1904 – Birth of Minoru Genda, well-known Japanese military aviator and politician; he later plans the Pearl Harbor attack that led to U.S. military involvement in the Pacific Ocean.
1929 – German Fritz Morzik, flying a BFW M.23B low-winged monoplane, wins the first FAI International Tourist Plane Contest (Challenge 1929) conceived by the Aéro-Club de France.
1944 – First operational use of the Messerschmitt Me-163 Komet, German rocket-powered fighter aircraft, only rocket-powered fighter aircraft ever to have been operational.
1947 – First flight of the de Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver (shown above), a popular single-engined, short-takeoff-and-landing aircraft.
2002 – Death of Louis Wellington “Lou” Schalk, Jr, a U.S. Air Force test pilot; he also was the chief test pilot for Lockheed Corp.’s Skunk Works.
2009 – While practicing for an airshow, two Sukhoi Su-27s of the Russian Knights collided in mid-air during a test flight near Moscow, killing the Knights’ leader, Igor Valentinovitch Tkachenko.