Among the officers who staffed this new administrative apparatus was Captain Washington Irving Chambers. The personal choice of Rear Admiral William H. Swift, the first Aide for Material, Chambers relinquished his brief command of the battleship Louisiana and became Swift’s assistant. An 1876 Naval Academy graduate, Chambers played a critical role in the process of reform and technological innovation that transformed the U.S. Navy into a world-class fleet. One of the Navy’s leading intellectuals, Chambers taught at the Naval War College in the 1890s and later contributed to the design of torpedoes and the Navy’s first all-big-gun battleships. He came to his new position with a record of technological aptitude and substantial experience in the Navy’s labyrinthine administration and incessant bureaucratic squabbling.12
While the Navy’s leaders proved slow to notice aviation developments, the growing clamor and the volume of mail promising that airplanes would revolutionize warfare overwhelmed Secretary Meyer’s office. He demanded that his aides assign someone to deal with it. So, Rear Admiral Frank F. Fletcher, who had succeeded Swift as Aide for Material, added the aviation correspondence to Chambers’ other duties in September 1910. A friend of Chambers since their days as Naval Academy midshipmen, Fletcher’s support proved important as Chambers sought to master his new responsibilities and bring airplanes into the Navy.13
Curious about aviation, Chambers had discussed recent developments with Lieutenant Sweet and had observed flights of lighter-than-air craft and Wilbur Wright’s flights for the 1909 Hudson-Fulton Celebration. Reading the aviation mail fired his imagination. He arranged for his friend Captain Templin Potts, the Navy’s Chief Intelligence Officer, to send him copies of all reports he received on aviation, which he translated himself. The more he studied aviation, the more its potential fascinated him. Chambers became the most vocal champion of aviation within the Navy.14
In October 1910, Admiral George Dewey and the Navy’s General Board, an advisory body of senior officers, recommended deploying airplanes on the new scout cruiser Chester. When this came to their attention, the Chiefs of both the Bureau of Construction and Repair and the Bureau of Engineering separately wrote Meyer requesting that he assign responsibility for aviation to his particular bureau. Chambers scrambled to maintain control of aviation and convinced Meyer’s assistant, Beekman Winthrop, to intervene on his behalf. Winthrop ordered each bureau to assign an officer to coordinate with Chambers. This decision, which remained in force throughout these years, split responsibility for aviation into three parts: Chambers remained tenuously in charge of personnel, policymaking, and the general direction of the program; the Bureau of Construction took charge of the planes; while the Bureau of Engineering looked after their engines. This was a poor arrangement, made worse first, because bureau chiefs received temporary rank as rear admirals, so they outranked Chambers and routinely bypassed him to speak directly to the Secretary of the Navy; and second, because when Congress later sanctioned this arrangement, it split funding among Chambers and the two bureaus.15
After examining about three dozen different aircraft and discussing aviation progress with the Wrights, Curtiss, and other inventors, and with pilots at aviation meets at Belmont Park, New York, and Halethorpe, Maryland, Chambers recommended that the Navy establish a national aeronautic laboratory to research flight, assign officers to study aviation and adapt it to the fleet’s needs, construct an airfield, train pilots, buy a few airplanes, and establish a distinct Naval Aeronautics Office to direct this effort. His report fell on deaf ears, so Chambers went in person, first to Rear Admiral Richard Wainwright, the Aide for Operations, and then to Secretary Meyer. Wainwright told him that “the present state of aeroplanes” did not merit funding, while Meyer dismissed airplanes as carnival toys. Glenn Curtiss received a similar response when he approached Meyer on his own.16
Hoping to force the issue, Chambers and Curtiss planned a demonstration for the Navy. Publisher and aviation enthusiast John Barry Ryan helped arrange a flight from a Hamburg-America passenger liner. Curtiss supplied a plane and pilot, Eugene Ely, but an accident damaged the plane, and the ship sailed before Curtiss repaired it. The liner’s German registry, though, allowed Chambers to hint darkly that the Germans were pursuing naval aviation. Supported by Fletcher and civilian aviation organizations, Chambers convinced the Navy to facilitate the demonstration. So, Eugene Ely took off from an improvised flight deck paid for by Ryan and erected on the cruiser Birmingham on 14 November 1910. Meyer’s grudging congratulatory letter arrived a few days later and spelled out further a requirement for Chambers and Curtiss to meet: “When you show me that it is feasible for an aeroplane to alight on the water alongside a battleship and be hoisted aboard without any false deck to receive it, I shall believe the airship is of practical benefit to the Navy.”17
Essentially, Meyer asked for a seaplane, which Chambers, inspired by Henri Fabre’s March 1910 seaplane flight, had already asked Curtiss to build. Fabre equipped a monoplane with three floats and completed the world’s first seaplane flight, taking off from and landing on the calm waters of la Méde harbor near Marseilles. Since Curtiss’ seaplane was not ready, Chambers rushed ahead with the second half of his demonstration. He arranged to land a plane on the armored cruiser Pennsylvania (ACR-4), then anchored in San Francisco Bay and commanded by Captain Charles Pond, another of Chambers’ friends. Workers erected a 119-foot wooden platform over the ship’s aft deck, attached three metal hooks to the bottom of Ely’s plane, and strung twenty ropes between 50-pound sandbags along the deck for the hooks to catch. On 18 January 1911 Ely took off from shore, circled the Pennsylvania, and then turned to land. He cut his engine fifty feet from the ship and glided in for a landing, but a sudden gust of wind lifted the plane. Responding quickly, Ely pushed the plane’s nose down and landed on the deck. The hooks caught eight of the ropes, which stopped the plane before it crashed into the canvas barrier at the end of the platform. The Pennsylvania’s crew refueled the plane, and Ely took off from that same short platform a few hours later after a celebratory toast with Chambers and ship’s officers. Over the next few days Chambers arranged a succession of other flights and demonstrations for the officers of the Pacific Fleet, which coincided with a nearby civilian aviation meet. Captain Pond was particularly impressed and announced that he was “positively assured of the importance of the aeroplane in future naval warfare.”18 Two weeks later, John Alexander Douglas McCurdy, shadowed by a squadron of destroyers arranged by Chambers, attempted to fly from Key West to Cuba in a Curtiss biplane. While engine trouble forced him down fourteen miles from Havana, he flew an accurate course for one hundred miles, further underlining the rapid progress in aviation.19
THE FIRST PILOTS AND PLANES
Chambers still had no budget, but Curtiss offered to train Navy pilots for free. The Wrights made a similar offer contingent on purchasing airplanes, which Chambers promised to do. Only a handful of Navy officers had requested aviation duty—how many remains uncertain since their requests often disappeared in the Navy’s bureaucracy before reaching Chambers. Nonetheless, he secured his first pilots, splitting them between Curtiss and the Wrights. Lieutenant Theodore Ellyson trained with Curtiss, and Lieutenant John Rodgers went to the Wrights.20 Rodgers had witnessed Ely’s landing while serving on Pennsylvania and afterward ascended in a box kite to spot and direct the ship’s fire by telephone. Two more pilots arrived the following summer: Lieutenant John Towers,21 previously the Chief Gunfire Officer on the Michigan, who trained with Curtiss; and Ensign Victor Herbster, who trained with the Wrights. Towers’ experiences trying to direct the Michigan’s guns convinced him of aviation’s importance despite the efforts of senior officers to discourage him from such foolishness.22
Chambers needed a plane better suited to the Navy’s needs than either Curtiss or the Wrights manufactured, and he worked to develop good relations with both companies. Curtiss proved more responsive to his requests and, unlike the Wrights, was willing to borrow and improve upon the ideas
of others. Chambers had first approached the Wrights to fly a plane off a ship, but they declined, as they had most suggestions for demonstrations and contests. Curtiss loved the idea, and his daring and outgoing nature endeared him to the Navy’s pilots. Unlike the Wrights, Curtiss also brought Navy officers into his design process. Lieutenant Ellyson helped Curtiss design and build the pontoons for his first seaplane and test a number of devices and modifications to his airplanes.23
Lieutenant John Towers was convinced of the importance of an aviation program in spite of the skepticism of senior officers.
The Wrights, though, did things their own way, and frequently ignored requests and suggestions from Chambers and his pilots. Relations worsened after Wilbur died from typhoid fever on 30 May 1912. Withdrawn and taciturn, Orville lacked Wilbur’s charm and had no interest in building seaplanes. He was, though, very interested in enforcing the Wrights’ patents. The Wrights had filed suit against Curtiss in 1909 and they continued to sue other pilots and inventors who infringed on their pioneering work to enjoin them from building, selling, or even exhibiting aircraft. Apart from complicating the work of military and civilian aviators, the patent fight hindered aviation research and development in the United States. The federal government did not step in and settle the dispute until 1917 when preparation for war necessitated a settlement, which it arranged by cross-licensing the key patents through the newly created Manufacturers’ Aircraft Association.24
While the Navy’s aviators favored Curtiss, the Army favored the Wrights, and this may have exacerbated the tendency of Army and Navy aviation leaders to go their own way. Navy aviators, who operated from a small airfield Chambers established near the Naval Academy at Greensbury Point in the summer of 1911, occasionally socialized with Army aviators stationed at nearby College Park, Maryland, but few friendships developed between the two groups. Whatever the reasons, cooperation and resource sharing between the Services’ aviation units remained slight.
The Navy’s airfield was also conveniently near the Bureau of Engineering’s Experiment Station. Perennially short of tools and supplies, Chambers’ pilots and mechanics borrowed these in regular nighttime raids that began after the station’s officers refused to support the aviation program—an all-too-common problem in these years. They also regularly wrote manufacturers, requesting samples of oil, gasoline, and other materials and equipment they needed, suggesting that lucrative contracts were in the offing. They often paid expenses out of their own pockets since the Navy proved slow to reimburse them and sometimes forgot them entirely.25
Seaplanes were critical both to satisfy Meyer’s requirements and to prove that airplanes could operate with the fleet. While a few visionaries suggested constructing aircraft carriers, Chambers saw seaplanes as the only viable option given the state of technology, lack of funds, and scant support from Navy leadership. Early in his career, Chambers had witnessed new technologies isolated by the Navy’s bureaucracy and ignored by officers, particularly torpedoes, which remained confined to the Newport Torpedo Station and its two torpedo boats before the Spanish-American War. Chambers hoped to put seaplanes on every cruiser and battleship in the Navy. This would not only spread the gospel of aviation, but also solve his financial problems by funding planes as part of a warship’s regular equipment rather than through separate appropriations.
Over the winter, Chambers relocated most of the aviation unit to Curtiss’ North Island base near San Diego where they could continue flying and also work with Curtiss on his new seaplane. Working with Ellyson, Curtiss developed effective pontoons and attached them to one of his planes, which they tested in several flights in late January. On 17 February 1911 Curtiss flew this new seaplane from shore and landed near the Pennsylvania, whose crew hoisted the plane aboard, refueled it, and lowered it back into the water. Curtiss took off without problems, satisfying Meyer’s terms.
Armed with this success, Chambers convinced Meyer to support a $25,000 appropriation for naval aviation—a rather small sum when one considers that the Royal Navy had spent $175,000 on aviation the previous year. Congress passed the Navy’s appropriation that March, but Chambers could not spend it until the fiscal year began in July. Meyer again refused Chambers’ request to create an Office of Aeronautics with a dedicated staff, but months of additional lobbying convinced him to clarify Chambers’ duties. Meyer ordered him to “keep informed” of the progress of aeronautics “with a view to advising the Department concerning the adaptability of such material for naval warfare, especially for the purpose of naval scouting.” He was to guide the training of Navy aviators and consult with the bureaus involved in his work. Final authority to carry out Chambers’ recommendations, though, rested “entirely with the bureaus having cognizance of the details.” This arrangement actually magnified all the problems of bureau coordination that Meyer had created the aide system to resolve. It left aviation, the great marvel of the twentieth century, saddled with nineteenth-century administrative problems. Chambers continued to operate without an official title or solid place in the Navy’s hierarchy, signing his correspondence with a self-made title, “Officer in Charge of Aviation.”26
Chambers’ friends continued to help him, or at least try to. On 30 March, Admiral Dewey transferred Chambers to the General Board where he would have clerical help and a voice in policymaking. Shortly afterward though, Congress assigned the $25,000 aviation appropriation to the Bureau of Navigation, which in those years oversaw personnel assignments. So Chambers had to arrange his transfer there, where no one wanted him. The Chief of the bureau, Reginald Nicholson, refused to assign him any staff and suggested that Chambers work from home, though Chambers found a corner in the dank basement of the War, State, and Navy building to set up shop. It was, he told friends, “a good place to catch a cold.”27
Chambers’ small budget proved just enough for him to order three planes, two from Curtiss and one from the Wrights, which he ordered on 8 May, generally considered the official birth of U.S. Navy Aviation. Curtiss delivered his planes in early July. One of these was a seaplane, the A-1 Triad, which had retractable wheels attached to its floats allowing it to operate from land and sea. The Wrights delivered their plane (the B-1) a few weeks later—a conventional plane rather than the requested seaplane. Naval constructors William McEntee and Holden C. Richardson, who worked closely with the aviation program, designed and built pontoons for the Wright plane. The following year, they helped Chambers’ pilots and mechanics assemble another Wright plane (the B-2) from spare and scavenged parts. The Wrights, who proved increasingly difficult to deal with, would sell only two more planes to the Navy. The B-1, underpowered before the addition of floats, rarely managed to exceed thirty-five miles per hour.28
By the end of 1911, Chambers had acquired a small mechanical and engineering staff, and his pilots had logged about one hundred hours in each of his three airplanes, often carrying passengers to demonstrate the potential of aviation. Chambers assumed that his team would build rapidly on this foundation the following year and that new demonstrations of airplanes’ growing capabilities would clear bureaucratic obstacles and yield more support and funding. Essentially he believed that all he had to do was repeat his 1911 experiences, producing new and better aviation demonstrations to overcome each new obstacle, which would open the financial floodgates and lead to the integration of aviation into the fleet. The Army’s pilots did much the same, hoping to promote their own program with successful tests and demonstrations. Given the poor funding of the United States’ two air Services, they could do little else.29
EXPANDING NAVAL AVIATION
Chambers spent the first months of 1912 lobbying Congress. He asked for $150,000, which Congress reduced to $35,000. Another round of lobbying and letters from aviation enthusiasts raised it to $65,000, split among the three bureaus ($10,000 for the Bureau of Navigation, $20,000 for the Engineering Bureau, and $35,000 for Construction and Repair). The Army did little better that year, securing only $100,000 for its larger
aviation program. The European powers, of course, spent much more. Between 1908 and 1913 Germany and France both spent more than $20 million on military aviation compared to a total of $435,000 spent by the United States Army and Navy. Not only did each of the major European powers outspend the United States in these years, so did Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, Greece, and Japan.30
Chambers ordered three more planes including a flying boat (C-1), a new Curtiss design with a boatlike fuselage instead of a central pontoon. Several new pilots arrived in the second half of the year: Ensign William D. Billingsley and Ensign Godfrey de Courcelles Chevalier; Lieutenant Patrick N. L. Bellinger; and Marine 1st Lieutenant Alfred A. Cunningham and Marine 1st Lieutenant Bernard L. Smith. While they were learning to fly, Chambers arranged a succession of new demonstrations. Helped by Ensign Charles H. Maddox, a radio expert, Towers and Rodgers transmitted messages to shore stations and a torpedo boat. Towers, the rising star of the aviation program, also worked with Lieutenant Chester Nimitz, then commanding the Atlantic Fleet’s submarine flotilla, to demonstrate that planes could locate submarines. On 6 October 1912 Towers set an endurance record by remaining aloft for more than six hours and also bested several other American records. Commanded by Towers, the aviation unit joined the Atlantic Fleet’s maneuvers off Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in January. For the next eight weeks, the Navy’s five planes spotted for gunfire, took photographs, hunted for submarines, dropped small bombs, and successfully located “enemy” ships. Encouraged by Chambers, pilots carried passengers on more than a hundred flights, among them Lieutenant Colonel John A. Lejeune and Lieutenant Ernest J. King who both received a ten-minute flight and aviation sales pitch from Towers.31
One Hundred Years of U.S. Navy Air Power Page 3