for appropriations for aviation. But Wainwright’s friends belittled the performance. A ship could not fight with its guns boxed by a platform. A masthead lookout, they said, could see farther than Ely had flown.
And so it went and so it would go for a long time, this argument between the Navy’s black shoe conservatives and the brown shoe visionaries.
1. The first flight to a “carrier deck” was accomplished by Eugene Ely in San Francisco Bay on 18 January 1911, when he landed on the slightly inclined wooden platform, 30 feet wide and 120 feet long, which had been built on the stern of the USS Pennsylvania for the occasion. A ramp sloped downward at a 30-degree angle at the after end of the platform. Twenty-two years later, Ely received posthumously the Distinguished Flying Cross.
CHAPTER THREE: THE SHIP AND AIRCRAFT MEET
The first flight from ship to shore, from forecastle of the cruiser Birmingham to Willoughby Spit, resulted in a blaze of publicity. In Washington, Captain Chambers endeavored to take advantage of such favorable atmosphere. But the interests of the bureaucrats in that bureau-infested city soon proved to be different from the aims and desires of Chambers.
Nobody denied that aeronautical research was needed, and everybody wanted the appropriations and the prestige that went along with it. When Chambers suggested a national laboratory, he was quickly seconded by the National Aeronautical Society and the Smithsonian Institution. Charles Walcott, who had taken the Langley pictures to Theodore Roosevelt, headed the Smithsonian. He announced the reopening of Langley’s old laboratory as a very inadequate nucleus for expansion.
But Chief Constructor R. M. Watt objected. A national laboratory would be needless—a costly duplication. Construction and Repair’s ship model basin could do all the necessary research, if only a few extra pieces of equipment were added. H. I. Cone, engineer in chief of the Navy, claimed that his Bureau had the necessary equipment, and offered the use of the Engineering Experiment Station across the Severn River from the Naval Academy. President Taft opposed a separate laboratory and, in spite of continuous agitation by Chambers and his backers, no national aeronautical research organization was formed for over four years.
Another scheme that bristled with controversy was Chambers’ plan for a small naval air organization. He wanted an Office of Aeronautics, headed by a director responsible to the Secretary of the Navy, to coordinate all aviation developments. Because Chambers thought naval planes would be like ships’ picket boats, he assumed they would be similarly bought, maintained, and operated. The Bureau of Construction and Repair would take care of the airframes; the Bureau of Engineering would provide motors and wireless; the Bureau of Navigation would equip, man, and operate them. And someday the Bureau of Ordnance might arm them.
Chambers ignored the interbureau rivalry and blamed naval aviation’s slow start on ignorance and lack of interest. Hence an informed coordinator to help everyone seemed a natural solution. He seems to have expected to have the office going within a week or so after he had suggested it. Although he knew Wainwright and the Secretary would oppose anything aerial, the stubborn opposition he encountered in other quarters took him by surprise. Watt, still trying for exclusive control of aircraft by the Bureau of Construction and Repair, said that no other bureau, except possibly Engineering, should be involved with planes. Since these two bureaus already cooperated on many things, they needed no outside coordinator to get them together on this new item. Other bureau chiefs shoved in their oars.
In addition to this open maneuvering, there was a covert, foot-dragging resistance by many veteran bureaucrats. They were jealous. They suspected Chambers of empire-building in order to make aviation a sinecure for himself. Ships, planes, and fleets were nebulous things to these men for whom the only reality was their individual spot in the Washington sun.
When Chambers persisted in his campaign, the opposition got rough. Captain Fletcher complained that aviation took so much of his assistant’s time that his regular work was being neglected. Then Chambers was refused clerical help for his aviation correspondence. So he answered letters in long-hand, using this circumstance as an additional argument for an Office of Aeronautics. Every letter, to anyone, on any subject, included a plug for his proposed organization. In addition, he set forth his aviation ideas in several magazines.
In March 1911, his article, “Aviation and Aeroplanes,” was the first original work on aviation to be printed in the United States Naval Institute Proceedings. It comprised a lengthy report of the machines and the flying at Belmont Park and Halethorpe and told of Ely’s work for the Navy. It stated the case for scouting planes, an Office of Naval Aeronautics, and a National Aeronautical Laboratory.
Soon after this article appeared, Secretary Meyer addressed a long, involved memorandum to Chambers, made him a handcuffed coordinator, and did nothing to check interbureau bickering. That day Chambers wrote to the Wrights’ factory manager, saying he was “running into obstruction in establishing the Office of Aeronautics,” but that he still hoped to have naval aviation started right.
In the spring, Admiral Dewey had Chambers ordered to the General Board. Ostensibly Chambers was to advise on aviation. Incidentally, the move made the Board’s typists available to him, but this break lasted only a couple of weeks. Then President Taft approved an appropriation bill which included the first funds for naval aviation. Over Dewey’s protest, Chambers was immediately assigned to the Bureau of Navigation to handle this.
Next to the chief of this Bureau, Admiral Reginald F. Nelson, Chambers was the senior officer attached. Nevertheless, the chief told him to work at home since there was no room for him, nor for aviation, at the Bureau. Instead, Chambers moved himself into Room 67, a hole under the basement stairs of the old State, War, and Navy Building. A caller described this as being about eight feet square, half filled with files, leaving barely room for a man and a desk. It was a good place to take cold and was “so unsanitary,” said Chambers, that no one wanted to take it away from him.
2. Eugene Ely’s “flying gear” consisted of an inflated bicycle tube tied over his stained leather jacket, a padded football helmet, and goggles. His “seat belt” was a length of rope looped over each shoulder which could easily be shrugged off in case of accident. His plane was a Curtiss landplane with pneumatic landing wheels. In case of a forced landing in the bay, metal air tanks were secured to each side of the plane to help keep it afloat, and a skid was placed forward to prevent “nosing up” in the water.
For over three years his proposal for an Office of Aeronautics was tossed out every time it was brought up. During those years, Chambers’ unofficial cubbyhole under the stairs was headquarters for naval aviation.
After his successful flight from the Birmingham, Ely received a fulsome letter of congratulations from Secretary Meyer.
“That four-flusher has a crust to congratulate me,” Ely commented. “He tried to stop me.”
And with that, he threw the letter at the wastebasket. After he stamped out of the room, Mabel Ely salvaged it for a souvenir. Then it was discovered that it bore the initials “WIC.” Chambers had drafted it.
Then came another letter, this time from Chambers himself. He asked if Ely still wanted to fly on and off a ship. If so, when and where would he be available? Ely wired his acceptance, suggesting San Francisco, where he expected to take part in an air meet during January 1911.
The commander of the Pacific Fleet was authorized to choose a convenient ship and arrange the details.
