AVIATION MILESTONES · 1903 TO THE JET AGE How Aviation Crossed Continents and Conquered the World’s Oceans Follow the breakthroughs in aircraft engineering, navigation, endurance, and international aviation that transformed brief experimental flights into global transportation. 1903 FIRST POWERED FLIGHT   →   1919 ATLANTIC CROSSINGS   →   1927 SOLO FLIGHT   →   … Read more

In May 1952, commercial aviation entered a miraculous new era when the British-built de Havilland DH.106 Comet 1 completed its inaugural passenger flight from London to Johannesburg. Flying at double the altitude and twice the speed of the finest propeller-driven airliners of its day, the Comet offered an unprecedented passenger experience: vibration-free cabins, smooth flights … Read more

In the vast chronology of human aviation, few milestones demanded such sheer aerodynamic perfection and human endurance as the quest to fly around the globe without landing and without refueling. For over eight decades following the Wright brothers’ breakthrough at Kitty Hawk, long-distance flights had relied on intermediate staging bases, aerial refueling tankers, or island-hopping … Read more

Aeronautical Historical Dispatch: The Forgotten Transatlantic Pioneer Flight Eight years before Charles Lindbergh captured global acclaim with his solo flight to Paris in 1927, two daring British aviators accomplished what was widely considered impossible. On June 14–15, 1919, Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Whitten Brown climbed into an open-cockpit twin-engine Vickers Vimy bomber in … Read more

Aeronautical Historical Dispatch: The Piercing of the Sonic Wall On the crisp morning of October 14, 1947, over the dry lakebeds of Muroc Army Air Field in the California Mojave Desert, Captain Charles ‘Chuck’ Yeager dropped from the bomb bay of a modified B-29 bomber in the rocket-powered Bell X-1. Igniting all four chambers of … Read more