Prototype Curtiss XB-2 Condor, 26-211, assigned to Wright Field, Ohio in October 1927, crashes at Buffalo, New York after having logged only 58 hours, 55 minutes flying time. 1928 13 February Sole prototype Blackburn F.1 Turcock, the firm's first fighter project in some eight years, an attempt to produce an aircraft equally suited as a land-based interceptor and as a ship-borne fighter, found no interest from the Air Ministry, but Blackburn built one as a private venture. It first flew (without guns) on 14 November 1927, piloted by Flt. Lt. Arthur George Loton, AFC, and having been purchased by the Turkish government was named the Turcock. Allocated the British registration G-EBVP for test and delivery purposes, it was destroyed in a flying accident this date. No other models of the type were built. 17 February Capt. William Millican Randolph, a pioneer aviator, a 1916 graduate of Texas A&M University, and adjutant of the Air Corps Flying School at Kelly Field, Texas, is killed in the crash of a Curtiss AT-4 Hawk, 27–220, three miles NW of Gorman, Texas after take off from Gorman Field. In September 1929, the Army Air Corps names its field north of San Antonio, Texas, Randolph Field for the Austin, Texas native. Randolph was interred at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. Ironically, Captain Randolph had been a member of the committee assigned to select a name for the new airfield. Randolph had survived wrecking a Fokker D.VII at Modesto, California, on 19 April 1920. 27 February Commander Theodore Gordon Ellyson, the first Naval Aviator, Lieutenant Commander Hugo Schmidt and Lieutenant Rogers Ransehounsen, crash to their deaths in the sole Loening XOL-7 amphibian, A7335, (an OL-6 modified with an experimental thicker wing), in the lower Chesapeake Bay while on a night flight from Norfolk, Virginia, to Annapolis, Maryland. The Navy searches for the lost aircraft for a month without success. On 11 March the office of the Secretary of the Navy cables Helen Ellyson, "Very reluctantly yesterday the Secretary came to the conclusion that it was necessary for us to declare the officers who were lost in the plane with your husband officially dead. We had hoped against hope that something might be found of those officers living but it does not seem now that there is any hope left." On 11 April, Ellyson’s body washed ashore in the lower Chesapeake Bay. May Sumitoshi Nakao becomes the first