* 1949 – Initial flight of the de Havilland Comet, the first jet-powered airliner.

* 1945 – World War II: a defecting German pilot delivers a Messerschmitt Me 262A-1, the world's first operational jet-powered fighter aircraft, to the Americans, the first to fall into Allied hands.

While the Soviet Union had the technology to create a jet-powered strategic bomber comparable to Boeing's B-52 Stratofortress, they instead produced the Tupolev Tu-95 Bear, powered with four Kuznetsov NK-12 turboprops, mated to eight contra-rotating propellers ( two per nacelle ) with supersonic tip speeds to achieve maximum cruise speeds in excess of 575 mph, faster than many of the first jet aircraft and comparable to jet cruising speeds for most missions.

However for the second half of the war, Messerschmitt turned almost entirely to jet-powered designs, producing the world's first operational jet fighter, the Me 262 Schwalbe (“ Swallow ”).

The first functional jetplane was the Heinkel He 178 ( Germany ), flown by Erich Warsitz in 1939, followed by the world's first operational jet aircraft, the Me 262, in July 1942 and world's first jet-powered bomber, the Arado Ar 234, in June 1943.

* KC-135 Stratotanker, first jet-powered aerial refueling tanker

His firm also produced the first jet-powered fighter to enter service — the Messerschmitt Me 262, although Messerschmitt himself did not design it.

Geoffrey carried out the first flights of the Mosquito and Vampire and was killed in 1946 flying the jet-powered DH 108 Swallow while diving at or near the speed of sound.

When applied to the jet-powered Mig-15, its maximum speed of outclassed the straight-winged American jets and piston-engined fighters first deployed to Korea.

The original 3b engine soon burned out, but a second one was nearing completion at about the same time as a new test airframe, the Heinkel He 178, which first flew on 27 August 1939, the first jet-powered aircraft to fly by test pilot Erich Warsitz.

The year 1947 marked the arrival of the first permanently assigned jet-powered aircraft, the F-80 Shooting Star, at Andrews.

Although they had little, if any, formal training in aeronautics or related fields, the Hortens designed some of the most advanced aircraft of the 1940s, including the world's first jet-powered flying wing, the Horten Ho 229.

The Horten Ho 229, the world's first jet-powered flying wing

In 1963, the first Sud Aviation Caravelle jet-powered aircraft joined the JAT fleet.

The first jet-powered equipment was added in 1961 when the twin-engined Sud Caravelle was introduced to the fleet.

Martin-Baker ejector seats were fitted to prototype and production aircraft from the late 1940s, and the first emergency use of such a seat occurred in 1949 during testing of the jet-powered Armstrong Whitworth A. W. 52 experimental flying wing.

; 1971: SAVER — The Stowable Aircrew Vehicle Escape Rotoseat is the first jet-powered autogyro with telescoping rotor blades

Perhaps Arado's most celebrated aircraft of the war was the Ar 234, the first jet-powered bomber.

The new aircraft, the first of its kind designed specifically for business travel, was a success, prompting Grumman to develop the jet-powered Grumman Gulfstream II or GII.

* July 21 – A McDonnell XFD-1 Phantom executes the first intentional and controlled landing by a purely jet-powered aircraft aboard a U. S. Navy aircraft carrier,.

So with all this experience, Bob Fogg was a natural choice to receive the first Emergency Air Mail Star Route contract.

Over the weeks, America's first Star Route Air Mail settled into a routine pattern despite the vagaries of weather and the lack of ground facilities and aids to navigation.

A young real estate salesman, Kern first got seriously interested in the problems posed by Communism when in the Navy Air Force.

On September 11, 2008, a United States Air Force C-17 Globemaster III successfully completed the first landing in Antarctica using night-vision goggles at Pegasus Field.

Parsons released titles under his name ( Try Anything Once, On Air, The Time Machine, and A Valid Path ), while Woolfson made concept albums named Freudiana ( about Sigmund Freud's work on psychology ) and Poe: More Tales of Mystery and Imagination ( continuing from the Alan Parsons Project's first album about Edgar Allan Poe's literature ).

Mueller agreed, and Phillips managed Apollo from January 1964, until it achieved the first manned landing in July 1969, after which he returned to Air Force duty.

* 1943 – World War II: The Royal Air Force begins Operation Hydra, the first air raid of the Operation Crossbow strategic bombing campaign against Germany's V-weapon program.

* 1944 – The 1st Air Commando Group using Sikorsky R-4 helicopters stage the first use of helicopters in combat with CSAR operations in the China-Burma-India theater.

The CAB investigation of the accident is the first investigation to be conducted under the Bureau of Air Commerce act of 1938.

The first batch of herbicides was unloaded at Tan Son Nhut Air Base in South Vietnam, on January 9, 1962.

Colonel Kari Renko, an engineer at the Finnish Air Force, was quoted by Helsingin Sanomat as saying about this failure, " The problem involves the rocket engines which have been in use for decades " and that Finland first was told of the problems by the Americans about two years ago.

The first emissions trading market was established in the United States by enactment of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990.

An increasing percentage of the ranks are " long-service " volunteer professionals ; women were allowed to serve in the armed forces beginning in early 1980s when the Brazilian Army became the first army in South America to accept women into career ranks ; women serve in Navy and Air Force only in Women's Reserve Corps.

Beechcraft was not Beech's first company, as he had previously formed Travel Air in 1924 and the design numbers used at Beechcraft followed the sequence started at Travel Air, and were then continued at Curtiss-Wright, after Travel Air had been absorbed into the much larger company in 1929.

In Sept 1956, the team added a sixth aircraft to the flight demonstration in the Opposing Solo position, and gave its first performance outside the United States at the International Air Exposition in Toronto, Canada.

Between 2 and 4 September 2011 on labor day weekend, the Blue Angels flew for the first time with a 50 – 50 blend of conventional JP-5 jet fuel and a camelina-based biofuel at Naval Air Station Patuxent River airshow at Patuxent River, Maryland.

The US Air Force's first operational surface-to-surface missile was the winged, mobile, nuclear-capable MGM-1 Matador, also similar in concept to the V-1.

The first problem that caused the pause in reconnaissance flights took place on August 30, an Air Force Strategic Air Command ( SAC ) U-2 flew over Sakhalin Island in the Far East by mistake.

* 1969 – The first legislation to limit aircraft noise levels at airports is introduced in U. S. Federal Air Regulation, Part 36.

* 1964 – The first test flight of the SR-71 ( Blackbird ) took place at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, Calif.

Until the first award of the Air Force Distinguished Service Medal in 1965, United States Air Force personnel received this award as well, as was the case with several other Army decorations until the Air Force fully established its own system of decorations.