Wings for the Fleet. George Van Deurs

      Naval Institute Press

      291 Wood Road

      Annapolis, MD 21402

      © 1966 by United States Naval Institute

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

      First Naval Institute Press paperback edition published in 2016.

      ISBN: 978-1-68247-143-2 (eBook)

      Library of Congress Catalogue Card No. 65–21791

      All photographs, unless otherwise credited, are official U.S. Navy releases.

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      First printing

      FOREWORD

      More than half a century ago, as officer of the deck of the USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco Bay, I watched a daring young man make the world’s first aeroplane landing aboard ship. Aviation was in its infancy then; less than ten years had passed since the Wright brothers had made the world’s first powered flight. Few who watched Ely’s sensational feat realized its historical significance, for that day marked the actual beginning of naval aviation.

      The men who ventured into the air in the Navy’s first frail aircraft, and the trial and error methods by which they developed naval aviation into the mighty weapon it was to become in World War II, are nearly forgotten now in a swift passing of history. They were not only daring—they had vision, persistence, and nearly unlimited determination, qualities which were required if they were to convince the skeptics that their playthings of the wind could ever possess military value.

      Here, written by a naval aviator who knew many of those early birds—“Bald Eagles,” we call them now—is the account of their trials, tragedies, and triumphs.

      Admiral van Deurs relates events during the first seven years when naval aviation was, as it were, getting off the ground. He tells the story well. To him, and to all those who, like him, flew in the days when every flight was still an adventure into the unknown, the Navy and the nation owe a vast debt of gratitude. This book will enable many who were not so fortunate as I, who saw it all begin, to appreciate the heritage of modern seagoing air power.

      FRANK LUCKEL

       Captain, U.S. Navy (Retired)

      PREFACE

      The span of but half a century separates the first flight of an aeroplane off the deck of a naval vessel from the first ascent of a naval aviator into outer space. The early days of this extraordinary development seem now to have been of another age and era. Yet it is a fact that within the lifetime of many, man has moved from the achievement of successful heavier-than-air flights to the penetration of space beyond the limits of the atmosphere of the earth on which he lives. And today no man can foretell the limit of this progression.

      In the United States Navy the first phase of this development came to an end with the entry of the United States into the first World War in 1917. It had commenced in 1910, a full seven years after the then hardly noticed and the now memorable flights of the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk. During the ensuing seven years the airplane was either the hobby of some rich sportsman or the stock-in-trade of the daredevil flier, who eked out a hazardous living by exhibition flights at the primitive air meets of that day. The development of aircraft and of flying in the Navy was inevitably tinctured by the glamour of that early time.

      The officers who pioneered in naval aviation were few in number. They were venture-some individuals, who became pilots by their own choice. They worked against great odds. It was their destiny to develop aviation into an effective arm of the Fleet. This development was more a matter of faith than anything else. Its contemporary performance was so strange and unique as to be hardly credible to conservative naval officers. The elder of these officers, exercising the great power of seniority, had trained in sail and had only recently accepted the steam engine. Those who sought to become naval fliers had much to overcome in the way of inertia, professional conservatism, and closed minds.

      The miracle is that some of these pilots, having survived the hazards of early flying and of two world wars in which they were the pre-eminent leaders of naval aviation, have lived on into the day when their successors are seeking to blaze a trail into space.

      Among those who have made generous contributions of their time and knowledge to the making of this book in the form of both letters and personal interviews are Vice Admiral P. N. L. Bellinger, U.S. Navy (Retired), deceased; Mrs. Eugene Ely, deceased; Colonel F. T. Evans, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired); Admiral A. W. Fitch, U.S. Navy (Retired); Mr. Paul Garber, National Air Museum, Washington, D.C.; Mr. George C. Gilmore, Pensacola, Florida; Captain F. A. LaRoche, U.S. Navy (Retired); Mr. M. W. McFarland, Library of Congress; Rear Admiral L. N. McNair, U.S. Navy (Retired), deceased; Captain Charles H. Maddox, U.S. Navy (Retired); Admiral George D. Murray, U.S. Navy (Retired), deceased; Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, U.S. Navy, deceased; Mrs. Edna Whiting Nisewaner; Mr. Lee M. Pearson, Historian, Naval Air Systems Command, Department of the Navy, Washington, D.C.; Admiral A. M. Pride, U.S. Navy (Retired); Captain Braxton Rhodes, U.S. Navy (Retired), deceased; Mr. M. C. Sloan, Air Force Museum, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio; Lieutenant Colonel Edna L. Smith, U.S. Marine Corps Women’s Reserve (Retired); Mrs. J. H. Towers; Mr. A. O. Van Wyen, Head of Aviation History Unit, Office of Chief of Naval Operations, Department of the Navy, Washington, D.C.; Mr. Alfred V. Verville, pioneer aviation designer; Mr. Charles L. Wiggin, pioneer aviation mechanic; and last but not least, many patient librarians.

      My special thanks are due Mr. Dudley C. Lunt, who himself served in the Navy in World War I, and who did most of the final editing.

      To all those named, and to those helpers I have been unable to name, my thanks.