As far as I've heard, apparantly it was a New Zealander who was the first in the air with a powered aircraft, the Germans weren't far behind either but the Wright brothers had much better
PR! All the others forgot to or couldn't proove it was done.
The sound barrier was broken in 1944 by a Me 262 pilot in southern Germany ( coming down afterwards with a warped airframe due to the buffeting/compressability) after being ordered straight back to base for some reason. He was repremanded and all high speed flights were banned because the machine was so rare at the time!