1917 in aviation

This is a list of aviation-related events from 1917:

Events

 * During her 30 November 1916 – 24 February 1918 cruise, the Imperial German Navy commerce raider Wolf carries a Friedrichshafen FF.33e seaplane nicknamed Wölfchen ("Little Wolf" or "Wolf Cub"), which during 1917 singlehandedly captures at least four of the 37 enemy ships Wolf captures and sinks during her cruise. Wölfchen makes between 54 and 56 flights, the most by any World War I shipboard aircraft.
 * The Aircraft Committee of the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet decides to phase balloon ships out of naval service. The balloon ships are returned to mercantile service, or converted into balloon depot ships (to inflate and maintain balloons for use by other ships) or seaplane carriers.
 * The Imperial Russian Navy operates the world's second-most-powerful seaplane carrier force, behind only that of the British Royal Navy.
 * The French Army's Service Aeronautique experiments with the use of a Breguet 14 as an air ambulance for rapid casualty evacuation on the Western Front.

January

 * January 9 - The Royal Navy seaplane carrier Ben-my-Chree is sunk by Ottoman artillery while in harbor at Castelorizo Island, becoming the only aviation ship of any nationality sunk by enemy action during World War I.
 * January 27 - A French air raid on Freiburg, Germany takes place.

February

 * The Royal Flying Corps's No. 100 Squadron, the first British night fighter squadron, is formed.
 * Germany begins the Operation Türkenkreuz ("Turk's Cross") bombing campaign against England.
 * The United States Army forms the 7th Aero Squadron for service in the Panama Canal Zone.
 * February 7 – Suffering progressive damage due to a series of crashes in bad visibility and poor weather, the Imperial German Navy Zeppelin L 36 finally crashes onto the Aller River and is destroyed by high winds. Her crew survives.
 * February 13 – Over the Gulf of Mexico off Pensacola, Florida, United States Marine Corps aviator Francis Thomas Evans, Sr., performs an aerobatic loop in a Curtiss N-9 floatplane, becoming the first person to loop a seaplane – a feat previously believed impossible in an N-9 even by the N-9's manufacturer. He will receive a Distinguished Flying Cross for the achievement in 1936. However, the recovery techniques he discovers when the N-9 stalls and spins – previously thought impossible to recover from in an N-9 – during some of the day's loop attempts prove of far greater importance and have been in use ever since.
 * February 26 – In anticipation of a possible entry by the United States into World War I, U.S. Marine Corps aviator Alfred A. Cunningham receives orders to establish, equip, and command an aviation company for a Marine Corps advance base force at the Philadelphia Navy Yard in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
 * Late February
 * The German Navy Zeppelin L 42 achieves an altitude of 19,700 feet (6,005 meters), a new record for an airship.
 * The commander of the German Naval Airship Service, Peter Strasser, requests the authorization of a force of 30 naval Zeppelins, 24 for use over the North Sea and six for service over the Baltic Sea.

March

 * Royal Naval Air Service Handley Page O/100 bombers begin night attacks on German naval bases, railway stations and railway junctions, and industrial targets.
 * United States Navy Lieutenant Kenneth Whiting proposes to Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels that the Navy acquire a ship with an aircraft catapult and a flight deck. Although rejected on June 20, it is the first serious U.S. Navy consideration given to acquisition of an aviation ship since the American Civil War (1861–1865).
 * March 8 – Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, inventor of the practical dirigible, dies.
 * March 13 – The United States Army's 6th Aero Squadron is organized in the Territory of Hawaii, operating three Curtiss N-9 seaplanes.
 * March 16–17 (overnight) – The German Naval Airship Service attempts to bomb England for the first time in 1917, in the first use of new Zeppelins designed for high-altitude flight that the Service's commander, Peter Strasser, believes will be too high for British air defenses to reach. The five Zeppelins – at least three of which achieve altitudes of between 17,100 and 19,000 feet (5,212 and 5,791 meters) – mostly bomb open countryside and do only £79 in damage and kill no one. Disabled by mechanical failure, L 39 drifts over Compiègne, France, and is shot down by French antiaircraft guns with the loss of her entire crew, and L 35 is badly damaged while landing in Germany. The success of the Zeppelins in reaching high altitudes during a bombing raid encourages Strasser, who accompanies the raid aboard L 42, to plan a new bombing offensive.

April

 * Known as Bloody April. The Royal Flying Corps, while supporting the Arras offensive, loses 245 aircraft—140 in the first two weeks—out of an initial strength of 365. Aircrew casualties are 211 killed or missing and 108 captured.
 * April 6
 * The United States enters World War I, declaring war on Germany.
 * United States Marine Corps aviation has a total strength of seven officers and 43 enlisted men.
 * April 13 – Royal Naval Air Service flying boats begin flying "Spider Web" patrols over the North Sea in the vicinity of the North Hinder light ship to detect German submarines in the area. The new patrol pattern, resembling a spider web, allows four aircraft to search a 4,000-square-mile (10,000-square-kilometer) area in about five hours, only half the time it takes a surfaced submarine to transit the area. The flying boats make 27 patrols in the next 18 days, sight eight German submarines, and make bombing attacks against three of them.
 * April 20 – The United States Navy's first airship, DN-1 flies for the first time at Pensacola, Florida. Tests of the highly unsuccessful DN-1 come to an end only nine days later.
 * April 26 – The Pacific Aero Products Company is renamed the Boeing Airplane Company.

May

 * May 1 – The German Navy Zeppelins L 43 and L 45 conduct reconnaissance patrols over the North Sea off the coast of Scotland, patrolling off the Firth of Forth and Aberdeen, respectively.
 * May 4 – The German Navy Zeppelin L 43 attacks a force of British light cruisers and destroyers in the North Sea near the Dogger Bank with three 50-kg (110-lb) bombs, hitting the light cruiser HMS Dublin (1912) with bomb splinters. It one of the few cases of an airship attacking warships.
 * May 7
 * British ace Major Edward Mannock claims his first kill.
 * British ace Captain Albert Ball (44 victories) is killed in a crash following a dogfight with Lothar von Richthofen, who also crashes but survives.
 * May 9 – French ace René Fonck shoots down six German aircraft in a day.
 * May 14 – Flying the Curtiss H.12 Large America flying boat 8666, Royal Naval Air Service Flight Commander Robert Leckie shoots down the German Zeppelin L 22 18 nautical miles (33 km) north-northwest of Texel Island. It is the first time that a flying boat shoots down a Zeppelin.
 * May 19 – The United States adopts an official national insignia for U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, and U.S. Marine Corps aircraft for the first time, a white star centered in a blue circle with a red disc centered within the star USAAC Roundel 1919-1941.svg; the U.S. Coast Guard does not adopt it. Except for an 18-month interruption in 1918-1919, the marking will remain in use until June 1942.
 * May 23–24 (overnight) – Six German Navy Zeppelins attempt a high-altitude raid on London and the south of England and encounter bad weather. They drop most of their bombs onto open countryside, killing one man, injuring no one else, and inflicting £599 in damage, and all return safely to Germany, although the raid reveals many mechanical problems and physical difficulties for crewmen during sustained high-altitude flights. Informed of the results of the raid, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany says, "In spite of this success, I am of the opinion that day of the airship is past for attacks on London. They should be used as scouts for the High Seas Fleet and strategic reconnaissance, not for bombing raids on London." The Chief of the Naval Staff argues that the bombing campaign is tying down many British personnel, guns, and aircraft on home air defense duties, and Wilhelm II agrees to allow raids to continue if conditions are favorable.
 * May 24 – Turbulence throws the observer aboard a German Aviatik C.V, First Lieutenant Otto Berla, from his cockpit without a parachute. As he falls, an updraft forces the tail of the aircraft upward, and he punches through the plywood of the Aviatak's fuselage aft of his cockpit. The Aviatik's pilot returns him safely to base.
 * May 25
 * A mass air-raid by 21 Gotha G.V bombers attacks Folkestone in Kent, England, killing 95 people and injuring 174. Seventy-four British aircraft take off to intercept, but shoot down only one Gotha. It is the first of 22 German heavier-than-air raids on England during World War I.
 * French ace Lieutenant René Dorme is killed in action. His 23 victories will tie him with Lieutenant Gabriel Guérin for ninth-highest-scoring French ace of World War I.

June

 * Birdseye B. Lewis and Chance M. Vought found the Lewis & Vought Corporation, which later would become the Chance Vought Corporation.
 * U.S. Army Colonel Raynal Bolling leads the Bolling Mission to Europe to examine the practicality of constructing British and French fighters in the United States. It leads to the establishment of the Engineering Division of the U.S. Department of War's Bureau of Aircraft Production to test its recommendations and to the manufacturing of the Airco DH.9 bomber and Bristol F.2B fighter in the United States.
 * An attack prior to the Battle of Messines Ridge on a British supply train by German aircraft disrupts the supply of British ammunition, forcing British artillery to cease firing after three hours.
 * At Naval Air Station Pensacola in Pensacola, Florida, the United States Navy armored cruiser Huntington lofts a kite balloon, the first U.S. Navy ship to do so.
 * June 5 – Royal Flying Corps Lieutenants Harold Satchell and Thomas Lewis of No. 20 Squadron shoot down and kill German ace Leutnant Karl Emil Schäfer. His 30 victories will place him in a tie with five other pilots as the 28th-highest-scoring German ace of World War I.
 * June 5 – The United States Navy's First Aeronautical Detachment disembarks from the collier USS Jupiter in France under the command of Kenneth Whiting. It is the first U.S. military unit to arrive in Europe.
 * June 6 – The world's first landplane designed for use as a torpedo bomber, a Sopwith Cuckoo, is completed for the Royal Naval Air Service.
 * June 13 – 14 German Gotha bombers make the most destructive air raid on London of World War I. They attack in daylight, dropping 118 bombs, killing 162 people and injuring 432. The casualty total is greater than inflicted by all the German airship attacks on England combined up to that time. Nearly 100 British fighters attempt to intercept the German bombers but do not shoot any of them down.
 * June 14
 * Royal Naval Air Service Curtiss H.12 Large America flying boat 8677 shoots down the German Zeppelin L.43 in flames over the North Sea, with the loss of the Zeppelin's entire crew.
 * The American aviator, aircraft manufacturer, and airline entrepreneur Thomas W. Benoist dies in a streetcar accident in Sandusky, Ohio. His company, Benoist Aircraft, soon ceases production and goes out of business.
 * Mid-June – The United States Marine Corps bases aircraft at Marine Barracks, Quantico, Virginia, for the first time, beginning a presence which eventually will lead to the establishment of Marine Corps Air Station Quantico there.
 * June 16–17 (overnight) – Five German Navy Zeppelins attempt a high-altitude raid on London and southern England. Only two arrive over England. L 42 bombs Ramsgate and detonates a munitions dump, wrecking the naval base, inflicting £29,000 pounds in damage, killing three civilians, and injuring 14 civilians and two Royal Navy personnel, then returns safely to Germany. L 48 bombs open fields outside Harwich before Royal Flying Corps Lieutenant L. P. Watkins of No. 37 Squadron shoots her down in flames over Harwich. killing 14 of the 17 men on board and fatally injuring one of the survivors. Among the dead is Viktor Schütze, the deputy commander of the German Naval Airship Service.
 * June 17 – In daylight, 21 German Gotha bombers make Germany's second heavier-than-air bombing attack on England. Seven bombers attack small towns in Kent and Essex and 14 attack London. The bombers kill 162 people and injure 432.
 * June 20 – The British war cabinet decides to increase the size of the Royal Flying Corps from 108 to 200 squadrons, with most of increase coming in bomber squadrons.
 * June 27 – German ace Leutnant Karl Allmenröder is shot down and killed. His 30 victories will tie him with five other pilots as the 28th-highest-scoring German ace of World War I.
 * June 28 – An aircraft takes off successfully from a flying-off platform mounted on a warship's gun turret for the first time when Royal Naval Air Service Flight Commander F. J. Rutland takes off from a platform aboard the British light cruiser HMS Yarmouth in a Sopwith Pup.

July

 * The only Handley Page O/100 in the Mediterranean theater bombs Constantinople in an attempt to begin a bombing campaign against the Ottoman Empire's capital city.
 * July 7 – In daylight, German Gotha bombers make a third attack on England, killing 65 people and injuring 245.
 * July 12 – Royal Naval Air Service Flight Lieutenant O. A. Butcher, manning a kite balloon lofted by the destroyer HMS Patriot (1916) off the Shetland Islands, sights the German submarine U-69 at a range of 28 nautical miles (52 km), allowing Patriot to intercept U-69 and sink her with depth charges.
 * July 17 – The United States Navy establishes the Naval Aircraft Factory at League Island Navy Yard in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

August

 * United States Secretary of War Newton D. Baker announces the completion of the first Liberty engine 28 days after its design began. Before the end of World War I, 13,574 will be manufactured, and total will reach 20,478 by 1919.
 * August 1 – The German Navy Zeppelin L 53 achieves an altitude of 20,700 feet (6,309 meters), a new record for an airship.
 * August 2 – A Sopwith Pup flown by Royal Naval Air Service Squadron Commander Edwin Dunning becomes the first aircraft to land aboard a moving ship, the hybrid aircraft carrier-battlecruiser HMS Furious (47).
 * August 7 – Dunning is killed on his third landing when the Pup falls over the side of Furious.
 * August 17 – Tasked to study how the United Kingdom's air forces could be best organized for the war with Germany and to consider whether or not they should remain subordinate to the British Army and Royal Navy, General Jan Smuts completes the Smuts Report. In it, he observes that an air service could be used as "an independent means of war operations," that "there is absolutely no limit to the scale of its future independent war service," that soon "aerial operations with their devastation of enemy lands and destruction of industrial and populous centres on a vast scale may be the principal operations of war, to which older forms of military and naval operations may become secondary and subordinate." He projects that by the summer of 1918 "the air battle front will be far behind the Rhine" while the ground front is still bogged down in Belgium and France and that air attacks on German industry and lines of communication could be an "important factor in bringing about peace." The report is the foundation of a new theory of warfare advocated by British bomber advocates and will inspire the creation of the independent Royal Air Force in 1918.
 * August 21 – Flying a Sopwith Pup fighter launched from a flying-off platform mounted on a gun turret of the Royal Navy light cruiser HMS Yarmouth (1911), Royal Naval Air Service Flight Sub-Lieutenant B. A. Smart shoots down the German Navy Zeppelin L 23 in flames over the North Sea with the loss of her entire crew. Smart is recovered safely along with his plane's engine and one of its machine guns after he ditches his fighter in the sea.
 * August 21–22 (overnight) – Eight German Navy Zeppelins commanded by German Naval Airship Service commander Peter Strasser aboard L 46 attempt a high-altitude raid on England. Only L 41 crosses the British coastline; she bombs the Kingston upon Hull area, destroying a chapel and injuring one civilian.

September

 * Due to increasing losses to new British fighters during daylight bombing raids on England, Germany switches to night bombing.
 * In a second bombing raid against Constantinople, the sole Handley Page O/100 in the Mediterranean is forced down in the Gulf of Xeros by engine failure and its crew taken prisoner by Ottoman forces.
 * The Commander in Chief of the Grand Fleet, Admiral David Beatty, proposes an aerial torpedo attack by 120 Sopwith Cuckoo torpedo bombers launched from eight converted merchant ships against the German High Seas Fleet at its moorings in Germany. Training for the raid takes place in the Firth of Forth, but the war will end before it can be carried out.
 * September 3 – The United States Army's 1st Aero Squadron arrives in France
 * September 11 – French ace Capitaine Georges Guynemer goes missing in action. Kurt Wisserman of Jasta 3 is credited with shooting him down, but Guynemer's body is never found.
 * September 15 – Flying a Fokker Dr.I, German ace Oberleutnant Kurt Wolff is shot down and killed in a dogfight with Royal Flying Corps Sopwith Camels north of Wervicq, Belgium. His 33 kills will tie him with Leutnant Otto Koennecke and Leutnant Heinrich Bongartz as the 20th-highest-scoring German ace of World War I.
 * September 17 – While on convoy escort duty in the Atlantic Ocean, the United States Navy armored cruiser Huntington has her kite balloon blown away in bad weather. A shipfitter from her crew is awarded the first Medal of Honor in World War I for rescuing the balloonist.
 * September 22 – A Royal Naval Air Service Curtiss H-12 flying boat piloted by Flight Sub-Lieutenant N. Magor sinks the German submarine UB-32 in the North Sea. It is only confirmed instance of a British aircraft sinking a German submarine without surface ships assistance during World War I.
 * September 23 – During an epic 10-minute dogfight against six Royal Flying Corps SE.5s of No. 56 Squadron, the German ace Werner Voss, flying a Fokker Dr.I triplane, is shot down and killed by the British ace Arthur Rhys-Davids north of Frezenberg, Belgium. At the time of his death, Voss has 48 victories and is the second-leading German ace behind Manfred von Richthofen at the time; Voss will be the fourth-highest-scoring German ace of World War I.
 * September 24–25 (overnight) – Nine German Navy Zeppelins set out to attack the middle and north of England. Only L 35 makes a deep penetration of England, dropping her bombs near Rotherham. Total damage inflicted by the raid is £2,210.
 * September 26 – For the second time, French ace René Fonck shoots down six German aircraft in a day.

October

 * At Ochey, France, the British Royal Flying Corps forms its first wing dedicated to long-range bombardment of targets in Germany. It will later become VIII Brigade.
 * The United States Marine Corps divides its Marine Aeronautical Company into two units, the First Aviation Squadron equipped with land planes and the First Aeronautical Squadron equipped with seaplanes. The latter unit is intended for antisubmarine patrols from the Azores.
 * October 1
 * The Royal Navy tests an aircraft catapult for the first time, using a compressed-air catapult aboard the catapult trials ship Slinger to launch an unmanned Short 184 with its fuselage fabric removed and engine replaced by ballast.
 * The Royal Navy conducts the first launch of an aircraft from a battleship or battlecruiser, when Royal Naval Air Service Flight Commander F. J. Rutland takes off in a Sopwith Pup fighter from a platform mounted on a 15-inch (381-mm) gun turret of the battlecruiser HMS Repulse (1916).
 * October 7 – L 57, a German Navy Zeppelin modified to be able a long-distance flight from Yambol, Bulgaria, to Mahenge, German East Africa, to deliver medical supplies and munitions to German ground forces there, and as such the largest airship ever built at the time at 743 feet (226.5 meters) and carrying 2,418,700 cubic feet (68,490 cubic meters) of hydrogen gas, is wrecked and destroyed by fire while attempting to take off for a test flight in poor weather.
 * October 19–20 (overnight) – The German Navy dispatches 13 Zeppelins on a high-altitude raid against the middle of England, and they encounter an unexpected gale. Two never leave their sheds; the other 11 set out for England and become lost in the storm. Most bomb open countryside, although L 41 damages the Austin Motor Works at Longbridge and L 45 bombs Northampton and London, killing 24 and injuring nine people. The British use muzzled antiaircraft guns around London to avoid guiding Zeppelins to the city, and the attack becomes known as the "Silent Raid." Although 73 British planes take off to intercept the raid, none have the ability to reach the Zeppelins' operating altitude. The storm scatters the Zeppelins widely across Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France during their return flights and only six reach Germany safely. L 55 sets an altitude record for airships of 24,000 feet (7,315 meters) during her homebound flight before being damaged beyond repair in a hard landing in Germany; L 44 is shot down in flames by French artillery over the Western Front with the loss of all hands; L 49 lands in France and is captured along with her entire crew; L 45 lands in France and is destroyed by her crew, who are captured; and L 50 makes a hard landing in France, after which 15 of her crew manage to get off the airship and are captured and she drifts away and crosses France before disappearing over the Mediterranean Sea with four men still aboard.
 * October 30 – The German ace Leutnant Heinrich Gontermann is performing aerobatics when the upper wing of his Fokker Dr.I fighter breaks off. He is fatally injured in the subsequent crash. His 39 victories will tie him with Leutnant Carl Menckhoff as the 13th-highest-scoring German ace of World War I.

November

 * November 21–24 – In an attempt to deliver medical supplies to munitions to German ground forces in German East Africa, the German Navy Zeppelin L 59, specially modified for long-range flights, makes a 6,757 km (4,196-statute mile) journey from Yambol, Bulgaria, over European Turkey, Asia Minor, and the Mediterranean Sea and into Africa to a point west of Khartoum before being recalled to Yambol, which she reaches after 95 hours 5 minutes continuously in the air at an average speed of 71 km/h (44 mph). The flight sets a new aircraft endurance record. She returns to Yambol with enough fuel aboard to have remained in the air for another 64 hours.

December

 * German Navy Zeppelins make daily reconnaissance patrols over the Heligoland Bight throughout the month.
 * December 6 – Chikuhei Nakajima and Seibi Kawanishi found the Japan Aeroplane Manufacturing Work Company Ltd. It is the first aircraft manufacturing company in Japan.
 * December 9 – Romania signs an armistice with the Central Powers, withdrawing from participation in World War I.

First flights

 * Berkmans Speed Scout
 * Orenco A
 * Standard M-Defense, prototype of the Standard E-1

January

 * Sopwith Camel flown by Harry Hawker
 * 5 January – Sage Type 3

February

 * Junkers J.4
 * February 16 – Fairey Campania, first aircraft designed for seaplane carrier operations

March

 * March 19 – Ansaldo SVA
 * March 20 – Sturtevant B

April

 * April 4 – SPAD S.XIII
 * April 11 – Marinens Flyvebaatfabrikk M.F.3
 * April 20 – U.S. Navy blimp DN-1

May

 * May 24 – B-1, the first U.S. Navy B-class blimp

June

 * Sopwith Cuckoo
 * Thomas-Morse S-4
 * June 22 – Port Victoria P.V.7

July

 * July 5 – Fairey N.9

September

 * September 7 – Port Victoria P.V.8
 * September 14 – Fairey III

October

 * October 15 – Alcock Scout

November

 * Ansaldo A-1 Balilla
 * November 30 – Vickers Vimy,

December

 * December 9 – Schaefer & Sons R.S.

Entered service

 * Summer 1917 – Breguet 14 with the French Army's Service Aéronautique

January

 * Airco DH.4 with No. 55 Squadron Royal Flying Corps

February

 * Sopwith Triplane with No.1 (Naval) Squadron, Royal Naval Air Service

March

 * Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5 with No. 56 Squadron, Royal Flying Corps.

April

 * Bristol F.2A with No. 48 Squadron, Royal Flying Corps

May

 * Airco DH.5 with No. 24 and No. 32 Squadrons, Royal Flying Corps.

June

 * Sopwith Camel with the Royal Flying Corps