1926 in aviation

Updated on Dec 07, 2024

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This is a list of aviation-related events from 1926:

Events

Award of the Harmon Trophy begins. A set of three trophies is awarded annually to the world's outstanding aviator, aviatrix (female aviator), and aeronaut (balloon or dirigible aviator) for the year, and a fourth trophy (the National Trophy) is awarded to the outstanding aviator for the year in each of the 21 member countries of the International League of Aviators.

Fiat acquires the Società Anonima Aeronautica Ansaldo aircraft manufacturing subsidiary from the Gio. Ansaldo & C. shipbuilding company and combines it with its own Società Italiana Aviazione subsidiary to form a new Società Anonima Aeronautica d'Italia subsidiary for the design and production of aircraft.

The first known reforestation of land by aircraft is carried by airplanes operating from Wheeler Field on Oahu in the Territory of Hawaii.

Summer 1926 – A Lieutenant Jira of Czechoslovakia flies Avia B.9.11 L-BONG 1,800 km (1,100 mi) from Prague to Paris and back at an average speed of 131.2 km/hr (81.5 mph), a notable achievement at the time for an aircraft of the B.9's class.

January

January 6 – Deutsche Luft Hansa is formed by the merger of Deutscher Aero Lloyd and Junkers Luftverkehr.

January 26 – The Plus Ultra, a Dornier Do J hydroplane completes a Trans-Atlantic flight with a crew of Spanish aviators, including Ramón Franco and Julio Ruiz de Alda Miqueleiz.

February

February 12 – Straying two miles (3.2 km) off course while flying a Curtiss Carrier Pigeon for the United States Post Office on the overnight airmail delivery route from Chicago, Illinois, to New York City, pioneering American pilot Art Smith dies when he crashes into a grove of trees near Montpelier, Ohio. He is the second U.S. overnight mail service pilot to die on duty.

March

March 1 - Four Royal Air Force Fairey IIIDs begin a long-distance flight, taking them from Cairo to Cape Town and then on to Lee-on-Solent, England, where they will arrive on June 2.

March 16 - Robert Goddard launches the first liquid-fuelled rocket near Auburn, Massachusetts.

April

April 1 – The Italian airline Società Italiana Servizi Aerei begins operations linking Trieste, Venice, Pavia, and Turin with CANT 10 flying boats.

April 6 – Varney Speed Lines begins operations in the US. It will later become Continental Airlines.

April 7 – The Italian airline Società Anonima Navigazione Aerea (SANA) begins fight operations, offering flying boat service on the Genoa-Rome-Naples-Palermo route.

April 10 – Three United States Army Air Service aircraft take photographs of an eruption of Mauna Loa volcano on the island of Hawaii, providing valuable scientific information.

April 17 – Western Air Express (the future Western Airlines) begins operations with a contract mail flight from Salt Lake City, Utah, to Los Angeles, California, using a Douglas M-2. The airline will begin passenger services a month later.

April 30 – Bessie Coleman, the first licensed African-American female pilot, is killed along with mechanic William Wills, who was piloting the plane, after they crash as a result of a wrench that Wills accidentally left loose getting stuck in the control gears.

May

May 1 – Deutsche Luft Hansa begins the first night passenger airline service, with domestic flights in Germany between Berlin and Konigsberg employing Junkers G 24 aircraft.

May 6 - Flying a Blackburn Dart, Flight Lieutenant Gerald Boyce makes the first night deck landing in history, landing aboard the British aircraft carrier HMS Furious off the south coast of England.

May 9 - Richard Byrd and Floyd Bennett make the first flight over the North Pole in a Fokker VIIa-3m.

May 11–14 - Roald Amundsen makes the first airship flight over the North Pole. The Norge leaves Spitzbergen and arrives in Teller, Alaska three days later.

May 20 – The Air Commerce Act becomes law in the United States. It creates an Aeronautics Branch within the United States Department of Commerce, vesting that entity with regulatory powers to ensure civil air safety, including testing and licensing pilots, issuing certificates to guarantee the airworthiness of aircraft, making and enforcing safety rules, certifying aircraft, establishing airways, operating and maintaining aids to air navigation, and investigating accidents and incidents in aviation. It also directs that airways in the United States be charted for the first time, and assigns the responsibility to chart them to the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey.

June

June 20 - The United States Coast Guard opens the first permanent Coast Guard Air Stations.

June 26 - Flying a Potez 28, Ludovic Arrachart and his brother Paul depart Paris. By the time a broken fuel pipe forces them to land at RAF Shaibah near Basra, Iraq, 26 hours 30 minutes later, they will have set a new world aviation nonstop distance record of 4,313 km (2,680 mi).

June 30 - Alan Cobham sets out on a round trip from England to Australia in a de Havilland DH.50. He will arrive back in London on October 1 and receive a knighthood for his accomplishment.

July

July 2

The United States Army Air Service becomes the United States Army Air Corps.

In accordance with the redesignation of its parent service, the Air Service Tactical School at Langley Field, Virginia, is renamed the Air Corps Tactical School.

July 24 - Two Deutsche Luft Hansa Junkers G.24s leave Berlin to make a round-trip to Beijing. They will return on September 26.

July 26 - During United States Navy experiments with the operation of seaplanes from a submarine equipped with an aircraft hangar, the submarine USS S-1 (SS-105) carries out for the first time a full cycle of surfacing, removing the disassembled seaplane from its hangar, assembling it, launching it, retrieving it, disassembling it, stowing in its hangar, and submerging, on the Thames River at New London, Connecticut.

August

August 18 – Flying in bad weather on a scheduled passenger flight from Paris-Le Bourget Airport outside Paris to Croydon Airport in London with 15 people aboard, the Air Union Blériot 155 F-AIEB Wilbur Wright strikes the roof of a barn and crashes into haystacks near Hurst, Kent, south of Lympne Airport, killing its two crew members and two of its 13 passengers.

September

September 10–17 – The Daily Mail sponsors the third and final light airplane trials at Lympne Aerodrome in Lympne, England. A Hawker Cygnet flown by George Bulman wins. Flying an Avro 581 Avian, Bert Hinkler takes second place in three of the six trials before withdrawing with magneto problems.

September 21 – Hoping to win the Orteig Prize, French World War I ace René Fonck attempts to take off from Roosevelt Field on Long Island, New York, in a severely overloaded Sikorsky S-35 for a nonstop transatlantic flight to Paris. The aircraft loses a wheel on takeoff, fails to gain lift, cartwheels off a bluff, and bursts into flames, killing two of its crew. Fonck survives.

September 26 – The French aviators Dieudonné Costes and René de Vitrolles fly 4,100 km (2,546 miles) from Paris, France, to Assuan, Egypt, in an attempt to break the world distance record.

October

October 2 – During a scheduled passenger flight from Paris-Le Bourget Airport outside Paris to Croydon Airport in London, the Air Union Blériot 155 F-AICQ Clément Ader experiences an in-flight engine fire and attempts an emergency landing at Leigh, Kent. It crashes and is consumed by fire, killing all seven people on board.

October 21 - The British airship R.33 makes further parasite fighter tests, releasing two Gloster Grebes from 2,500 ft (762 m).

October 22 - Curtiss F6C Hawk fighters of the United States Navy's Fighter Squadron 2 (VF-2) surprise U.S. Navy capital ships sortieing from San Pedro Harbor, California, with a simulated dive-bombing attack, diving almost vertically from 12,000 feet (3,658 m). It generally is considered the birth of modern dive bombing.

October 28 – The French aviators Dieudonné Costes and J. Rignot break the world distance record, flying 5,396 km (3,351 miles) from Paris, France, to Jask, Persia, as a part of 19,625-km (12,187-mile) Paris-India-Paris flight.

November

November 6 – Italo Balbo becomes Italy′s Secretary of State for Air.

November 13 - The 1926 Schneider Trophy race is flown at Hampton Roads, Virginia, in the United States. Mario de Bernardi of Italy wins in a Macchi M.39 at 396.698 km/h (246.497 mph), a new world speed record.

November 15 - T. Neville Stack and B. S. Leete leave England in an attempt to reach India by air in a de Havilland DH.60. They will arrive in Karachi on January 8, 1927.

November 17 - Mario de Bernardi breaks his four-day-old world speed record, reaching 416.618 km/h (258.875 mph) in the same Macchi M.39 at Hampton Roads, Virginia, USA.

December

December 22 - Bert Hinkler and John F. Leeming, flying an Avro 585 Gosport biplane G-EBPH, successfully land on and take off from the summit of Helvellyn in England.