Mitsubishi Internal Combustion Engine Company Ltd. registers as an aircraft manufacturing company, with its factory at Kobe, Japan, and takes over the aircraft manufacturing business of its parent company, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.[5]
British military thinker ColonelJ. F. C. Fuller writes that in the next war "Fleets of aeroplanes will attack the enemy's great industrial and governing centres. All these attacks will be made against the civil population in order to compel it to accept the will of the attacker..."[6]
The last Royal Navyballoon ship, HMS Canning, which has operated since December 1916 as a balloon depot ship, is sold.[8]
The Royal Air Force's "Z Unit" – the first self-contained air unit dedicated to "aerial policing," the use of independent air power to suppress colonial rebellions – begins operations in British Somaliland against the Dervish State of Mohammed Abdullah Hassan (the "Mad Mullah") using 10 Airco DH.9s. On the first day, a DH.9 drops a bomb on the tent of the Mullah – who has never seen an airplane before and whose advisers tell him that the aircraft must be either chariots from Allah or friendly messengers from the Ottoman Empire's Sultan Mehmed VI – while he waits to receive their crews as important guests. He survives and flees.[9] The Z Unit will continue to bomb and strafe the Mullah's forces on January 22 and 23.[10]
January 24 – Extensive aerial reconnaissance by the Royal Air Force's Z Unit establishes that the Dervish State has abandoned the area around its forts at Medishi (later Medistie) and Jid Ali (later Jideli). Independent air operations against the forces of Mohammed Abdullah Hassan end, and the Z Unit begins direct support to British troops pursuing Hassan.[11]
January 29 – Royal Air Force Airco DH.9s bomb the Dervish State fort at Gallbaridur.[12]
January 30 – Royal Air Force DH.9s bomb Mohammed Abdullah Hassan's baggage train and personal retinue, but he survives.[13]
Early in the month, Royal Air Force Airco DH.9s bomb the Dervish State stronghold at Tale, including Mohammed Abdullah Hassan's personal compound. Hassan again survives and flees into Abyssinia.[15] The British campaign to restore their control over British Somaliland comes to a successful conclusion in only three weeks, at a low cost in British lives and money. It is the prototype of the "aerial policing" of rebellious colonies that the Royal Air Force will conduct in the 1920s and 1930s, most notably in Iraq.[16]
February 1 – The first interisland commercial flight in the Hawaiian Islands takes place when pilot Charles Fern carries a paying passenger from Honolulu to Maui and back. The outbound flight requires an emergency stop on Molokai.[7]
February 27 – Piloting a United States Army Air ServicePackard-Le Peré LUSAC-11 fighter equipped with one of the first turbochargers, Major Rudolf Schroeder sets a new world altitude record of 10,099 metres (33,133 feet). His oxygen system fails and he passes out; he regains consciousness only very near the ground and lands safely, but is hospitalized.
Post-World War I budget cuts have reduced United States Marine Corps aviation from almost 400 aviators to fewer then 50, prompting the Marine Corps' first aviator, MajorAlfred A. Cunningham, to write in the Marine Corps Gazette, "One of the greatest handicaps which Marine Corps Aviation must now overcome is a combination of doubt as to usefulness, lack of sympathy, and a feeling on the part of some line officers that aviators and aviation men are not real Marines."[24]
September 20 – The 1920 Schneider Trophy race is flown at Venice, Italy. Lieutenant Luigi Bolgna in a Savoia S.12 is the only starter and wins simply by finishing the race, with an average speed of 172.6 km/h (107.2 mph).
^Scheina, Robert L., Latin America: A Naval History 1810-1987, Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1987, ISBN 0-87021-295-8, p. 193.
^Scheina, Robert L., Latin America: A Naval History 1810-1987, Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1987, ISBN 0-87021-295-8, p. 200.
^Francillon, René J., Japanese Aircraft of the Pacific War, Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1979, ISBN 0-87021-313-X, p. 30.
^Francillon, René J., Japanese Aircraft of the Pacific War, Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1979, ISBN 0-87021-313-X, p. 18.
^Francillon, René J., Japanese Aircraft of the Pacific War, Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1979, ISBN 0-87021-313-X, p. 23.
^Fuller, J. F. C., Tanks in the Great War, London, 1920, p. 314, quoted in Hastings, Max, Bomber Command: Churchill's Epic Campaign - The Inside Story of the RAF's Valiant Attempt to End the War, New York: Simon & Schuster Inc., 1987, ISBN 0-671-68070-6, p. 41.
^Layman, R.D., Before the Aircraft Carrier: The Development of Aviation Vessels 1849-1922, Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Insitute Press, 1989, ISBN 0-87021-210-9, p. 77.
^O'Connor, Derek, "The Hunt For the Mad Mullah," Aviation History, July 2012, p. 45.
^O'Connor, Derek, "The Hunt For the Mad Mullah," Aviation History, July 2012, p. 46.
^O'Connor, Derek, "The Hunt For the Mad Mullah," Aviation History, July 2012, p. 46.
^O'Connor, Derek, "The Hunt For the Mad Mullah," Aviation History, July 2012, p. 46.
^O'Connor, Derek, "The Hunt For the Mad Mullah," Aviation History, July 2012, p. 46.
^O'Connor, Derek, "The Hunt For the Mad Mullah," Aviation History, July 2012, p. 46.
^O'Connor, Derek, "The Hunt For the Mad Mullah," Aviation History, July 2012, p. 47.
^Layman, R.D., Before the Aircraft Carrier: The Development of Aviation Vessels 1849-1922, Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1989, ISBN 0-87021-210-9, p. 122.
^Peattie, Mark R., Sunburst: The Rise of Japanese Naval Air Power 1909-1941, Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 2001, ISBN 1-55750-432-6, p. 16.
^Francillon, René J., Japanese Aircraft of the Pacific War, Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1979, ISBN 0-87021-313-X, p. 38.
^Mauer, Maurer, Air Force Combat Units of World War II: The Concise official Military Record, Edison, New Jersey: Chartwell Books, 1961, ISBN 0-7858-0194-4, p. 4.
^Angelucci, Enzo, The American Fighter: The Definitive Guide to American Fighter Aircraft From 1917 to the Present, New York: Orion Books, 1987, p. 182.
^ abChant, Chris, The World's Great Bombers, New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2000, ISBN 0-7607-2012-6, p. 44.
^Butler, Glen, Colonel, USMC, "That Other Air Service Centennial," Naval History, June 2012, p. 56.
^Borch, Fred L., and Robert E. Dorr, "Bravery Over Belgium," Military History, March 2012, p. 17.
^Angelucci, Enzo, The American Fighter: The Definitive Guide to American Fighter Aircraft From 1917 to the Present, New York: Orion Books, 1987, p. 197.
^Angelucci, Enzo, The American Fighter: The Definitive Guide to American Fighter Aircraft From 1917 to the Present, New York: Orion Books, 1987, p. 323.
^Donald, David, ed., The Complete Encyclopedia of World Aircraft, New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1997, ISBN 978-0-7607-0592-6, p. 77.
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