U.S. Naval Aviation – 100 Years

18 January 1911: At 11:01 a.m., Eugene Ely, flying the same Curtiss pusher used to take off from Birmingham (CL 2), landed on a specially built platform aboard the armored cruiser Pennsylvania (Armored cruiser No. 4) at anchor in San Francisco Bay. At 11:58 he took off and returned to Selfridge Field, San Francisco, completing the earliest demonstration of the adaptability of aircraft to shipboard operations.

And so it began. Fragile constructs of wire, canvas and wood, given flight by human guts and ingenuity would give way to immensely more powerful creatures flying from the decks of leviathans that themselves, were once the sole provence of fantasy writers. In so doing, the margins of naval warfare were stretched to fantastic margins and capabilities. Powerful naval forces, centered on aircraft carriers and their embarked airwings and supported by land- and sea-based maritime patrol would dominate broad swaths of the mightiest ocean barely thirty years later. Fifty years hence supersonic fighters would lift from the deck of the first nuclear-powered carrier while Naval Aviators prepared for the first manned spaceflight. And today – 100 years on, the edge of the envelope continues to be stretched and pushed as Naval Aviation in all its forms – carrier-based, rotary winged and maritime patrol provide critical and flexible options to our nation’s leaders – in times of peace and war.

As part of the celebrations and observances for this milestone, there will be regular posts based on this theme here and at other sites – like that hosted by the Naval Institute and of course, the official site for the celebration. Check the “Centennial of Naval Aviation: 1911-2011” block over on the right for updates and links to special events. Over at the U.S. Naval Air Forces Facebook site you will find additional information, including a growing collection of aircraft which are receiving “retro” paint schemes based on period aircraft (personal favorites are the tri-color schemes from 1944).

More to follow…