31 December 1913

The Wright Model E, built in 1913, was an exhibition plane. A small crew could disassemble this single-seat plane for shipping in just 12 minutes. Orville flew a Model E equipped with his automatic stabilizer on December 31, 1913, to win the Collier Trophy of the Aero Club of America.

30 December 1913

The headline of the St. Petersburg Daily Times on Tuesday, December 30, 1913 read “Tony Jannus Will Make First Flight Thursday” to inaugurate airline service between that city and Tampa. Jannus gave the recently assembled Benoist Model 14 flying boat two test flights on December 30 and 31, accompanied on one by Benoist's chief mechanic, J.D. Smith, and on the other by a local man named J.G. Foley.

29 December 1913

On December 29, 1913, the first public test flight was made at Sra Pathum Airfield by the Royal Thai Air Force. Field Marshal Prince Kamphaengbejra Agrayodhin, Inspector General of the Royal Engineers, Field Marshal Prince Chakrabongse, Army Chief of Staff, and a great number of crowds, viewed the flight.

28 December 1913

Record heights increased only gradually until what was called “the world’s first great altitude flight” took place Dec. 28, 1913, when Georges LeGagneux was the first to reach an altitude of over 20,172 feet (6,120 meters).

27 December 1913

The first airplane to visit the Holy Land was the Bleriot XI flown by the French aviator Jules Vedrines, who participated in a competition to fly from Paris to Cairo. He landed near Jaffa, on the Mediterranean coast, on December 27th, 1913 - at a time when Palestine was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire.

26 December 1913

On 26 December 1913, Lt. Joseph E. Carberry set an Army record for altitude carrying a passenger, piloting a Curtiss Model G to 7,800 feet. He subsequently set several other altitude records.

25 December 1913

French aviator Jules Vedrines, in the course of his journey from Paris to Cairo, landed his Bleriot XI monoplane at Beirut, Lebanon on Christmas Day, 25 December 1913.

24 December 1913

Pilot Richard Johnson joined a leading aviator, Frank Gooden, in an attempt to open an airfield and flying school in Tonbridge, Kent. The pair came to grief but were not hurt while taking off to return to Hendon after giving a demonstration flight on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1913. The wheels stuck in the mud, and the plane tipped on its nose damaging the propeller, which became an object of interest in a later Tonbridge museum.

23 December 1913

On 23 December 1913, in the annals of aviation history, it would appear that nothing of any lasting significance happened.

22 December 1913

On December 22, 1913 at Cicero Flying Field in Chicago, C. Le Gaucier reportedly tested his Le Gaucier monoplane, which was intended to accomplish a transatlantic flight.

21 December 1913

The ideas of air-minded First Sea Lord W.S. Churchill could be worked on very quickly. In a minute dated 21 December 1913 to the Director of the Air Department, he asks for the construction of a Sopwith tractor biplane with a 100hp engine and side-by-side seating for the flying school at Eastchurch. The aeroplane was actually built by Sopwiths, appearing in its order book 24th December 1913, and described as a Land Tractor biplane Ds with a 100hp Gnome engine. It was given the RNAS serial number 149, and was known as the ’Sociable’, the ‘Tweenie’ or the ‘Churchill’.

20 December 1913

On 20 December 1913, in the annals of aviation history, it would appear that nothing of any lasting significance happened.

19 December 1913

On December 19, 1913, the Hon. Mrs. Assheton Harbord accompanied by Mr. C.F. Pollock, ascended from Battersea in a free balloon and alighted 130 miles away in Taunton, Somerset. This flight won for the Hon. Mrs. Harbord the Mortimer Singer Long Distance Balloon Race cup.

18 December 1913

Harold D. Kantner received flight instruction at the Moisant aviation school on Long Island in 1910, where he became an instructor, aircraft designer and test pilot. He designed and built the Morane-Kantner Military Monoplane, a modification of the Morane Saulnier "G". The aircraft was destroyed in the Hempstead Trials on December 18, 1913. Kantner/Moisant built more of them, particularly for use in the Mexican Revolution.

17 December 1913

On December 17, 1913, Captains Eduardo Barrón and Carlos Cifuentes attacked the village of Ben Carich in Spanish Morocco, dropping four "Carbonit" shrapnel bombs filled with explosives and steel balls from their Lohner Pfeilflieger biplane, to punish rebellious villages. Ten years after the Wrights' First Flight their creation was in use as a weapon of war.

16 December 1913

In Chile, Clodomiro Figueroa (1886-1958) topped the list for persistence, courage and ingenuity. He made the first attempts at crossing the Andes but his efforts were unsuccessful. Mounting a fragile Blériot XI with an 80 hp Anzani engine, he took off on the morning of December 16, 1913 from a pasture at the foot of Cerro La Virgen with the intention of reaching Mendoza, but strong winds prevented sufficient progress. The Andes would resist crossings until 1918.

15 December 1913

On 15 December 1913, in the annals of aviation history, it would appear that nothing of any lasting significance happened.

14 December 1913

The second Blackburn Type I monoplane was a single-seater with a freight compartment in place of the passenger’s seat. It was first flown by Harold Blackburn (not related to designer Robert Blackburn) on 14 December 1913. The second Type I was flown by Blackburn through the winter of 1913-4. A trip from York to Leeds in fog, rain and gales brought out a crowd estimated at 10,000. This aircraft also featured at the Yorkshire Show that year, but was later written off in York.

13 December 1913

In a flight that began on 13 December 1913 and ended on the 17th, Germans Hugo Kaulen, Alfred Schmitz and Bruno Kweft-Gevelsberg set a free-balloon distance record of 1,757 miles from Saxony to the Ural Mountains. They also took the endurance record at the same time with 87 hours in the air. The latter record stood until 1978.

12 December 1913

Benoist Model XIV seaplane No. 43, the Lark of Duluth, arrived in St. Petersburg by train on December 12, 1913, two weeks before its scheduled debut with P.E. Fansler's nascent St Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line. The biplane had a wingspan of 44 feet, was 26 feet long, and had two seats for the pilot and one paying passenger. It weighed about 1250 pounds and had a top speed of 64 mph. Its Roberts six-cylinder engine produced 75 horsepower.

11 December 1913

The Parsons Biplane was designed and built by P. M. Muller specially to make use of an automobile engine (the four-cylinder 40 h.p. Aster), the weight of which, compared with the light-weight aero engines, normally militated against its use in an aeroplane. The machine was sold to a pupil of the Bristol School named Boger, who crashed it on 11 December 1913 at Ripley, when attempting to land there to breakfast at the Talbot Hotel. The remains were bought by Pemberton Billing and some parts were used in the construction of the Gaskell-Blackbum biplane.

10 December 1913

The Ilya Muromets aircraft, designed by Igor I. Sikorsky and built at the Russo-Baltic Carriage Factory (RBVZ) in Riga, first flew on 10 December 1913. The revolutionary design, intended for commercial passenger service, had a spacious passenger saloon and washroom on board. During World War I, it became the first four-engined bomber to equip a dedicated strategic bombing unit.

9 December 1913

On 9 December 1913, in the annals of aviation history, it would appear that nothing of any lasting significance happened.

8 December 1913

Effective Dec. 8, 1913, the 1st Provisional Aero Squadron was redesignated as the 1st Aero Squadron. This first military unit of the U.S. Army devoted exclusively to aviation, today designated the 1st Reconnaissance Squadron, has remained continuously active since its creation. Assigned a role in the Punitive Expedition of the Mexican border in 1916, this squadron became the first air combat unit of the U.S. Army.

7 December 1913

Aviatrix Carmen Damédoz, flying a Sommer monoplane, reportedly won a prize offered by French senator Reymond for the world female record for altitude on December 7, 1913, when she reached an altitude of 1,050meters (approx. 3,500 ft).

6 December 1913

In the 6 December 1913 issue of the (London) Evening Independent, Lord Mayor Sir Vansittart Bowater ventured predictions for the world of 2013, including that "the drone of great airships, each carrying perhaps many hundreds of passengers, will also probably be heard across both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans."

5 December 1913

On December 5, 1913 the 5th Exposition de la Locomotion Aérienne (ancestor of today's Paris Air Show) opened in Paris. The Chairman was

4 December 1913

On Dec. 4th, 1913 Percival Elliot Fansler made his pitch for the St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line in St. Pete. "They thought I had a mighty clever idea," he wrote later, "but they didn't believe there was any such thing as a flying boat. I talked a group of a dozen men into putting up a guarantee of $100 each, and the Board of Trade came in with a like amount." Fansler gained support from the city and other St. Pete businessmen, subscribing a $2,400 airline subsidy, even though there never had been a scheduled airline in the history of man. The first scheduled heavier-than-air airline flight would occur less than a month later.

3 December 1913

On 3 December 1913, the War Office ordered from the Royal Aircraft Factory a fast scout powered by a 160hp Gnome rotary engine, the SE4. The design, by Henry Folland, was for the most advanced aeroplane possible at the time, with every possible measure taken to reduce drag to a minimum, so as to attain the greatest possible speed. When completed the following summer it attained 135 mph and was the fastest airplane extant in 1914.

2 December 1913

On December 2, 1913 Capt. Gilbert V. Wildman-Lushington, Royal Marines, was killed in the crash of his Maurice Farman 'Longhorn' (No. 23) while landing at Eastchurch. His passenger suffered minor injury. Earlier in the year Wildman-Lushington had instructed Winston S. Churchill, First Lord of Admiralty, giving him three lessons in a Short Bros. S.38 biplane.

1 December 1913

Attempting a Paris to Cairo flight, Jules Vedrines took off from Belgrade, Serbia in his Bleriot monoplane on December 1, 1913 for Sofia, Bulgaria and was on arrival invited to the court of King Ferdinand.