Otto-Lilienthal-Museum Anklam

Time Line of Aviation

Compiled by the
Otto-Lilienthal-Museum Anklam

About 2300 BC: Relief of King Etana riding an eagle in the ruins of Ninive (on exhibit in the Museum).
About 750 BC: Emergence of the legend of Daedalus and Icarus.
About 400 BC: The often described pigeon of the Greek mathematician Archytas of Tarant could have been a kite.
220 BC: Records indicate the Chinese used kites as rangefinders.
200 BC: Emergence of the legend of Alexander, in which Alexander of Macedonia flew in the company of some half-starved griffins to the end of the world. This theme turns up frequently (on exhibit in the Museum).
2nd Century BC - 5th Century AD: Large geoglyphs from the Nazca culture ("earth drawings" up to several kms in length) are preserved in the high desert of Peru. A new hypothesis suggests they are prehistoric take-off and landing sites for kites or hang gliders.
10th Century AD: The glider-kite is presumed to have gained usage around the Pacific. It was probably manned and used for military, religious and ceremonial reasons.
1247 AD: The Mongolian army used lighted kites in the battle at Liegnitz.
1282 AD: Marco Polo reports manned and ritual kite ascents.
1316 - 1390 AD: Albert of Saxony, Bishop of Halberstadt, holds the opinion that air could carry a reasonably constructed machine as water can carry a ship (Archimedes principle).
1486 - 1513 AD: Technical and mathematical flight studies of Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519 AD). Designs for a parachute, helicopter, and ornithopter were found in his notes, as well as studies of airflows and streamlined shapes. Obviously Leonardo was the first to understand the mechanics of the bird flight.
1496 AD: The Italian Mathematician Giambattista Danti is supposed to have flown from a tower. There are many reports of supposed flights and attempts to fly in many countries. In the Middle Ages the ability to fly was attributed by popular belief to saints and witches.
About 1500 AD: Hieronymus Bosch shows in his triptych "The Temptation of the Saint Anthony" two fighting airships above a burning town, among other flight scenes.
1558 AD: Giambattista della Porta publishes a theory and a construction manual for a kite.
1644 AD: The Italian physicist Evangelista Toricelli manages to give proof of atmospheric pressure. He also produces a vacuum.
1654 AD: The physicist and mayor of Magdeburg, Otto von Guericke, measures the weight of air and demonstrates his famous "Magdeburger Halbkugeln" (hemispheres of Magdeburg): 16 horses are unable to pull apart two completely airless hemispheres that stick to each other only because of the external air pressure.
1670 AD: The Jesuit Francesco Lana de Terzi describes in his treatise "Prodomo" a vacuum-airship-project. This is considered to be the first realistic, technical plan for an airship. (on exhibit in the Museum). Lana writes: "God will never allow that such a machine be built…because everybody realises that no city would be safe from raids…"
1678 AD: Reported flight of the French locksmith Besnier with a flapping wing machine (on exhibit in the museum).
1680 AD: The Italian physicist Alphonso Borelli shows in his treatise "movements of animals" that the flapping of wings with the muscle power of the human arm cannot be successful.
1687 AD: Isaac Newton (1642 - 1727) published the "Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica", the basics of classical physics. In book II he published the theoretical derivation of the basic drag equation.
17th Century AD: The kite is popular during the century.
1709 AD: Airship-privilege and Montgolfière experiments by Lourenco de Gusmao in Lisbon (on exhibit in the Museum).
1716 AD: Well thought-out glider-project of the Swedish scholar Emanuel Swedenborg. The bases for his construction are bird flight and the glider kite.
1738 AD: In his "Hydrodynamica" the Swiss scholar Daniel Bernoulli (1700 - 1782) formulates the principle of the conservation of energy for gases (Bernoulli's Law), the relationship between pressure and velocity in fluid flow.
1746: The English military engineer Benjamin Robins (1707 - 1751) invented among others a whirling arm apparatus in order to determine drag.
1766: The British chemist Henry Cavendish determines the specific weight of hydrogen gas.
1772: Abbé Desforges tries out unsuccessfully, a flying apparatus with a basket and oars made of bird feathers.
1777: In St. Louis the prisoner Dominikus Dufort jumps with a parachute garment off a high building and is rewarded with a spontaneous collection of money.
1781: The Italian scientist Tiberiua Cavallo, living in England, sends up soap bubbles filled with oxygen.
1783: Sebastian Lenormand does several parachute jumps from the tower of the observatory in Montpellier.
June 5, 1783: Rise of an unmanned, hot-air-balloon (Montgolfière) of the brothers Montgolfier in Vivarais, France.
August 27, 1783: Rise of an unmanned, experimental hydrogen-balloon in Paris (built by Prof. Charles and the Robert brothers).
September 19, 1783: A duck, a cock, and a sheep were the first living creatures to fly in a Montgolfière in Versailles.
October 15, 1783: Pilatre de Rozier and Marquis d'Arlandes ascend with a Montgolfière that is tied to the ground in Paris.
November 21, 1783: J. P. Pilatre de Rozier and Marquis d'Arlandes make the first free flight of nine kilometers in the untethered Montgolfière in Paris.
December 1, 1783: Prof. Charles and his assistant Robert fly the first hydrogen-filled balloon (Charliere). On his second flight, Prof. Charles reaches an altitude of 2,700 m in Vivarais.
1784: Pilâtre de Rozier and the chemist Proust rise in a Montgolfière to 4,000 m.
1784: Airship project of Jean Baptiste Meusnier to explore unknown areas with an oblong balloon, Ballonet with an airscrew powered with muscle power (on exhibit in the Museum).
September 19, 1784: The brothers Robert and Colin Hullin ride in a balloon over 186 km from Paris to Beuvry.
January 7, 1785: Jean-Pierre Blanchard and the American meteorologist John Jeffries cross the English Channel from Dover to Guines in a hot air balloon.
June 15, 1785: Pilâtre de Rozier and Piére Romain crash with their balloon as they begin crossing the English Channel and become the first casualties in the history of aviation. History records Pilâtre de Rozier as the first human to fly and the first to die in an aviation accident.
January 9, 1793: Blanchard made the first balloon ascent in North America, launching from the Washington Prison Yard in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and landing in Gloucester County, New Jersey, while carrying the first airmail letter. The flight was observed by President George Washington.
1793: Military use of a captive balloon at the siege of Mainz.
April 2, 1794: Establishment of the first airship company in the French army.
October 22, 1797: André-Jaques Garnerin jumps from a balloon with a parachute and becomes "official French aeronaut of the state".
1799: The Englishman Sir George Cayley (1773 - 1857) sketched a glider with a rudder unit and an elevator unit (presented in the exhibition). His manuscript is considered to be the starting point of the scientific research on flying "heavier than air flying machines." It was Cayley who helped to sort out the confusion of that time. …"He knew more than any of his predecessors … and successors up to the end of the 19th century." - Orville Wright. Even so, his ideas did not affect further development.
Around 1800: Francisco Goya shows in his etching "The Art of Flying," people with man-made wings, which are to be moved by the arms and legs. The flyers are shown in great detail from different views.
July 18, 1803: Etienne Gaspar Robertson and Lhoest ascent from Hamburg to 7,280 m.
October 3-4, 1803: The Frenchman André-Jaques Garnerin covered a distance of 395 km from Paris to Clausen with his Montgolfière.
August/September 1804: The Physicists Joseph-Lois Gay-Lussac and Jean Baptiste Biot started with scientific measurements and disproved the thesis that the earth's pull decreases with height.
1804: J. Kaiserer made the suggestion of making a Montgolfière maneuverable with the help of tamed eagles.
1804: Sir George Cayley successfully tested a hand-lunched glider with moveable control surfaces similar to a modern-configuration airplane (presented in the exhibition).
1807: Jakob Degen, a watchmaker from Vienna, did experiments with a device with valve flap flapping wings (presented in the exhibition).
1808: J. Degen tries to combine a Montgolfière with the flapping wings.
September 1809: Sir George Cayley published his seminal paper "On Aerial Navigation," publishing for the first time the scientific principles of heavier-than-air flight.
May 31, 1811: Albrecht Ludwig Berblinger, the "tailor of Ulm" crashes with his flying machine that is a copy of J. Degen's into the Danube. It was presumably a workable hang glider. (presented in the exhibition)
July 19, 1812: Usage of lamp gas for the filling of a Montgolfière (Charles Green).
7th and 8th of November in 1836: Flight with a coal gas Montgolfière by Charles Green covering a distance of 722 km from London to Weilburg with passengers Holland and Mason.
1838: The American John Wise introduces the ripping panel, which is still used today. The ripping panel is the solution to the problem when the Montgolfière were dragged along the ground by the wind when landing and had to be stopped with the help of anchors.
1839: Charles Green and the astronomer Spencer Rush rise to 7,900 m in a free balloon.
November 1842: The English engineer William Samuel Henson makes the first complete drawing of a power driven aeroplane with steam engine drive. The patent follows the works of Cayley. The English House of Commons rejects the motion for the formation of an "Aerial Transport Company" with great laughter (presented in the exhibition).
12th and 25th of July in 1849: Austrian Montgolfières used for the first time to bomb a city, Venice.
October 7, 1849: The Frenchman Francisque Arban flew over the Alps in a free balloon (Marseille-Subini near Turin).
1849: Sir George Cayley builds the first man-carrying triplane, which was towed like a kite down a slope. Another successful monoplane flight occurs in 1853 with Cayley's coachman as the pilot.
September 24, 1852: The airship powered with a steam engine of the English engineer Henry Giffard reaches a speed of approximately 10 km/h (presented in the exhibition).
1852: Formation of the first society for promoting aerial navigation (Societe Aerostatique de France).
1857: The French brothers du Temple de la Croix apply for a patent for a power-driven aeroplane after successful attempts with models.
1857: The French Captain Jean Marie Le Bries makes attempts to fly after studying albatross flight. It is said that his attempts were successful. A photograph is evidence of his flying apparatus.
1858: The French airman Nadar takes the first aerial photographs.
July 1-2, 1859: John Wise and 3 companions complete a Montgolfière flight over a distance of 1,292 km (St. Louis, Missouri - Henderson, New York - USA).
September 5, 1862: The aeronaut Coxwell and the English physicist Glaisher reach, after a dramatic take-off, a height of 9,000 m.
1865: Jules Verne describes in his novel "The Journey to the Moon" the launch of a rocket from Cape Canaveral, where many years later, U. S. space flights actually start.
1865: The Frenchman d'Esterno writes in his book "About the flight of birds": "Gliding seems to be characteristic for heavy birds; there are no odds that humans can not do the same with a fair wind."
1865: The French Artist and farmer Louise Pierre Mouillard makes a successful attempt to fly. After years of studies about bird flight he publishes his book "L'Empire de l'Air" in 1881. He thinks that imitation of gliding and sailing flight of birds is possible, but not the imitation of the flapping of wings.
1867: Henry Giffard installs a huge captive balloon for 20 passengers at the World Exposition in Paris.
1868: M.Boulton applies for an English patent for the use of a wing aileron.
1868: First exhibition of aviation in London's Crystal Palace.
1870/71: Franco-Prussian War: In besieged Paris, 66 Montgolfières are built in order to pass over the ring of besieging forces.
1871: The Frenchman Alphonse Pénaud builds a free-flying flight model with rubber motor drive (presented in the exhibition).
1871: The Englishmen Wenham and Browning do air flow experiments in a wind tunnel.
February 2, 1872: The French Navy-engineer Dupuy de Lome reaches a speed of 9 to 11 km/h with his muscle powered airship. (presented in the exhibition)
December 13, 1872: The German engineer Paul Haenlein tests the first airship with a gas engine in Brünn. The airship can reach a speed of 19 km/h. The tests were stopped because of a shortage of funds.
July 5, 1874: The Belgian Vincent de Groof is killed in an accident as he tries to fly with flapping wings.
1874: Otto and Gustav Lilienthal do lift- and drag measurements of wing airfoils. The results were published in 1889. Their research included the advantages of the curved surface.
1875: The Englishman Thomas Moy tests a tied down, power driven aeroplane with steam engine drive and a wing span of 4 m.
April 15, 1875: The scientific flight of the Montgolfière "Zenith" to 8,000 m ends in the death of two aeronauts and the deafness of Gaston Tissandier.
1876: The Frenchmen Penaud and Gauchot apply for a patent for a power-driven aeroplane with a device for drawing in the undercarriage, with wings with upward dihedral and a stick control.
1877: First flight of a steam-driven helicopter model (Forlanini).
1879: The Frenchman Victor Tatin builds a power-driven aeroplane model with two propellers and a compressed air motor. The model made successful starts off the ground.
1881: The Russian Alexander Fjodorowitsch Moshaiski gets the patent for a power driven aeroplane with a steam engine.
1882: The Berlin-based "German Society for Promoting Aviation" first publishes a magazine, the "Zeitschrift für Luftschiffahrt" (Magazine of Aviation).
1883: The German Gottlieb Daimler invents the high speed internal combustion engine, which is suitable for aviation because of its good proportion between power and weight.
1883/84: Airships with electric engines (Tissandier brothers, Renard and Krebs). The airship of Renard and Krebs flew for the first time in a full circle and landed on the starting point on August 9th (presented in the exhibition).
1884: The Englishman Horatio F. Philipps receives a patent for curved profiles of wings.
September 12 -13, 1886: The Frenchmen Hervé and Alluard make a Montgolfière flight of over 24 hours.
1889: Otto Lilienthal publishes in his book "Der Vogelflug als Grundlage der Fliegekunst" (Bird Flight as the Basis of Aviation), measurements of wings, with so called polar diagrams, which are our concept of description of airfoils even today. The book gives test results showing the advantages of a cambered wing. (reprint available)
October 9, 1890: The Frenchman Ader's aeroplane "Eole" takes off.
1891: Otto Lilienthal flew over 25 meters. These flights are considered to be the first safe, repeatable glides in history and his method "from jump to flight" is considered as the only possibility for learning flying.
1893: The Australian Hargrave demonstrates a box kite at an aeronautical congress in Sydney (presented in the exhibition). It becomes an example for several scientific kites and aeroplane constructions.
1893: First experiments of the Englishman Philipps with a 50-wing-plane. Later, a larger version of four banks of slats failed to get off the ground.
December 4, 1894: The German meteorologist Berson climbs to 9,155 m.
1894: The large aeroplane of the American H. S. Maxim is damaged in taxi tests, which showed the possibility to achieve take-off. After that he stopped his experiments, which had already cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars.
1894: Otto Lilienthal goes with his "Normal-apparatus" in the first serial production of an aircraft. With different glider designs, he covers distances up to 250 meters.
1894: Octave Chanute's book "Progress in Flying Machines," which is a summary of many articles published in the "American Engineer and Railroad Journal," is a comprehensive account on the stage of aviation development worldwide. (Reprint available)
1895 to 1899: The English engineer Percy Sinclair Pilcher works successfully on gliding and power flight (Exhibition area I). He was killed in an accident on the 30th of September in 1899 at a gliding performance.
May 6, 1896: The American Prof. Samuel Pierpont Langley does the first flight with a steam engine aeroplane model over 1 km distance.
August 9, 1896: Otto Lilienthal crashes during a routine flight in the hills of Stölln and dies next day because of a spinal injury.
June 1896: The railway engineer Octave Chanute organises a flyer camp at Lake Michigan. A replica of a Lilienthal-glider and a biplane built by Chanute were tested, and this was the basis for the further development of flight technique (on exhibit in the Museum).
1896: The Germans August von Parseval and Bartsch von Sigsfeld invent the kite balloon useable during strong wind for reconnaissance.
June 11, 1897: S. A. Andrée, N. Strindberg and K. Fraenkel start at Spitzbergen with a free balloon for their North Pole expedition. They were found dead in 1930. It was possible to develop their exposed film.
June 12, 1897: Friedrich Hermann Wölfert and his mechanic are killed in an accident when their airship powered by petrol caught on fire at a demonstration at the Tempelhof field.
November 3, 1897: Flight of an Aluminium-Airship designed by Hungarian David Schwarz in Berlin.
From 1900 to December 17, 1903: Gliding, wind tunnel, control, and light-weight engine design experiments of the Wright brothers (USA), lead to the first successful powered flight of a controllable, heavier-than-air aircraft.
July 2, 1900: First flight of metal airship of Ferdinand, Earl of Zeppelin.
July 31, 1901: The German meteorologists Berson and Süring reach 10,800 m with a free balloon.
August 14, 1901: The German-American Gustav Weißkopf is reported to have made the first stable engine flight over a distance of half a mile in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The flight is disputed in the history of aviation and did not have an effect on the development of flight.
October 19, 1901: The Brazilian Alberto Santos-Dumont starts with his airship "Nr. 6" from St. Cloud, flew around the Eiffel Tower and comes back to his starting point within 30 minutes. These were the conditions for winning the Deutsch-Award, which included a prize of 100,000 Francs.
1901: The seaplane of the Austrian W. Kress is destroyed during take-off.
1901: First flights of a power-driven aeroplane model with a petrol engine (Prof. Langley, USA).
1901: The Wright Brothers optimise their wings with the help of wind tunnel measurements.
1903: The Russian Konstantin Ziolkowski deduces the Basic Rocket Equation in his article "Explorations of the outer space with the help of reaction engines".
August 18, 1903: Karl Jatho does short air jumps with a power-driven aeroplane near Hannover.
October 8 and December 8, 1903: Prof. Samuel Pierpont Langley's power-driven aeroplane crashes at both attempts to fly after launching from a catapult off a boat in the Potomac River at Washington, DC.
December 17, 1903: The four successful flights by the Wright Brothers in the sand dunes near Kitty Hawk (North Carolina) are today considered the beginning of powered flight. The fourth and longest flight lasted 59 seconds. While preparing for another flight, a wind gust turned the plane over and damaged it. This "Flyer I" never flew again. (model on exhibit in the Museum).
September 20, 1904: Wilbur Wright flew in a circle for the first time. In order to make the take-offs easier, the Wrights developed a catapult.
October 14, 1905: Foundation of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), which is still active in Paris today.
October 4, 1905: Orville Wright few for 33 minutes and 17 seconds in Dayton, Ohio (USA).
1905: In Santa Clara (California) Daniel Maloney flew for 20 minutes with a glider after he started from a Montgolfière at 1,220 meters height. He crashed during one of the following launchings.
1905: The engineer Léger's helicopter lifts a person vertically into the air in Monaco.
November 12, 1906: Santos-Dumont, who already caused a stir with his one-man-airship in 1901, flew his unusual aircraft over a distance of 220 meters in Paris. His aeroplane combined the Wright's tail-first machine with Hargrave's box kite.
1906: "Swabia-drive" of the Zeppelin-airship LZ III. The airship flew 350 km in eight hours.
1906: First Gordon-Bennett free balloon race. Initially the race was open for all aircraft. But only the balloons managed to cover great distances.
August 5, 1908: The Zeppelin-airship LZ IV burned in Echterdingen.
September 9, 1908: Orville Wright flew 1 hour 3 minutes and 15 seconds.
October 30, 1908: Henry Farman made the first cross-country flight with a power-driven aeroplane from Bouy to Reims (27 km in 20 minutes).
December 18, 1908: Wilbur Wright ascended to 115 meters in Auvours.
December 31, 1908: Wilbur Wright flew 2 hours and 20 minutes in Auvours.

July 25, 1909: The Frenchman L. Blériot crossed the English Channel with his successful power-driven aeroplane "Blériot XI" from Calais to Dover.
July - October 1909: International Exhibition of Aviation in Frankfurt/Main (ILA - in every second year in Berlin nowadays).
October 30, 1909: Hans Grade won the "Lanz-Preis der Lüfte" (Lanz-Award of Winds) - 40,000 RM for 2 km flown by a German pilot in a German aeroplane.
November 16, 1909: Foundation of the first Air Transport Company in the world, the DELAG (German Aviation Company).
1909: First flight-weeks in Berlin-Johannisthal and Frankfurt/Main.
January 7, 1910: The Frenchman Hubert Latham is the first pilot to reach 1,000 meters.
March 28, 1910: Henry Fabre flew the first successful seaplane.
1910: First night flights.
1910: Races between aeroplanes and cars are only won by racing cars.
April 14, 1910: Louis Paulhan flew 146 km in a straight route from Orleans to Trois.
July 9, 1910: The Frenchman Léon Morane sets a new speed record of 106 km/h.
September 23, 1910: The Peruvian Geo Chavez flew with the Blériot-monoplane over the Alps from Brig (Switzerland) to Domodossola (Italy) at a height of 2,200 meters. He dies in the failed landing.
1910: Hugo Junkers received a patent for his thick wing/all-wing type aeroplane.
1911: Claude Dornier built the first metal aircraft.

April 12, 1911: Pierre Prier flew non-stop from London to Paris in less than 4 hours.
October 24, 1911: Orville Wright sails with a glider 9 minutes and 45 seconds in the dunes near Kitty Hawk (North Carolina).
March 1, 1912: Albert Berry does the first parachute jump out of an aeroplane in St. Louis (USA).
April 24, 1913: O. Gilbert flew over a distance of 825 km from Villacoublay to Vitoria (8 hours and 23 minutes).
September 1, 1913: The Frenchman Adolphe Pégoud does the first upside-down flight.
September 9, 1913: Prevost reaches a speed of 204 km/h with the "Deperdussin-racing aeroplane".
December 11, 1913: First flight of the Russian large aeroplane "Ilja Murometz" (4 engines, 4.5 t lift off mass, 2 crew members, 10 passengers).
December 13-17, 1913: The German balloonist Hugo Kaulen stays in the air with his free balloon for 87 hours. This record lasted until 1935.
February 8-10, 1914: Berliner, Haase and Nikolai fly 3,053 km with their free balloon from Bitterfeld to Perm. This record lasted until 1950.
July 10-11, 1914: The German Reinhold Böhm flew with his Albatross-biplane 24 hours and 12 minutes without refueling and without a stopover. This one-man-flight record lasted until 1927.
1914 to 1918: First World War: Aviation changes the theater of war in a twofold way:
- The very young invention "Aeroplane" turns the sky into a new battlefield. About 20,000 flyers, most of the trained pilots, die.
- Airships raise the clear distinction between frontline and hinterland. The civilian population far behind the frontline becomes the new target.
November 21-24, 1917: Journey through Africa with the Zeppelin-airship L 59. 6,757 km are flown in 96 hours (average speed 71km/h).
June 14, 1919: The Englishman J. Alcock and A. W. Brown cross the Atlantic with the bomber "Vickers EB.27 Vimy" - 8 years prior to the famous flight of Lindbergh. Comment of Alcock: "Yesterday I was in America, and I am the first man in Europe to say that."
July 2-6 and 10-13, 1919: The English airship "R 34" crosses the Atlantic Ocean (England - USA - England).
August 1, 1919: A kite reaches a height of 9,750 m in the meteorological observatory at Lindenberg (near Berlin). This world height record is valid till this day.
August 24, 1919: Opening of air traffic between Friedrichshafen and Berlin (Airship "Bodensee").
1919: The US-American R. H. Goddard publishes his essay "A method for Reaching Great Height" a standard work of space flight literature.
1919: On the basis of the Peace Treaty of Versailles a grounding order and a prohibition for building aeroplanes is issued in Germany. These are modified several times in the following years.
July 17, 1920: Beginning of a Gliding-and Sailing Competition on the Wasserkuppe (Rhön). In the following years the yearly "Rhön Competition" became the beginning of today's sailing flight. "Sailing flight is definitely the best thing the Germans got out of a lost war." - D. Vogt
1922: Hermann Oberth submits his dissertation, which was rejected as "too fantastic". The dissertation was published in 1923 as "The Rocket to Planetary Spaces". The book is one of the major works in space flight history.
October 12-15, 1924: Transportation of the Zeppelin-Airship "LZ 126" (ZR III "Los Angeles") to America under guidance of H. Eckener.
May 11-14, 1926: R. Amundsen flew with his airship "Norge" over the North Pole (Spitzbergen - North Pole - Alaska).
May 20-21, 1927: The American post office aviator Charles A. Lindbergh wins a prize that was announced in 1919 for the direct flight from New York to Paris with his single-engine Ryan RYN, the "Spirit of St. Louis". Overnight, Lindbergh becomes famous the world over.
July 12, 1929: First flight of the Dornier Do X, built in a Swiss factory on Lake Constance. In the design process, a one-to-one wooden mock-up, the first in aviation history, was built. The twelve-engine Do-X was the largest aircraft ever built until that time and carried 169 passengers. It held the record until the U.S. Lockheed Constitution lifted 168 passengers and a crew of 11 in 1949, but only two aircraft were built and both were scrapped because there was no airline interest. The Do X retained the record for over forty years until the Boeing 747 entered service in 1970.
August 8-29, 1929: The airship LZ 127 "Graf Zeppelin" flew 34,200 km around the world in four stages with an average speed of 114 km/h. (Friedrichshafen - New York (Lakehurst) - Friedrichshafen - Tokio - Los Angeles - Lakehurst - Friedrichshafen). By request of the main sponsor, the publisher W. C. Hearst, the trip started and ended with a rounding of the Statue of Liberty.
May 27, 1931: The Swiss Prof. August Piccard and his assistant Kipfer ascend with a stratosphere-balloon to 15,781 m. They start in Augsburg and land on a glacier in Austria.
August 29, 1931: The airship LZ 127 "Graf Zeppelin" opens the air traffic between Germany and Brazil.
January 1934: The stratosphere-balloon "Ossoaviachim I" of the Soviet Union pilots Fedossenko, Wassenko and Usyskin ascends to 22,000 m.
May 6, 1937: The fire catastrophe of the Zeppelin-Airship LZ 129 "Hindenburg" ends the intercontinental airship service.
June 20, 1939: The "Heinkel He 176" flew as the first aeroplane powered exclusively with a rocket engine.
July 6, 1939: Flight without engine over a distance of 746 km from Moscow to Otradnoje. Olga Klepikowa's flight with a soaring plane was world record.
August 27, 1939: First flight of a aeroplane with jet engine (He 178) near the Heinkelwerke in Rostock (test pilot: Erich Warsitz).
February 25, 1941: First flight of Messerschmitt's cargo soaring glider Me-321 "Gigant" (55m wing span, 35 t weight).
May 5, 14/1941: Flight of the first English jet aircraft Gloster E28/29.
October 3, 1942: A rocket A4, the later "Repayment Weapon 2" flew from Peenemünde/Island of Usedom 190 km in 296 seconds. The rocket flew at five times the speed of sound to an altitude of 84.5 km, leaving the stratosphere.
July 4, 1943: First flight of an engineless aeroplane dragged by a power driven aeroplane over the Atlantic (5,600 km).
September 22-24, 1943: Ernst Jachmann flew his single-seat glider for 55 hours and 51 minutes in upward wind currents.
August 6, 1945: The bomber B 29 "Enola Gay" transports the Uranium-235-bomb "Little Boy" to Hiroshima, a new aviation-based dimension of war, again.
September 29-October 1, 1946: Th. D. Davies and crew fly with a Lockheed P2V-1 18,080 km in a straight route. (Perth, Australia - Columbus, Ohio USA)
October 14, 1947: The American Charles Jaeger exceeds the speed of sound with the Bell XI.
October 25-28, 1950: S. Sinowjew, S. Gaigerow and M. Kirpitschew fly with the free balloon "UdSSR-WR-79" 3 160 km in 84 hours.
March 20, 1951: Patent for flexible wings: In 1948, the NASA-engineer Francis Melvin Rogallo applies for a patent for a different delta-airfoil. It was tested by NASA as a landing system for space modules until the Gemini Program. The System is the next decisive step in development from Lilienthal's gliders to today's hang gliding (presented in the exhibition).
October 4, 1957: Sputnik-I the first man-made satellite launched into orbit, reaching a height of 800 km. Sputnik-2 with the dog Laika on board, is launched on the 3rd of November. Laika did not survive.
April 12, 1961: Yuri Gagarin (Soviet Union) becomes the first human in space in the "Wostock-1".
1963: John Dickenson/Australia used an A-Frame for the control of a Hang glider.
January 3-24, 1963: Sailing flight world championship in Argentina: The discipline "free route" will not be held in the future because the performances are too lengthy (distance reached by the winner: 716 km).
March 2, 1969: First flight of the first supersonic airliner "Concord"
July 20, 1969: The astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin (USA) are the first humans who set foot on another celestial body - the moon.
November 18, 1971: The Soviet lunar module "Lunochod" lands on the earth satellite.
April 11, 1973: The American Mike Harker flew with a hang glider from the south face of the Zugspitze, which measures 2,000 m in height down into the valley. This sensational flight with this new aviation device made a breakthrough in Europe.
September 1-12, 1976: First world championship for hang gliding in Kössen/Tyrol.
August 12-18, 1978: The Americans Abruzzo, Anderson and Newman cross the Atlantic in a Montgolfière (USA-France).
June 12, 1979: The muscle-powered aircraft "Gossamer Albatross" crosses the English Channel (36 km in 2 h, 49 min).
1979: German Test Pilot Hanna Reitsch's last record flight was an 800 km glider round trip from Pennsylvania down the Appalachian mountains. She died of a heart attack a few months later at 67 years old.
1980: Engineless hang glider flight in the Sierra Nevada Mountains (USA), soaring to over 5,180 meters and traveling more than 160 km by George Worthington.
April 12, 1981: A new technology combines aviation with astronautics. The space shuttle "Columbia" starts at Cape Canaveral.
February 7, 1984: The US-Astronaut Bruce McCandless floats free in space. Gas jets attached to his backpack allow him to do maneuvers within a radius of 100 meters and to return to the space shuttle "Challenger".
December 23, 1986: Flying around the world non-stop and without refueling was the last record to break. The American pilots, Dick Rutan and Jenna Yeager complete the flight in their 3-bodied experimental, composite airplane, "Voyager." (On display in the entrance of the National Air and Space Museum Washington, DC) After the nine day flight and covering 40,000 km, they landed at their starting point at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The "U.S. News & World Report" writes about "the last great adventure in aviation"!
April 23, 1988: New world record in muscle-powered flight on the traces of a legend: The Greek professional cyclist K. Kanellopouios flies with a muscle-powered aircraft designed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology "Daedalus 88", which weighs 32 kg, 119 km from Crete to the Aegean island Santorini.
March 1-21, 1999: Again a "last adventure of aviation": The Swiss Bertrand Picard and the Englishman Brian Jones fly successfully fly around the world in a balloon without propulsion, in a so-called Roziere (Combination of a helium- and a hot-air balloon). The key to their success was the "jet-stream", air current over 10,000 meters high with speeds up to 300 km/h.
August 13, 2001: Flight on the edge atmosphere: The unmanned NASA solar airplane Helios flew a height world record of 29.413 m. 14 electric motors and a wing span of 75.3 metres allowed this flight.
September 11, 2001: Using four hijacked commercial airliners, nineteen suicide bombers coordinated an attack on symbolic buildings in New York and Washington, D.C. that resulted in over 3,000 fatalities. Again, aviation is used as a means for a cause, a symbol, or justification for an event that changed the way of life and military strategies in every country on Earth.
June 18 to July 2, 2002: American Steve Fossett flew alone around the world in a hot air balloon. The balloon named "Bud Light Spirit of Freedom" carried a 2,1 * 1,7 m nacelle.
April, 2011: The company Festo presented at the Hanover Fair the Smartbird, a fully controllable artificial bird with wings drive. With two-meter wingspan and a weight of 0.45 kg, it requires a power of 23 watts.
March 2015 to July 2016: Circumnavigation of the Solar Impuls 2, the first solar powered aircraft. The flight of the Swiss Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg led in 17 stages from Abu Dhabi over China, Japan, the USA, Spain and Egypt back to Abu Dhabi, with a more than 9-month repair break in Hawaii.

Time Line of Aviation

Compiled by the Otto-Lilienthal-Museum Anklam

Compiled by the
Otto-Lilienthal-Museum Anklam