13.6. 1889 Pilot Adolphe Pégoud is born

He is considered to be the first air ace in history. Adolphe Pégoud was born on June 13, 1889. He also performed his acrobatic routine in Brno and Prague.

Adolphe Pégoud was one of the pioneers of aerobatics. In September 1913, he won the world championship in the steady flight "on his back". About a month before that, he was the first in the world to jump out of a plane with a parachute. In order to get used to the different positions common during aerobatic flying, he had his plane hung upside down in his hangar. Pégoud also headed Louis Blériot's flight school and promoted his planes.

At the turn of 1913 and 1914 he demonstrated his art in Prague. The whole city watched his performance over Letná with bated breath. Around eighty thousand people came to the aeronautical plan by foot, electric railway, cars and fiacres. At that time Prague had only 230 thousand inhabitants. Smíchov was then an independent city.

According to the National Gazette, everything went off without injury. "Barely 100 m high, he was already leaning on the wing, and, rising a little, he began to throw his goats. Suddenly the aeroplane stands perpendicularly aloft, then slowly tilts back to the horizontal, and by a simultaneous turn about the longitudinal axis returns to its normal position. But immediately it climbs, rolls, rolls, and so on three times. The audience goes wild," one journalist described the atmosphere in a report published on 30 December 1913.

Pégoud was said to have flown over Brno. He arrived in Prague at the beginning of 1914, but it was his last performance, as his plans were interrupted by the First World War. He also made history during the war. According to surviving sources, for example, he made the first documented attack on a balloon, which he attacked with steel darts or flechettes on 31 August 1914. Balloons were used for aerial reconnaissance and to guide artillery fire.

Pégoud is considered by many to be the first aerial ace, but is sometimes called so by Roland Garros, who has three confirmed kills. Pégoud, however, has six. His fatal one came on the last day of August 1915, when he was shot down by a German reconnaissance plane. Pégoud died when he was only 26 years old. He was shot down by Walter Kandulski, one of the French pilot's pre-war students. The German crew then dropped a funeral wreath on the French trenches.

Sources: www.atlasobscura.com, Science and Technology for Youth, www.tyden.cz, https://cs.wikipedia.org/