Short answers, pulled from the story.
The earliest documented aerial warfare took place in the third century when a manned kite was used to spy for military intelligence and communication. By the second or third century, a prototype hot air balloon known as the Kongming lantern served as a military communication station in China.
Austrian imperial forces besieged Venice by floating some two hundred paper hot air balloons each carrying a twenty-four to thirty-pound bomb over the city. Some balloons were launched from land while others came from the side-wheel steamer SMS Vulcano acting as a carrier.
German Leutnant Kurt Wintgens scored the first known victory for a synchronized gun-equipped fighter aircraft on the 1st of July 1915. Dutch aircraft designer Anthony Fokker developed a successful gun synchronizer that allowed him to achieve this result.
The Allies lost one hundred sixty thousand airmen and thirty-three thousand seven hundred planes during World War II. These losses occurred despite efforts to gain air superiority through large formations of heavy bombers.
Soviets downed a piloted Lockheed U-2 with a surface-to-air missile when Gary Powers flew it. The aircraft was expected to be invulnerable due to extreme altitude capabilities before this event occurred.
The Korean War was the first time helicopters were used extensively in conflict while their use remained rare in World War II. Sikorsky H-19 partially took over non-combat Medevac area and later large scale use of helicopters led to new class of airmobile troops introducing Air Cavalry in United States.