June 14-15, 1919. Capt. John Alcock and Lt. Arthur Whitten Brown
 of the United Kingdom make the first nonstop flight across the
 Atlantic in sixteen hours, twelve minutes.
     September 1, 1919. Dive bombing is demonstrated at Aberdeen
 Proving Ground, Md.
     October 30, 1919. The reversible-pitch propeller is tested for
 the first time at McCook Field near Dayton, Ohio.
     February 27, 1920. Maj. R.W. "Shorty" Schroeder sets a world
 altitude record of 33,114 feet in the Packard-LePere LUSAC-11
 biplane over McCook Field.
     June 4, 1920. The Army Reorganization Bill is approved, creating
 an Air Service with 1,514 officers and 16,000 enlisted men.
     June 5, 1920. A provision in the Fiscal Year 1921 appropriations
 bill restricts the Army Air Service to operating from land bases.
     February 22, 1921. American transcontinental airmail service
 begins. The route between San Francisco and Mineola, N.Y., is flown
 in fourteen segments by pilots flying US-built de Havilland DH-4s.
 The first flight, made mostly in bad weather, takes thirty-three
 hours, twenty minutes.
      June 8, 1921. The first flight of an Army Air Service pressur-
 ized cabin airplane occurs.
      July 13-21, 1921. In a series of tests off the mouth of the
 Chesapeake Bay, Army airplanes from Langley Field, Va., sink three
 ships, including the captured German battleship Ostfriesland,
 demonstrating the vulnerability of naval craft to aerial attack.
      September 26, 1921. Sadi Lecointe pushes the recognized absolute
 speed record past 200 mph, as he hits 205.223 mph in the Nieuport-
 Delage Sesquiplane at Ville-sauvage, France.
      November 12, 1921. Wesley May, with a five-gallon can of gaso-
 line strapped to his back, climbs from the wing of one aircraft to
 the wing of another in the first "air-to-air" refueling.
      March 20, 1922. USS Langley (CV-1), the Navy's first aircraft
 carrier, is commissioned in Norfolk, Va. The ship is the converted
 collier Jupiter.
      September 4, 1922. Lt. James H. Doolittle makes the first trans-
 continental crossing in an aircraft in a single day--2,163 miles in
 twenty-one hours, twenty minutes.
      October 17, 1922. The first carrier takeoff in US Navy history
 is made by Lt. V.C. Griffin in a Vought VE-7SF from USS Langley
 (CV-1), at anchor in the York River in Virginia.
      October 18, 1922. Brig. Gen. William H. "Billy" Mitchell becomes
 the first US military pilot to hold the recognized absolute speed
 record, as he sets a mark of 222.97 mph in the Curtiss R-6 at
 Selfridge Field, Mich. This is also the first time the world speed
 record has been certified outside of France.
      May 2-3, 1923. Lts. Oakley G. Kelly and John A. Macready com-
 plete the first nonstop transcontinental flight. The trip from New
 York to San Diego takes twenty-six hours, fifty minutes, three
 seconds in a Fokker T-2.
      September 4, 1923. First flight of the airship USS Shenandoah
 (ZR-1) is made at NAF Lakehurst, N.J. The airship will make fifty-
 seven flights in two years before it is destroyed by a storm near
 Marietta, Ohio.
     February 5, 1924. 2d Lt. Joseph C. Morrow, Jr., qualifies as
 the twenty-fourth and last Military Aviator under the rules set up
 for that rating.
     March 4, 1924. The Army Air Service takes on a new mission:
 aerial icebreaking. Two Martin bombers and two DH-4s bomb the
 frozen Platte River at North Bend, Neb., for six hours before
 the ice clears.
     April 6-September 28, 1924. The Army Air Service completes the
 first circumnavigation of the globe. Four crews in Douglas World
 Cruisers begin the voyage in Seattle, Wash., but only two aircraft
 (Chicago and New Orleans) and their crews complete the trip.
     September 28, 1923. At Cowes, on the Isle of Wight, off Eng-
 land's southern coast, Navy Lt. David Rittenhouse claims the
 Schneider Cup for the United States for the first time. Flying a
 Curtiss CR-3, Lieutenant Rittenhouse wins the prestigious seaplane
 race with an average speed of 177.37 mph.
     October 12-15, 1924. As part of World War I reparations, the
 German zeppelin LZ-126 is flown from Friedrichshafen, Germany, to
 NAF Lakehurst, N.J. The Navy will later christen the airship USS
 Los Angeles (ZR-3).
     October 28, 1924. Army Air Service airplanes break up cloud
 formations at 13,000 feet over Bolling Field, D.C., by "blasting"
 them with electrified sand.
     January 24, 1925. The Navy airship USS Los Angeles (ZR-3), with
 twenty-five scientists and astronomers on board, is used to make
 observations of a solar eclipse.
     February 2, 1925. President Calvin Coolidge signs the Kelly
 Act, authorizing the air transport of mail under contract. This is
 the first major legislative step toward the creation of a US
 airline industry.
     July 15, 1925. The Dr. A. Hamilton Rice Expedition, the first
 group of explorers to use an airplane, returns to the US. The
 expedition, which used a Curtiss Seagull floatplane, discovered
 the headwaters of the Amazon River.
     October 26, 1925. Lt. James H. Doolittle, flying the Curtiss
 R3C-2 floatplane racer, wins the Schneider Cup race in Baltimore,
 Md., with an average speed of 232.57 mph. This marked back-to-back
 wins for the United States and the only time the Army had competed
 in a seaplane race. (Note: The US won the Schneider Cup race in
 1923, and the race was not held in 1924.) The next day, he sets a
 world seaplane record of 245.713 mph over a three-kilometer course.
 End of Part 5
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