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BEFORE NAVAIR WAS NAVAIR FOSTERING THE BIRTH AND GROWTH OF U.S. NAVAL AVIATION
For many years after the Wright brothers made history at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, human flight still wasn’t taken seriously by most Americans; it was a novelty, a circus act, performed by daredevil “birdmen.” The U.S. Navy was firmly among the skeptics, despite the urgings of a small, passionate group of enthusiasts who claimed the airplane was on the verge of changing the way wars were fought. Aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss was one of the most prominent of these advocates; in the summer of 1910, he simulated aerial bombing and gunnery exercises in front of naval officers near his aviation laboratory at Keuka Lake, near Hammondsport, New York.
When one of Curtiss’ pilots, Eugene Ely, became the first to land an aircraft on the deck of a ship in
January 1911, the achievement, while impressive, still seemed perhaps a bit too improvisational
to Navy brass: As Ely brought his pusher biplane down onto a wooden platform built above the deck of the USS Pennsylvania, he was wearing a football helmet and, because he couldn’t swim, several inflated bicycle inner tubes hitched under his armpits. To slow the momentum of his plane, steel hooks mounted on his undercarriage – not much different from today’s tailhooks – caught several ropes that had been stretched across the deck
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS PHOTO
By Craig Collins
