Flatland to flat tops: Iowan first to fly plane off carrier

The third week of March marks the 100th anniversary of America’s first aircraft carrier. It ushered in a new era in warfare and changed forever how an enemy could be defeated. What does this have to do with Iowa, 1,500 miles away from the nearest ocean?

Everything.

You see, it was an unassuming farm boy from the Hawkeye State who proved that it’s possible to take off from the deck of a ship and successfully remain airborne above the water. It seems so routine today in warplanes whisked forward by twin jets blasting out 50,000 pounds of thrust, but in the day of fabric wings and a four lung gasoline motor generating only 40 horsepower, it wasn’t so easy.

Eugene Ely was born Oct. 21, 1886, on a farmstead near Williamsburg. He excelled at things mechanical, repairing and improving all forms of implements and what few internal combustion engines existed in rural Iowa at the time. Recognized as a brilliant “fix it” man, Ely enrolled at Iowa State University as a teenager and graduated with a degree in engineering in 1904. He sold “souped up” motorcycles and automobiles and eventually taught himself how to fly airplanes.

Glenn Curtiss, generally acknowledged as the second American to build and fly a heavier than air flying machine, hired Ely to join Curtiss on his nationwide tour conducting flights around major cities and small airfields across the country.

It was while flying an early Curtiss made “Pusher” biplane at exhibition in late 1910 at Belmont Park, New York, that Captain Washington Chambers, Chairman of the U.S. Navy Aeronautical Bureau, saw firsthand Ely’s mastery of the plane, and asked the fledgling airman from Iowa to serve as test pilot for the Navy.

Ely agreed and Chambers convinced the War Department (the predecessor of today’s Department of Defense) to allot $25,000 for aviation under the command of the Navigation Bureau. Wanting to immediately prove the concept of an aircraft taking off from a ship, on Nov. 14, two weeks after meeting Chambers, Ely’s Curtiss aircraft was loaded on top of an eighty foot wooden deck constructed over the bow of the Navy cruiser, U.S.S. Birmingham, and, amid threatening gray skies, barreled down the makeshift platform at full speed.

Once running out of runway, the plane dropped out of sight, unable to be seen from the ship’s deck, until Ely finally gained enough lift of air beneath his wings to rise above the bay at Hampton Roads, and banked his aircraft to a safe landing on a flat beach less than three miles from the ship.

Along the way, his plane had dipped so low that his propeller splintered at the tip when it struck a wave on the water’s surface and the spray from it covered his goggles until they were coated in an impenetrable film of vapor. Because of this, as he unbuckled himself from his seat on the lower wing and was greeted by Naval officials, he considered the flight a failure.

Fortunately for him, and the evolution of modern warfare, the Navy did not. The event was heralded by the Navigation Bureau as proof a plane could launch form a ship at sea, and the accomplishment was touted as the beginning of a new epoch in aeronautics.

The victory was only half sweet, however. Verifying that the same plane could land on a waterborne vessel was imperative or the whole experiment was moot.

As such, the Navy again contracted with Ely, and equipped the larger armored cruiser, U.S.S. Pennsylvania, with a 120 foot long wooden deck, with ropes attached to sandbags across it that to catch specially designed hooks on the landing gear and bring the aircraft to a stop. If that didn’t work, the amid ship section of the cruiser had padded sheets raised at the ready to cushion the blow of a crash landing. Ely wore a rubber inner tube around his chest, just to be safe.

In San Francisco on the morning of Jan. 18, 1911, Ely nudged his Pusher, modified with a new 70 horsepower engine, along the grass of the Golden Gate’s Tanforan racetrack then lifted off at the blazing speed of sixty miles per hour. He waved to the crowd of thousands gathered to see him off, then circled to line up for his landing on the ship at anchor in the bay.

As he approached, Ely shut down the aircraft’s motor just as he reached the leading edge of the deck, pointed the nose down slightly, and set down like a feather. The hooks caught the ropes, and within 30 feet, Ely and his aircraft, glided to a halt.

The Navy, however, despite this feted achievement, balked at first, debating the value of the lesson Ely had taught the industry. Concerned with costs, and awaiting the development of more powerful engines and equipment, the military finally authorized the creation of a warship to serve as a floating air base.

In 1920, the collier, U.S.S. Jupiter (which had crossed the Atlantic many times as a cargo transport in World War I), was stripped of her above decks, replaced with a 500 foot long flat wooden runway. It took two years for a complete overhauling of the vessel, and by the time it was completed, it could carry 55 planes and a complement of 500 sailors and airmen.

On March 20, 1922, the Secretary of the Navy commissioned the one-of-a-kind ship and christened it U.S.S. Langley. The world had its inaugural aircraft carrier… and it was all made possible by a talented farm boy from the small landlocked town of Williamsburg, Iowa.

Sadly, Ely never got a chance to witness that historic moment. Exactly a year after the opening of the air show in Belmont, which had begun his career with the Navy, he was performing at an aerial meet in Macon, Ga. and lost control of his plane. It fell, crumpled, into the ground, and, at age 24, aviation lost one of its pioneering heroes.

His body was returned to Williamsburg and he was buried with military honors. Today, a small granite stone marks his grave outside of Williamsburg, but in a larger sense, his true memorial is the fleet of 90,000-ton 1,000-foot long and 250-foot wide floating cities that carry nearly 100 aircraft and 4,500 crew to defend freedom around the globe.

David V. Wendell is a Marion historian, author and special events coordinator specializing in American history.