850 B.C.

First record of humans attempting to fly.

1752

Benjamin Franklin uses kite to test theory of lightning and electricity.

1783

First successful hot air balloon voyage by Montgolfier in France.

1900

Zeppelin (German) and Santos-Dumont (Brazilian-French) successfully fly powered dirigibles.

1900-1910

Hundreds of experimental and pioneering flights by humans using kites and gliders, and than powered “biplane” aircraft occured.

Designers:

the Wright Brothers, and Glen Curtiss (American);

Alexander Graham Bell (Canadian);

Geoffrey De Havilland, and Alliot V. Roe [AVRO triplane] (British);

Henry Farman, Ferdinand Ferber, and Voison Brothers (French).

By 1910 all basic aeroplane controls had been developed and adopted... control stick or wheel, vertical rudder, horizontal elevators, wing ailerons and engine throttle.

1903

First powered flight by the Wright Brothers.

* (850 B.C. to 1903 was a total of 2,753 years of humans attempting to fly)

1909

First flight across a large body of water (English Channel) by Bleriot.

1914-1918

Aeroplanes flying combat in World War I were biplanes or triplanes.

1919

First successful pioneering flights across the Atlantic Ocean were conducted in aircraft by Albert Read (American), and John Alcock and Arthur Brown (British), and in an airship/dirigible by the RAF's R-34 which makes the first double crossing - both ways.

1927

Charles Lindbergh flies the Atlantic in 1927.

1932

Amelia Earhart is the first woman to fly the Atlantic.

* (from first powered flight to the start of WWII was just 36 years)

1939-1941

Up to and including the first three years of WWII, the front line combat aircraft of many countries were biplanes with an average speed of 150-250 mph and a range of 200-300 miles. Germany, Japan, America, and Britain, were the first major air forces to transition to the new “modern and revolutionary” mono-winged aeroplanes.

1941

British Naval “Swordfish” biplanes flying from the carrier Ark Royal cripple the German battleship BISMARK with torpedos. Leaders in carrier aviation were first Britain, then America, and then Japan.

1942

three years into WWII is 2,792 years after humans first attempted to fly

...just 39 years after the development of powered flight...

...just 23 years after the first trans-Atantic flight by Read in ...

...just 15 years after Lindbergh flies the Atlanic...

a country is going to send its freshly trained rookie pilots on so-called “routine” ferry flights over freezing water and the desolate icecap of Greenland. Each section of the trans-Atlantic flight is bewteen 700 to 850 miles between airfields.

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