World Aviation in 1912 - Part 1

Part 2

10 January
Glenn Curtiss flies the first proper flying-boat, a converted Curtiss A2.

February
Jules Vedrine makes the first 100mph flight in his Monocoque Deperdussin.

16 February
Frank Coffyn films New York from the air using a cinema camera while controlling his aircraft with his feet and knees.

17 February
French military aircraft make their first flights in Algeria.

March
The German Aviation Experimental Establishment (DVL) is established at Berlin-Adlershof.

March
The first seaplane competition is held at Monaco.

March
Structural failures lead the French government to ground Blériot monoplanes. Louis Blériot investigates and the ban is lifted after two weeks.

March
The Liore & Olivier aircraft company is founded by French engineers Fernand Liore and Henri Olivier.

1 March
The first parachute jump from an aeroplane, a Benoist biplane, is made over Jefferson Barracks in St Louis, USA, by Captain Albert Berry.

5 March
Bob Fowler completes a west to east coast-to-coast crossing of the USA, from Los Angeles to Jacksonville, after 4 months.

12 March
The French Service de l'Aéronautique de la Marine is formed.

15 March
The newly established Turkish Army Aviation Section receives its first two French-built aircraft.

29 March
The French Aéronautique Militaire is reorganised into three Groupes, based in Lyon, Reims and Versailles.

3 April
American Calbriath P. Rodgers dies when he crashes into the Pacific during a Long Beach air show.

6 April
Belgian M.V. de Jonckheere demonstrates that aeroplanes can follow ships at night as he flies his monoplane in experiments at League Island in California.

16 April
American Harriet Quimby, the first American woman to gain a pilot's certificate, becomes the first woman to cross the English Channel in an aeroplane. She flies from Deal in England to Cap Gris-Nez in France in a Blériot monoplane.

7 May
An American Wright biplane, flown by Lieutenant Thomas De Witt Milling at College Park in Maryland, becomes the first aeroplane to be armed with a machine gun.

9 May
In Sydney, William Hart is fined £20 for causing a herd of cattle to stampede by flying over them.

22 May
A United States Marine Corps (USMC) officer is ordered to commence flying training.

24 May
Anthony Fokker crashes his Goedecker-built B1912 monoplane at Berlin, just 10 days after demonstrating it to the German Army.

30 May
Pioneer aviator Wilbur Wright dies from typhoid fever.

1 June
Lieutenant Hans E. Dons makes the first flight by an aeroplane in Norway, flying a German Start across Oslo Fjord.

2 June
A machine-gun is fired from an aeroplane for the first time. Captain Charles de Forest Chandler of the United States Signal Corps fires a Lewis gun from a Wright Model B biplane piloted by Lieutenant Thomas de Witt Milling at Maryland, USA.

7 June
Pioneer Anglo-French aviator, Hubert Latham, is killed by a buffalo while on safari in Central Africa.
Part 2