1849 – In 1849, Austrian forces besieging Venice launched some 200 incendiary balloons, each carrying a 24- to 30-pound bomb that was to be dropped from the balloon with a time fuse over the besieged city. The balloons were launched from land and from the Austrian navy ship SMS Vulcano that acted as a balloon carrier.[1][2]
1910 – The first experimental take-off of a heavier-than-air craft from the deck of a US Navy vessel, the cruiser USS Birmingham
1910 – First bombing attack against a surface ship: Didier Masson and Captain Joaquín Bauche Alcalde, flying for Mexican Revolutionist Venustiano Carranza, dropped dynamite bombs on Federalist gunboats at Guaymas, Mexico, on 10 May 1913.
1914 – In October, a plane[who?] is shot down by another aircraft[who?] with a handgun over Rheims, France.
1914 – The first conventional air-to-air kill occurs on 5 October when a gunner on a French Voisin machine-guns a German Aviatik reconnaissance aircraft in World War I.[5]
1918 - The Royal Air Force, the world's first independent air force is formed.
1918 - HMS Argus (I49) became "the world's first carrier capable of launching and landing naval aircraft".[6]
^Military Aircraft, Origins to 1918: An Illustrated History of Their Impact, Justin D. Murphy, page 9-10
^Mikesh, Robert C. "Japan's World War II balloon bomb attacks on North America." (1973).
^Colonel Templer and the birth of aviation at Farnborough, RAeS, May 2007
^Gerard J. De Groot (2005). The bomb: a life. Harvard University Press. pp. 2–. ISBN 978-0-674-01724-5. Retrieved 25 April 2011.
^Christopher Chant (2002). A century of triumph: the history of aviation. Simon and Schuster. p. 68. ISBN 978-0-7432-3479-5.
^Geoffrey Till, "Adopting the Aircraft Carrier: The British, Japanese, and American Case Studies" in Murray, Williamson; Millet, Allan R, eds. (1996). Military Innovation in the Interwar Period. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 194. ISBN 0-521-63760-0.
^David R. Mets (December 2008). Airpower and Technology: Smart and Unmanned Weapons. ABC-CLIO. pp. 85–86. ISBN 978-0-275-99314-6. Retrieved 6 April 2011.