March 2

What happened on March 2 in aviation and space history.

• March 2, 1943

  Battle of the Bismarck Sea

  Milestone — Between 2 and 4 March 1943, Fifth Air Force B-25s, together with A-20 Havocs, used low-altitude skip bombing against a Japanese convoy in the Bismarck Sea off New Guinea, after earlier medium-altitude horizontal bombing had proven ineffective against moving ships.

• March 2, 1969

  First flight of Concorde

  First flight — On 2 March 1969 the supersonic airliner Concorde took off from Toulouse on its maiden flight. The programme, jointly developed by Sud Aviation and the British Aircraft Corporation under a 1962 UK-France treaty, had begun construction of six prototypes in February 1965. Certification came years later: the French certificate of airworthiness on 9 October 1975 and the UK CAA's on 5 December.