her aircraft crashes into the Thames Estuary. The Royal Navy barrage balloon ship HMS Haslemere
  attempts to rescue her, but a swell pushes her into the ship's propellers, which kill her. Her body is never recovered.
• January 7 –
  Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor aircraft to begin supporting German U-boat operations in the Atlantic Ocean.^[7]
• January 9 – 10 Italian bombers attack a Gibraltar-to-Malta convoy escorted by the British aircraft carriers HMS Ark Royal and HMS Illustrious, scoring no hits and losing two of their number to Fairey Fulmar fighters from Ark Royal.^[8]
• January 9–10 (overnight) – 135 British bombers attack oil targets in Gelsenkirchen, Germany.^[9]
• January 10 – German aircraft make their combat debut in the
  Fliegerkorps X join Italian bombers in attacking the British aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious in the Mediterranean while she is escorting the Gibraltar-to-Malta convoy. The Italian attacks are ineffective, but the German aircraft score six hits, knocking Illustrious out of action until the end of November.^[10][11]
• January 11 – Fliegerkorps X aircraft continue attacks on the Gibraltar-to-Malta convoy, damaging the light cruiser HMS Gloucester and fatally damaging the light cruiser HMS Southampton.^[12]
• January 16 – 60 German dive bombers make a massed attack on the Malta Dockyard in an attempt to destroy the damaged British aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious, but she receives only one bomb hit. Incessant German and Italian bombing raids will target Malta through March, opposed by only a handful of British fighters.^[13]
• January 17 – During the
  La Motte-Picquet
  .
• January 18 – A large German air raid strikes Malta's airfields and other facilities.^[13]
• January 19 – German aircraft again attack the Malta dockyard, causing underwater damage to HMS Illustrious.^[13]
• January 20 – Brazil merges the air arms of the Brazilian Army and Brazilian Navy to form an independent air force^[14] called the National Air Forces. The National Air Forces will be renamed the Brazilian Air Force in May.

• The destruction of bridges along the
  bombers based at Hanoi in French Indochina forces the road to close.^[2]
• The
  Nippon Kokusai Koku Kogyo K.K. (the Japan International Air Industries Company Ltd)., best known as Kokusai.^[50]
• June 1
  • German
    Alexandria, Egypt, as she retires after evacuating troops from Crete.^[51]
  • Germany completes the conquest of Crete. German airborne forces have suffered such heavy losses – probably 6,000 to 7,000 casualties and 284 aircraft lost – in the eleven days of fighting that Germany never again attempts a large airborne operation.
• June 2 – The United States Navy commissions
  Norfolk Navy Yard in Portsmouth, Virginia.^[52]
• June 8 – General
  1941 purge of the Soviet armed forces. He will be executed in October.^[53]
• June 8–July 8 – The British invade Syria, and aerial combat between British and Vichy French aircraft ensues.
• June 16
  • National Airport (the modern-day
    Arlington, Virginia
    , to end confusion and disputes over local jurisdiction.
  • Official start of production at Ford's Willow Run facility (Air Force Plant 31) in Michigan. At its wartime peak, it will produce one B-24 bomber every hour.^[55]
• June 17 – The Royal Navy commissions its first
  HMS Empire Audacity
  . She later will be renamed HMS Audacity and become the world's first escort carrier to deploy in combat.
• June 20 – The United States Department of War creates the United States Army Air Forces, with General Henry H. Arnold as its first commander. As part of the reorganization, General Headquarters Air Force is renamed Air Force Combat Command; the new Army Air Forces organization consists of Air Force Combat Command (its combat element) with the logistics and training element of the earlier United States Army Air Corps now retaining this name for such elements, during the war years.^[56]
• June 22
  • Germany invades the Soviet Union (
    Soviet Air Force aircraft on the ground at one base alone. By 13:30 hours, the Germans have destroyed 800 Soviet aircraft in exchange for ten of their own. By the end of the day, the Germans have destroyed 1,811 Soviet aircraft – 1,489 on the ground and 322 in the air.^[57]
  • Soviet Tupolev SB-2 and Ilyushin DB-3 bombers suffer heavy losses in attacks on German airfields near Warsaw; German fighters shoot down 20 out of 25 Soviet bombers on one raid.^[58]
  • During the first hour of Operation Barbarossa, Soviet pilot Lieutenant I. I. Ivanov of the 46th Fighter Air Regiment rams a Heinkel He 111, the first of 10 Soviet taran attacks against Luftwaffe combat aircraft that day and more than 200 during the war; Ivanov is killed in the ramming.^[59]
• June 23 – During the second day of Operation Barbarossa, the Soviets lose another 1,000 aircraft.^[60]
• June 24 – The commander of the
  Maria Nesterenko, will be arrested on 25 June for failing to denounce him as a state criminal. After Rygachov is tortured, they both will be executed in October.^[38][53]
• June 28
  • In the early morning hours, 35 British bombers attempting an attack on Bremen stray so far off course that they mistakenly bomb Hamburg – 110 km (68 mi) northeast of Bremen – instead, losing five of their number to German night fighters over the city while killing seven people, injuring 39, and leaving 280 homeless.^[35]
  • At the end of the first week of Operation Barbarossa, the Luftwaffe has destroyed 4,017 Soviet aircraft in exchange for 150 of its own.^[60]
• June 30
  • German fighter pilot
    shoots down five Soviet bombers, bringing his aerial victory total to 82. He becomes the first pilot to surpass the World War I record of 80 victories set by Manfred von Richthofen in 1918 and the highest-scoring ace
    in history at the time.
  • Since January 1, the Soviet aviation industry has delivered 1,900
    ground-attack aircraft to operational air units.^[61]

• July – The Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter aircraft is introduced in the United States.^[62]
• July 1 –
  Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic
  .
• July 3–4 (overnight) – 90 British bombers attempting to attack the Krupp arms works and rail targets in Essen, Germany, scatter their bombs so widely that they bomb Bochum, Dortmund, Duisburg, Hagen, Wuppertal, and other cities as well as Essen. In Essen, they succeed only in inflicting minor housing damage, injuring two people.^[63]
• July 8 – A trial raid by three RAF Fortress I
  8th Air Force would itself first hit Nazi Germany directly with later-model B-17s, eighteen months later
  .
• July 9 – Under attack at their airfield by a 27-aircraft
  Soviet Air Force bomber regiment, Luftwaffe Major Günther Lützow of Jagdgeschwader 3 and his Messerschmitt Bf 109F fighter unit take off and shoot down all 27 Soviet bombers without loss to themselves.^[58]
• July 15 – Luftwaffe ace Werner Mölders shoots down two Soviet aircraft, raising his victory total to 101. He becomes the first pilot to claim 100 victories.
• July 18 – The first RAF aircraft is equipped with radar.^{[citation needed]}
• July 19 – Adolf Hitler issues Directive 33, ordering the Luftwaffe to conduct a series of air raids against Moscow.^[65]
• July 22 – During the month since the beginning of Operation Barbarossa on June 22, the Luftwaffe has averaged 2,500 sorties per day in operations in the Soviet Union, and at times has achieved 3,000 per day.^[66]
• July 23 – During
  store ships bound for Malta escorted by a British naval forces including the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal. The high-level bombers are ineffective and Fairey Fulmars from Ark Royal shoot down two of them, but the six torpedo bombers fatally damage the destroyer HMS Fearless and cripple the light cruiser HMS Manchester.^[67]
• July 28 – The
  Vichy government
  agrees to build German aircraft in France.
• July 30 – 24 aircraft from the British aircraft carrier HMS Furious strike Petsamo, Finland, sinking a small steamer for the loss of three aircraft, while 29 aircraft from the carrier HMS Victorious attack Kirkenes, Norway, sinking a small ship and setting fire to another and claiming three German fighters shot down in exchange for the loss of 11 British aircraft.^[68]
• July 31 – A chartered
  Philippine Islands with stops at Guam, Wake Island, Johnston Atoll, and Honolulu in the Territory of Hawaii
  . The flight makes Philippine Airlines, Asia's first airline, the first Asian airline to cross the Pacific Ocean. Philippine Airlines will begin a scheduled transpacific service in December.

• Gee navigation aboard bombers. The loss of a Vickers Wellington equipped with Gee over Germany on August 13 raises fears that the Germans have captured Gee and will counter it, and no further test flights occur over Germany.^[69]
• August 1
  • The Soviet Union makes the first operational use of
    Constanţa with modified Polikarpov I-16s carried into action by Tupolev TB-3s
    .
  • The United States embargoes the sale of aviation fuel to Japan.
• August 6
  • After running out of ammunition,
    fighter, destroying both aircraft. Talalikhin parachutes to safety. It is the first aerial night ramming in history.^[70]
  • Two squadrons of United States Navy flying boats are based at Reykjavík, Iceland, to conduct flights as part of the Neutrality Patrol.^[71]
• August 7 – Bruno Mussolini, the commander of the Italian 274a Squadriglia (274th Squadron) and son of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, is killed along with two other crew members when the Piaggio P.108B bombers he is piloting flies too low and crashes into a house near San Giusto Airport in Pisa, Italy. Five crewmen are injured.
• August 7–8 (overnight) – 13 Ilyushin DB-3 bombers of the Soviet Navy's Baltic Fleet Air Force conduct a raid on Berlin without loss. It is the first Soviet air raid against Berlin and the first of ten Soviet Naval Aviation raids on Berlin in August and September 1941.^[72]
• August 9
  • Flying a
    UHF-band Lichtenstein radar to detect and close with a British Vickers Wellington bomber participating in a raid on Hamburg, Germany, before shooting down the Wellington.^[73]
  • Flying a
    prisoner-of-war
    . He is credited with 20 aerial victories, four shared victories, six probables, one shared probable, and 11 enemy aircraft damaged before his capture.
• August 11–12 – The
  antiaircraft artillery mistakenly shoots down another as it returns to base.^[72]
• August 18
  • The Butt Report is issued. It reveals a widespread failure of RAF Bomber Command aircraft to deliver their payloads to the correct target.^[74]
  • The U.S. Navy commissions
    Naval Air Station Midway at Midway Atoll.^[75]
• August 27
  • The German submarine U-570 surrenders to an RAF Lockheed Hudson patrol bomber 80 nautical miles (150 kilometres) south of Iceland. No other German submarine surrenders to enemy forces during World War II prior to the final days of the war.^[76]
  • Former Australian senator
    Airlines of Australia de Havilland Puss Moth crashes into the Coen River 2 miles (3.2 km) outside of Coen, Queensland, on a flight from Thursday Island to Cairns.^[77]

• The total of Soviet aircraft destroyed since the German invasion of the Soviet Union began on June 22 reaches 7,500.[78]
• During the month,
  Long-Range Bomber Aviation strikes staging bases for Luftwaffe raids on Moscow.^[79]
• The
  fighter makes its first carrier deployment aboard Royal Navy aircraft carriers on convoy protection duties. It is the first carrier-based combat use of any variant of the Grumman F4F Wildcat.^[80]
• September 5–12 – Nine U.S. Army Air Forces
  Philippine Islands via Midway Atoll, Wake Island, Port Moresby in New Guinea, and Darwin, Australia.^[81]
• September 12 – Aircraft from the British aircraft carrier HMS Victorious strike Glomfjord, Norway, sinking two merchant ships without loss to themselves.^[68]
• September 14 – An
  Axis
  forces attacking convoys in the Atlantic Ocean since mid-September 1939.
• September 23 –
  Marat flying a Junkers Ju 87
  dive bomber.
• September 27 – During Operation Halberd, Italian aircraft attack a Malta-bound convoy and its escorts in the Mediterranean, damaging the British battleship HMS Nelson and fatally damaging a merchant cargo ship.^[83]
• September 30 – The Germans begin their ground offensive against Moscow,
  Operation Typhoon, supported by the Luftwaffe's Luftflotte 2 (2nd Air Fleet), which the Soviets estimate has 950 aircraft. Soviet Air Force units in the area have only 391 aircraft and are quickly overwhelmed.^[84]

• Aircraft from the British aircraft carrier HMS Victorious strike Glomfjord, Norway, sinking two merchant ships for the loss of two Fairey Albacores.^[85]
• October 1 – Inter-Island Airways is renamed Hawaiian Airlines.
• October 2 –
  Douglas Skystreak
  in August 1947.
• October 6 – During the first week of
  Operation Typhoon, the Soviet Air Force has flown 700 sorties against German forces driving toward Moscow.^[86]
• October 9 – Since October 1, German aircraft supporting Operation Typhoon have flown more than 4,000 sorties against the Soviet Western Front alone.^[86]
• October 11–18 – Soviet Air Force aircraft strike Luftwaffe staging airfields along the northwestern, western, and southwestern approaches to Moscow.^[87]
• October 11–12 – After Soviet intelligence detects Luftwaffe plans for a major air attack on October 12 targeting industrial complexes, airfields, railroad terminals, and logistical facilities in the Soviet Western Front area, Soviet Air Force aircraft mount a major preemptive strike against German airfields at Vitebsk, Smolensk, Orel, Orsha, Siversk, and elsewhere overnight on October 11–12, followed by another large raid on the morning of October 12. The Soviets claim 500 German aircraft destroyed, although German sources do not confirm that number.^[87]
• October 18 – The German drive on Moscow stalls because of mud, and will make little progress until the ground freezes in mid-November. During this period, the Soviet Air Force flies 26,000 sorties in support of forces defending Moscow.^[88]
• October 27 –
  Victor Talalikhin
  , the Soviet Union's first major air hero of World War II, is killed in action during a dogfight with German aircraft.
• October 28 – As part of the
  1941 purge of the Soviet armed forces, 20 officers of the Soviet armed forces are executed. Among those shot are General Yakov Smushkevich, commander of the Soviet Air Forces from 1939 to 1940 who had overseen its poor performance during the Winter War with Finland,^[89] General Pavel Rychagov, commander of the Soviet Air Forces from 1940 to 1941, and Rychagov's wife, aviator Maria Nesterenko. Rychagov is executed because he had called Soviet military aircraft "flying coffins" and Nesterenko because she had failed to denounce him as a state criminal.^[38][53]

• Italy begins the conversion of the passenger liner SS Roma into the first Italian aircraft carrier, later named Aquila ("Eagle"). The conversion will halt in an incomplete state when Italy surrenders to the Allies in September 1943 and will never be finished.^[90]
• November 7–8 (overnight) – 392 British bombers attack Berlin, Cologne, and Mannheim, losing 36 of their number – a heavy 9.2 percent loss rate.^[91]
• November 12 – The British aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal is sunk in the Mediterranean east of Gibraltar by the German submarine U-81.
• November 15-December 5 – The Luftwaffe carries out 41 raids on Moscow. Soviet air defenses claim an average of 30 to 40 German aircraft shot down per day during the attacks.
  Operation Typhoon manage only 3,500. Soviet sources claim that the Luftwaffe loses 1,400 aircraft during this time.^[92]
• November 17 – Ernst Udet, the Luftwaffe's Director-General of Equipment and the second-highest German ace of World War I (62 victories), commits suicide.
• November 22
  • The German fighter ace
    Breslau
    while riding as a passenger on his way to Ernst Udet's funeral. His official kill total stands at 115 at the time of his death, although he is believed to have shot down another 30 Soviet aircraft for which he received no credit while making unauthorized combat flights during the last months of his career.
  • Axis convoy bound from Naples to North Africa, damaging the Italian light cruiser Luigi di Savoia Duca degli Abruzzi.^[93]
• November 30
  • air mail from Milan to Guidonia Montecelio, Italy, in a Caproni Campini N.1 motorjet-powered aircraft. It is the first time air mail is carried in any form of jet aircraft
    .
  • In the air defense of Moscow, the
    Soviet Air Defense Forces 6th Fighter Air Corps claims to have shot down 170 German aircraft since November 1. It will claim another 80 kills in December.^[94]
• November 30-December 4 – U.S. Navy patrol aircraft based in the
  Camranh Bay in French Indochina.^[95]

• December 1 – The Civil Air Patrol is founded in the United States.^[96]
• December 2 –
  Axis convoys to North Africa, paralyze Allied sea traffic in the Mediterranean, and prevent Allied supplies from arriving at Tobruk and Malta. The redeployment will reverse the balance of power at sea in the Mediterranean in favor of the Axis.^[97]
• December 5 – The Soviets begin a major counteroffensive to push German forces back from the Moscow area. In the western sector of the Soviet offensive alone, the Soviets commit 1,376 aircraft to support the offensive, opposing a Soviet-estimated 580 German planes.[98] In the southwestern sector, the 286 available Soviet aircraft make a concerted effort to destroy the 2nd Panzer Army, flying 5,066 combat sorties during the month.^[99]
• December 7 (December 8 west of the International Date Line) – The Imperial Japanese Navy makes a devastatingly successful surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and other U.S. military facilities on Oahu, Hawaii. Six aircraft carriers launch 353 warplanes in two waves. They sink five American battleships and ten other vessels, damage three other battleships, and destroy 188 U.S. aircraft, killing 2,402 and wounding 1,282. The Japanese lose 29 aircraft, five midget submarines, and 65 killed.
• December 8
  • Japanese air attacks destroy half the aircraft of the
    Philippine Islands. Japanese aircraft also begin attacks on Hong Kong, Guam, and Wake Island
    .
  • As the
    Major General Hiroshi Takumi, the commanding officer of the Imperial Japanese Army′s 18th Division′s 56th Regiment, and forcing her abandonment. The landing is successful, however, and captures the airfield at Kota Bahru before the end of the day.^[100]
  • During the Japanese invasion of Malaya,
    Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa ("peregrine falcon"; Allied reporting name "Oscar") fighter, forcing an RAF No. 34 Squadron Bristol Blenheim Mark IV trying to bomb the Japanese beachhead in British Malaya to land at Machang airfield.^[101]
  • The United States declares war on Japan.
• December 9
  • Japanese aircraft which landed at captured airfields at
    air superiority over northern Malaya.^[100]
  • Soviet air reconnaissance confirms a large-scale German troop withdrawal west of Klin in response to the Soviet winter counteroffensive.^[102]
• December 9–14 – With the German air threat to Moscow in decline,
  Soviet Air Force Frontal Aviation aircraft in supporting the Soviet winter ground offensive, attacking retreating German troops columns west of Moscow near Klin, Solnechnogorsk, and other locations in heavy snow and extreme cold.^[103]
• December 10
  • French Indochina-based Imperial Japanese Navy Mitsubishi G3M bombers (Allied reporting name "Nell") sink the Royal Navy battleship Prince of Wales (53) and battlecruiser Repulse (1916) in the South China Sea east of Malaya using torpedoes. They are the first capital ships to be sunk at sea by aircraft alone.^[104]
  • In the Philippines, 54 Japanese naval bombers systematically destroy
    Cavite Navy Yard and a significant part of neighboring Cavite with precision bombing from 20,000 feet (6,100 m) during a two-hour attack. The submarine USS Sealion (SS-195) is sunk pierside at the Navy Yard, the first American submarine ever sunk by enemy action.^[105]
  • After a courageous attack against Japanese ships off the Philippines,
    B-17C Flying Fortress pilot, becomes one of the earliest American heroes of World War II when he stays at the controls of his stricken bomber long enough for his crew to escape and is killed when his plane explodes. He is mistakenly reported to have deliberately crashed his stricken plane into the Japanese battleship Haruna
    .
  • A Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bomber from the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CV-6) piloted by Lieutenant Clarence E. Dickinson sinks the Japanese submarine I-70 northeast of Oahu.^[106] I-70 is the first Japanese submarine ever sunk by enemy forces and the first enemy warship sunk by the U.S. armed forces during World War II.
• December 11
  • The United States exchanges declarations of war with Germany and Italy.
  • Four
    F4F Wildcat fighters on Wake Island play an important role in repelling a Japanese invasion of the island.^[107]
  • Serving in the
    Roxholme, Lincolnshire, England
    . The Oxford pilot also dies.
  • U.S. Navy
    South Atlantic Ocean.^[108]
• December 12 – The U.S. Navy creates the Naval Air Transport Service (NATS) to provide emergency deliveries of materiel to front-line forces when delivery by ship would take too long.^[109][110]
• December 14–19 – Japanese naval aircraft from Kwajalein Atoll strike Wake Island repeatedly.^[111]
• December 15–16 (overnight) – The Soviet Union makes the first combat parachute assault in its history, dropping 415 men behind German lines near Teryayeva Sloboda in support of an advance by the Soviet 30th Army. Due to poor coordination of operations and a lack of fighter cover, the Soviet paratroopers suffer heavy casualties and narrowly escape annihilation.^[112]
• December 17
  • In the
    Lieutenant Colonel Boyd Wagner shoots down his fifth Japanese plane near Vigan, becoming the first American ace of World War II.^[113][114]
  • Imperial Japanese Army Air Force Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa ("peregrine falcon"; Allied reporting name "Oscar") fighters, attack a formation of 12
    Brewster Buffalo fighters over Kuala Lumpur, Malaya, shooting down five of them and damaging four. The only Japanese loss is a Ki-43 that crashes after its wing collapses as it pulls out of a dive.^[115]
  • Aircraft from
    escort aircraft carrier
    -based aircraft contribute to the sinking of a submarine.
  • A Yokosuka E14Y floatplane (Allied reporting name "Glen") launched by the Japanese submarine I-7 conducts a post-strike reconnaissance flight over Pearl Harbor. It is the E14Y's combat debut.^[116]
• December 17–20 – All surviving
  B-17 Flying Fortress bombers of the United States Army Air Forces's Far East Air Force
  are withdrawn from the Philippine Islands to Australia. All other Far Eastern Air Force aircraft are destroyed or captured by the Japanese.
• December 17–26 – Soviet Air Force Frontal Aviation aircraft fly 1,289 combat sorties in support of five Soviet armies driving on Rzhev, claiming 16 German aircraft shot down.^[117]
• December 20 – The
  Nationalist Chinese Air Force's American Volunteer Group, the "Flying Tigers", sees its first combat near Kunming, China.^[118]
• December 21
  • The Luftwaffe's
    Fliegerkorps II begins a steadily escalating bombing and sea mining campaign against Malta with a goal of knocking out British air and naval forces based there.^[119]
  • The German submarine
    Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condors, damaged three more, and driven one off, contributed to the sinking of a German submarine, and greatly interfered with the operations of German submarines against convoys she had escorted, proving the value of escort carrier escort of convoys. As a result, the Allies will begin to commit escort carriers to convoy escort operations in the Atlantic Ocean again in 1943.^[120]
• December 21–22 – Aircraft from the Japanese carriers Hiryū and Sōryū strike Wake Island, which will fall to the Japanese on December 23.^[121]
• December 22 – A radar-equipped Fairey Firefly sinks a German submarine (U-451) at night, the first such victory.
• December 27–28 – 132 British bombers attack Düsseldorf, Germany.^[9]
• December 31
  • Since October 1, the Soviet Union has formed 71 new
    air regiments.^[122]
  • During 1941, German night fighters defending Germany have shot down 421 British bombers, a tenfold increase over 1940.[123]

First flights

• Aeronca L-3
• Arado Ar 232^[124]
• Spring 1941– Nakajima B6N Tenzan ("Heavenly Mountain"), Allied reporting name "Jill"^[125]

January

• Kawanishi H8K (Allied reporting name "Emily")^[126]
• Junkers Ju 288
• January 9 - Avro Manchester Mark III BT308, prototype of the Avro Lancaster heavy bomber^[127]
• January 11 – Polikarpov I-185
• January 29 – Tupolev Tu-2 (NATO reporting name "Bat")

February

• Curtiss O-52 Owl^[128]
• February 2 – Curtiss XP-46A^[129]
• February 18 – Grumman XP-50^[130]
• February 19 – Airspeed Cambridge T2449
• February 25 –
  Messerschmitt Me 321

March

• Kawasaki Ki-60^[131]

April

• Kyushu K10W1
• April 2 – Heinkel He 280^[132]
• April 9 – Piaggio P.111
• April 10 – Nakajima G5N Shinzan ("Mountain Recess"), Allied reporting name "Liz"); first four-engined land-based aircraft designed for the Imperial Japanese Navy and first aircraft built in Japan with retractable tricycle landing gear^[133]

May

• Kawasaki Ki-45 KAI Toryu ("Dragon Slayer"); Allied reporting name "Nick"^[134]
• Kokusai Ki-76 (Allied reporting name "Stella")^[135]
• Nakajima J1N Gekko ("Moonlight"), Allied reporting name "Irving"^[136]
• May 6 – Republic XP-47B, prototype of the P-47 Thunderbolt^[137]
• May 14 – Grumman XP-50
• May 15 – Gloster E.28/39, the first British jet^[39]
• May 26 – Kayaba Ka-1,^[138] the pioneering combat autogyro design.

June

• Brewster XSB2A-1, prototype of the Brewster SB2A Buccaneer and Brewster Bermuda^[139]

July

• July 19 – Beech Model 26, prototype of the Beechcraft AT-10 Wichita^[140]

August

• August 1 – Grumman TBF Avenger
• August 8 – Spencer Air Car^[141]

September

• Polikarpov TIS
• September 18 –
  Curtiss XP-60^[142]

• Kawasaki Ki-61 Hien ("Swallow"), Allied reporting name "Tony"^[143]
• December 5 – Kawanishi E15K Shiun ("Violet Cloud"), Allied reporting name "Norm"^[144]
• December 8 – Nakajima A6M2-N (Allied reporting name "Rufe")^[145]
• December 22
  • Fairey Firefly prototype Z1826
  • Vought XTBU-1, prototype of the Consolidated TBY Sea Wolf^[146]

Entered service

• Imperial Japanese Army Air Force^[147]
• Stinson L-1 Vigilant with the United States Army Air Corps
• Early 1941 –
  Soviet Air Force
• Autumn 1941 –
  Imperial Japanese Army Air Force^[148]
• Late 1941 – Aichi E13A (Allied reporting name "Jake") with the Imperial Japanese Navy^[149]

February

• P-39 Airacobra with 31st Pursuit Group (39th, 40th, and 41st Pursuit Squadrons), United States Army Air Corps

• Mitsubishi G4M (Allied reporting name "Betty") with the Imperial Japanese Navy's 1st Naval Air Corps^[150]
• April 7 – Douglas Havoc night fighter with No. 85 Squadron, RAF^[151]

May

• Northrop N-3PB with RAF's No. 330 (Norwegian) Squadron^[152]

• Imperial Japanese Army Air Force^[153]

• Focke-Wulf Fw 189 with the German Luftwaffe
• Focke-Wulf Fw 190 with the German Luftwaffe
• Imperial Japanese Army Air Force.^[101]

• Bell Airacobra (British export version; U.S. Army Air Forces designation P-400) with No. 601 Squadron, RAF^[154]

November

• de Havilland Mosquito with No. 105 Squadron, RAF

December

• Avro Lancaster with No. 44 (Rhodesia) Squadron, RAF

Retirements

• Avro 621 Tutor by the RAF
• Mid-1941
  • Berliner-Joyce OJ-2 by the United States Navy^[155]
  • Saro London (from front-line service) by the Royal Air Force and Royal Canadian Air Force

May

• Handley Page Heyford by the Royal Air Force; the RAF's last biplane heavy bomber

References