1944 in Aviation - Events - September

September

• Japanese monthly production of aircraft peaks at 2,572.
• U.S. Army Air Forces bombers of the Seventh Air Force conduct 22 air raids against Iwo Jima.
• September 2 – In an experiment with the use of the F4U Corsair as a fighter-bomber, Charles Lindbergh – the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean – flies a bombing mission in an F4U as a civilian consultant with United Aircraft, dropping one 2,000-lb (907-kg) and two 1,000-pound (454-kg) bombs on Japanese positions in the Marshall Islands.
• September 3 – Flying a P-51 Mustang of the U.S. Army Air Forces' 55th Fighter Group's 338th Squadron, Lieutenant Darrell Cramer shoots down and kills the German ace Hauptmann Emil Lang over Belgium. Lang's Focke-Wulf Fw 190A-8 crashes and explodes in a field outside Overhespen. Lang dies with 173 aerial victories and the sinking of a Soviet torpedo boat to his credit.
• September 6 – The sole completed McDonnell XP-67 prototype is destroyed by an engine fire, prompting USAAF leaders to declare the aircraft redundant and cancel the program a week later.
• September 7 – 108 B-29 Superfortresses bomb the Showa Steel Works in Anshan, Manchuria, from bases in China.
• September 14 –Operation Dragoon, the Allied invasion of southern France, concludes. Penetrating as far as 120 miles (190 km) inland, carrier aircraft from British and American escort aircraft carriers supporting the operation have lost 16 aircraft in combat—all to German ground fire—and 27 to non-combat causes while conducting armed reconnaissance flights targeting German ground forces and providing observer services for naval gunfire. The escort carriers never come under attack from German forces.
• September 15 – 28 Royal Air Force Avro Lancaster bombers operating from Yagodnik airfield in the Soviet Union attack the German battleship Tirpitz in Altenfjord, Norway, with 12,000-lb (5,443-kg) "Tallboy" bombs. They score only one hit, but it so badly damages Tirpitz that she never again is seaworthy.
• September 17 – The U.S. Navy submarine USS Barb (SS-220) torpedoes and sinks the Japanese aircraft carrier Unyō in the South China Sea. There are over 761 survivors.
• September 18
  • Aircraft from the British aircraft carriers HMS Indomitable and HMS Victorious strike targets on Sumatra.
  • Allied aircraft fly to Warsaw to drop supplies by parachute to the Polish Home Army fighting in the Warsaw Uprising for the last time. Mainly flown by Polish pilots flying for the Royal Air Force, 306 bombers have made the flights, dropping hundreds of antitank weapons, 1,000 Sten guns, and two million rounds of ammunition, but have suffered an unacceptably high loss rate of one aircraft destroyed for every ton of supplies dropped.
• September 24 – More than 30 U.S. Navy carrier aircraft from Task Force 38 sink the Japanese seaplane tender Akitsushima in Coron Bay off Coron Island in the Philippine Islands with the loss of 86 lives.