1940: First flight of the Fairey Barracuda prototype, P1767.

1941: The Imperial Japanese Navy makes a devastatingly successful surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and other U.S. military facilities on Oahu, Hawaii. Six aircraft carriers launch 353 warplanes in two waves. They sink five American battleships and ten other vessels, damage three other battleships, and destroy 188 U.S. aircraft, killing 2,402 and wounding 1,282. The Japanese lose 29 aircraft, five midget submarines, and 65 killed.

1942: First flight of the Bell XP-63 King Cobra.

1944: Signing of the Convention on International Civil Aviation in Chicago, Illinois.

1945: New Zealand National Airways Corporation is founded with amalgamation of Union Airways, Air Travel and Cook Strait Airways.

1962: First flight of the Aérospatiale Super Frelon.

1964: Beale Air Force Base, California, announced as the home base for SR-71s. Beale AFB was the home base of the SR-71 throughout its entire career.

1980: Pan Am’s Boeing 747 China Clipper arrives in Peking from New York via Tokyo to complete the first official flight between China and USA since shortly before 1949.

1987: A PSA BAe 146 crashes after a former USAir employee shoots the pilots, killing forty-three.

1990: n Alaska Airlines Boeing 727 takes off from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in visibility of only 500 ft (152 m), the lowest for any airliner takeoff in the US.