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On This Day in Aviation History JUNE 9 th
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1861 - 2 members of the 1st Rhode Island Regiment, James Allen and Dr. William H. Helme, make the 1st U.S. Army trial captive balloon ascent.

1887 - Birth of Edward Gribben, British WWI flying ace

1891 - Patrick Young Alexander made a gas balloon ascent in the company of aeronaut Griffith Brewer: this was the 1st of a number of balloon ascents that would lead to his becoming a licenced balloonist.

1895 - Birth of Marius Jean Paul Elzeard "Marc" Ambrogi, French WWI fighter ace and WWII fighter pilot

1899 - Birth of Edward Dannett Asbury, British WWI flying ace

1910 - 1st aircraft reconnaissance is made by Captain Marconnet and Lieutenant Fequant of the French Army, using a single seat Henri Farman biplane on a 2½ hour, 145 kilometre flight from Camp de Châlons at Mourmelon to Vincennes. Fequart piloted the aircraft while Marconnet, armed with a hand held camera, squeezed into a narrow space between the seat and the engine. During the flight, photographs were taken of roads, railways, towns and the countryside.

1916 - Death of Richard Caswell Saufley, US Navy pioneer aviator, in the crash of his Curtiss Model E hydroplane, while attempting to better his own  altitude and endurance record over Santa Rosa Island.

1917 - Death of Frederick James Harry Thayre, British WWI fighter ace, killed with his observer Francis Richard Cubbon, their F.E.2d aircraft sustaining a direct hit from anti-aircraft fire

1918 - Birth of Jean Délémontez, French aircraft designer. best known for his work with his father-in-law, Édouard Joly, on the Jodel range of light aircraft and his collaboration with Pierre Robin on the Avions Robin aircraft range.

1918 - Death of Walter Alexander Tyrrell, Irish WWI fighter ace, killed in his S.E.5a  by enemy machine gun fire from the trenches.

1918 - Death of Alexandre Paul Leon Madeleine Marty, French WWI flying ace, Killed in action.

1921 - Birth of Forrest M. Bird, American aviator, inventor and biomedical engineer. 

1922 - Birth of John Gillespie Magee, Jr., American aviator and poet. He served in the RCAF during WWII , before the United States officially entered the war. He is most famous for his poem "High Flight"a tribute to the Spitfire and pilots of all generation.

1924 - Georges Pelletier d'Oisy and Lucien-Pierre-Alfred Besin land their Breguet XIV in Tokorasawa near Tokyo after a 120 hrs flight from villacoublay, France.

1928 - 1st airplane flight across the Pacific is made by Charles Kingsford Smith and his crew in the Fokker F.VIIb-3m Southern Cross. They left Oakland, California on May 31 and reach Brisbane via Honolulu and Fiji. The flight takes 83 hours

1930 - Birth of Benjamin L. Abruzzo, American hot air balloonist and businessman.

1938 - The Nicaraguan Air Force is formed as the Fuerza Aérea de la Guarda Nacional.

1942 - Death of Satoshi Yoshino, Japanese navy WWII Fighter ace, While intercepting B-26 Marauders of the 22nd Bombardment Group attacking Lae, he was killed by an escorting P-400 Airacobra.

1942 - Operations Maintop and Salient: an additional 32 Supermarine Spitfires arrive on Malta, flown from the deck of the carrier HMS Eagle.

1944 - 1st flight of The Avro Type 694, better known as the Avro Lincoln, British four-engined heavy bomber. Developed from the Avro Lancaster, the first Lincoln variants were known initially as the Lancaster IV and V, but were renamed Lincoln I and II. It was the last piston-engined bomber used by the Royal Air Force.

1946 - Birth of Francis Andrew "Drew" Gaffney, American doctor who flew aboard a NASA Space Shuttle mission as a Payload Specialist.

1948 - 1st flight of the SNCASE SE-1210, French experimental 4 engine flying-boat,  flying scale model of the proposed SE-1200 transatlantic flying boat.

1948 - Prototype Convair XF-92A, early American delta-wing jet aircraft, makes a short 'hop'.

1949 - 1st flight of the Lockheed EC-121 Warning Star, US Navy and USAF 4 engine early warning radar surveillance aircraft, military version of the Lockheed Constellation

1956 - A Short SB.6 Seamew, British lightweight anti-submarine aircraft crashed during the Sydenham (Belfast) Air Display killing test pilot Walter J. "Wally" Runciman.

1958 - 1st flight of the Agusta AZ8-L, Italian 4 engine conventional low-wing monoplane with tricycle undercarriage and all-metal construction airliner prototype

1958 - Queen Elizabeth II flies into the new Gatwick airport in a de Havilland Heron of the Queen's Flight. The 1st "official" flight to depart Gatwick following the reopening ceremony was a BEA DC-3 operating a charter for Surrey County Council to Jersey and Guernsey. Gatwick was the world's 1st airport with a direct railway link, the 1st to combine mainline rail travel, trunk road facilities and an air terminal building in one unit and  one of the 1st to have an enclosed pier-based terminal

1959 - 1st flight of the Morane-Saulnier MS-880 'Rallye', French single-engined, low-wing monoplane light aircraft.

1959 - 1st flight of the definitive production model , all-weather capability, of The Republic F-105D Thunderchief, US supersonic fighter-bomber

1960 - Death of Semyon Alekseyevich Lavochkin, Soviet aircraft designer

1960 - Death of Ernesto Cabruna, Italian WWI flying ace.

1962 - The U. S. Air Force ejected Zena, a chimpanzee, from a B-58 flying at 45,000 feet at 1,060 mph to test an escape capsule.

1964 - United Airlines Flight 823 Vickers Viscount 745D experienced an uncontrollable fire on board and crashed 2 miles northeast of Parrottsville, Tennessee killing all 39 on board.

1967 - To commemorate Amelia Earhart’s last flight in 1937, Ann Dearing Holtgren Pellegreno takes off a Lockheed Electra 10A from Oakland.

1974 - 1st flight of The Northrop YF-17 (nicknamed "Cobra"), US prototype lightweight fighter aircraft

1976 - Death of Jan Nagórski (Ivan Nagurski), Polish engineer and pioneer of aviation, 1st person to fly an airplane in the Arctic and 1st aviator to perform a loop with a flying boat.

1980 - Soyuz T-2, Soviet manned space flight to the Salyut 6 space station, is back on earth

1980 - Death of Renato Donati, Italian Aviator and record setter

1988 - 1st flight of the Nicollier HN 500 Bengali, French single engine light aircraft prototype.

1994 – An Antonov An-124 carries a 112 tonnes (250,000 lb) diesel locomotive from Ontario, Canada, to Dublin, Ireland.

1995 - Ansett New Zealand Flight 703 de Havilland Canada DHC-8-102 crashed west of the Tararua Ranges and 16 km east of Palmerston North airport, during an instrument approach in bad weather, killing 4 over 21.

1995 - 1st flight of The Eurocopter EC120 Colibri, 5-seat, single-engine, single main rotor, light helicopter. 

2005 – Logan Airport runway incursion: After air traffic controllers at Logan International Airport in Boston, Massachusetts, give them clearance to take off simulatenously on intersectong runways, US Airways Flight 1170, a Boeing 737-3B7 with 109 people on board, and Aer Lingus Flight 132, an Airbus A330-301 with 272 people on board, nearly collide on takeoff. Disaster is averted when the US Airways first officer sees the approaching A330, realizes the aircraft could collide if they both become airborne, and pushes the control column forward to keep the 737 on the ground until the A330 passes 170 feet (52 m) overhead