September 30, 1929. At Frankfurt, Germany, Fritz von Opel travels
 just over a mile in the world's first flight of a rocket-powered air-
 plane. The Rak-1 tops eighty-five mph but crashes.
     November 23, 1929. After visiting Dr. Robert H. Goddard, Charles
 A. Lindbergh arranges a grant of $50,000 from the Daniel Guggenheim
 Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics to support Dr. Goddard's work
 with rockets.
     November 29, 1929. Navy Cmdr. Richard E. Byrd, Bernt Balchen,
 Army Capt. Ashley McKinley, and Harold June make the first flight
 over the South Pole. Mr. Balchen is the pilot of the Ford Trimotor,
 Floyd Bennett.
     December 31, 1929. The Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion
 of Aeronautics ends its activities.
     April 12, 1930. Led by Capt. Hugh Elmendorf, nineteen pilots of
 the 95th Pursuit Squadron set an unofficial world record for alti-
 tude formation flying over Mather Field, Calif. The P-12 pilots
 reach 30,000 feet, shattering the old record of 17,000 feet.
     May 3, 1930. Laura Ingalls performs 344 consecutive loops.
 Shortly afterward, she tries again and does 980. In another flight
 during 1930, she does 714 barrel rolls, setting a pair of records
 that few people have cared to challenge.
     May 15, 1930. Ellen Church, a registered nurse, becomes the
 world's first airline stewardess as she serves sandwiches on a
 Boeing Air Transport flight between San Francisco, Calif., and
 Cheyenne, Wyo. She sits in the jumpseat of the Boeing Model 80A.
     October 25, 1930. Transcontinental commercial air service be-
 tween New York and Los Angeles begins.
     March 10, 1931. Air Corps Capt. Ira C. Eaker attempts to set
 the transcontinental speed record in the Lockheed Y1C-17, a special
 version of the civilian Vega. Taking off from Long Beach, Calif.,
 Captain Eaker gets as far as Tolu, Ky., before he has to make a
 forced landing in a field because of air in the fuel lines. Captain
 Eaker had travelled 1,740 miles at an average speed of 237 mph,
 which, if he had been able to complete the flight, would have
 shattered the existing coast-to-coast speed mark.
     September 4, 1931. James H. Doolittle wins the first Bendix
 Trophy transcontinental race, flying the Laird Super Solution from
 Los Angeles to Cleveland with an average speed of 223.058 mph. Total
 flying time is nine hours, ten minutes. He then flies on to New York
 to complete a full flight across the continent.
     September 26, 1931. Keel of the Ranger, first aircraft carrier
 designed and built as such, is laid at Newport News, Va.
     September 29, 1931. Flying in the same aircraft that won the
 last Schneider Cup seaplane race, Royal Air Force Flt. Lt. George
 Stainforth pushes the recognized absolute speed record past 400
 mph as he hits 407.001 mph in the Supermarine S.6b at Lee-on-Solent,
 England.
     October 3-5, 1931. Americans Clyde "Upside Down" Pangborn and
 Hugh Herndon, Jr., make the first nonstop transpacific flight from
 Japan to America, in a Bellanca monoplane. The trip takes forty-
 one hours, thirteen minutes.
     December 22, 1931. Maj. Gen. Benjamin D. Foulois takes the oath
 as Chief of Air Corps.
     August 25, 1932. Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to com-
 plete a nonstop transcontinental flight, Los Angeles, Calif., to
 New York, NY.
     November 19, 1932. National monument to Wilbur and Orville
 Wright is dedicated at Kitty Hawk, N.C.
     April 4, 1933. The Navy dirigible USS Akron (ZRS-4) hits the sea
 during a training flight off the East Coast and breaks up. Of a crew
 of nearly eighty, only three survive. Among the casualties is Rear
 Adm. William A. Moffett, head of the Navy's Bureau of Aeronautics.
     July 15-22, 1933. Famed aviator Wiley Post, flying the Lockheed
 Vega Winnie Mae, becomes the first person to fly around the world
 solo. The 15,596-mile flight takes seven days, eighteen hours,
 forty-nine minutes, thirty seconds at an average speed of 134.5 mph.
     July 18, 1934. Lt. Col. Henry H. "Hap" Arnold leads a flight of
 ten Martin B-10 bombers on a six-day photographic mapping mission
 to Alaska.
     September 4, 1933. Jimmy Wedell sets a world landplane speed
 record of 304.98 mph in the Wedell-Williams racer over Glenview, Ill.
     December 31, 1933. The prototype Soviet Polikarpov I-16 Mosca is
 flown for the first time. When the type enters service in 1934, it
 is the first monoplane fighter to have an enclosed cockpit and fully
 retractable landing gear.
 1934-1939
     February 19, 1934. President Franklin D. Roosevelt issues an
 Executive Order canceling existing airmail contracts because of
 fraud and collusion. The Army Air Corps is designated to take over
 airmail operations.
     May 1, 1934. Navy Lt. Frank Akers makes a blind landing in a
 Berliner-Joyce OJ-2 at College Park, Md., in a demonstration of a
 system intended for aircraft carrier use. In subsequent flights, he
 makes takeoffs and landings between NAS Anacostia, D.C., and
 College Park under a hood without assistance.
     May 19, 1934. The first flight of the Ant-20 Maxim Gorki, at
 this time the world's largest aircraft, is made in the Soviet Union.
 The aircraft was designed by Andrei Tupolev.
     June 1, 1934. Army Air Corps airmail operations are terminated.
     June 18, 1934. Boeing begins company-funded design work on the
 Model 299, which will become the B-17.
     December 31, 1934. Helen Richey, flying a Ford Trimotor from
 Washington, D.C., to Detroit, Mich., becomes the first woman in the
 US to pilot an airmail transport aircraft on a regular schedule.
     February 12, 1935. The Navy airship USS Macon (ZRS-5) crashes
 off the California coast with two fatalities out of a crew of
 eighty-three. This loss effectively ends the Navy's rigid airship
 program.
 End of Part-7===
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