One Hundred Years of U.S. Navy Air Power

by Smith, Douglas V.

  Chambers needed to find a way to launch aircraft from the Navy’s existing warships. He studied the catapults used by Langley and the Wrights and also built on his own experience with torpedoes to design a compressed air catapult. Tested and improved over the summer of 1912, the catapult successfully launched Ellyson (in the A-3) on 12 November. Leaving the project in Richardson’s capable hands, Chambers announced to reporters that a working catapult eliminated the last barrier to deploying planes to the fleet. Hoping to pressure his superiors, he predicted that each of the fleet’s battleships would carry a seaplane by the end of 1913.32

  Less than miniscule funding hindered Chambers’ work. The efforts by leaders of the Bureau of Construction and Repair to gain control of aviation repeatedly obstructed Chambers and slowed the growth of Navy aviation. Toward the end of 1912, for example, Chambers discovered that the bureaus had sabotaged his lobbying efforts by telling members of Congress that they needed money for other projects and that funding aviation was premature. The same thing happened in 1913, when Congress again authorized only $65,000 for Navy aviation. So, U.S. Navy aviation grew slowly in 1912 against considerable resistance, while other navies surged ahead. Royal Navy aviators duplicated Ely’s shipboard take-off, and European aviators soon matched and then surpassed other American records. The French navy moved particularly quickly, converting the destroyer Foudre to a seaplane tender in 1912. The Royal Navy did the same to the obsolete cruiser Hermes the following year.33

  The change in administration following the 1912 election compounded Chambers’ problems. New Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels assumed his position determined to run things strictly according to existing laws and regulation. This necessarily entailed either dismantling or making permanent Meyer’s ad hoc administrative arrangements. The first indication of changes to come was Daniel’s threat to retire Captain Templin Potts, the Chief of Naval Intelligence, for lack of sea duty.34 As he had Chambers, Meyer had recalled Potts from a battleship command to assume his new post. As word spread of Potts’ problems, virtually every officer on shore applied for command at sea, producing a tremendous shake-up in the Navy’s administration. Hutchinson I. Cone, Chambers’ strongest supporter in the bureaus, relinquished his position as Chief of the Bureau of Engineering and returned to sea as a Lieutenant Commander. Others left as well, including Ellyson, and Chambers watched most of his carefully cultivated group of supporters and contacts sail out to sea with the Atlantic Fleet. Chambers, himself short of sea duty, refused to apply for sea duty until Daniels appointed an officer to replace him in charge of aviation.35

  Chambers also ran into problems with his new commander, Rear Admiral Bradley Fiske. A reformer appointed Aide for Operations in February 1913, Fiske desperately wanted to become the first Chief of Naval Operations, an office everyone expected Congress would soon create. In 1911, Fiske had stunned the General Board by suggesting that torpedo-armed airplanes could defend the Philippines. When he returned to Washington two years later after a tour at sea, Fiske still understood neither the complexities of aviation technology nor the intricacies of interbureau politics as they related to aviation matters. Fancying himself a master of new technology, he wrested control of the Navy’s aviation program. A visionary, Fiske understood neither the “problems of builders or pilots.” He routinely clashed with the pragmatic Chambers, who insisted that unless critical technical problems were solved, all of Fiske’s ideas would come to naught. Fiske quickly tired of these debates and maneuvered to replace Chambers with a more amenable officer.36

  Internal resistance to aviation was such that Chambers spent most of 1913 working to overcome it, emphasizing struggles inside the Navy over lobbying Congress for more money or even saving his own career. In June, shortly after Chambers received a gold medal from the National Aeronautical Society for his pioneering work and aviation advocacy, the Navy announced his retirement for lack of sea service as a Captain. Chambers, in fact, had belatedly applied for sea duty, but Fiske interceded with Daniels and prevented his reassignment to a battleship command. It is also likely that Chambers’ insistence that a qualified officer first relieve him in command of naval aviation had irked Daniels. While Fiske searched for an officer willing to risk his career by succeeding Chambers, Chambers launched a last desperate effort to overcome the combination of political and administrative neglect and bureaucratic competition that slowed aviation progress, focusing his efforts on improving safety, funding a national aeronautic research lab, and expanding the naval air service.

  Newly appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt—probably at Admiral Dewey’s suggestion—facilitated Chambers’ campaign by appointing him to chair a special aeronautics board (usually called the Chambers Board) on 7 October 1913. Chambers added Towers to the board, the Marine Corps sent Cunningham, and each of the bureaus sent a representative. Richardson represented Construction and Repair; Commander Carlo B. Brittain represented Navigation; Commander Samuel S. Robison represented Engineering; and Lieutenant Manly H. Simons represented Ordnance. The board met in mid-November for twelve days and afterward issued a unanimous report that charted the future of naval aviation. Its recommendations totaled $1,297,700 and included purchasing fifty airplanes and three dirigibles and assigning a ship to serve as a mobile aviation base, as Britain and France had. While Fiske had lobbied to create a separate aviation bureau, the existing bureaus strongly opposed this, and the Chambers Board simply recommended an Office of Naval Aeronautics, directed by a Captain and a small staff that included representatives from the Marine Corps and the four bureaus involved in aviation. Similarly, they refused to choose sides in what had become a fractious dispute and recommended funding aeronautic research at both the Navy’s model basin and the Smithsonian.37

  Airplanes crashed frequently in these experimental years. Ellyson, for example, was seriously injured in a crash on 16 October 1911 that wrecked the A-1. Yet in almost three years of flying, no U.S. Navy aviator had died in a crash. This was an anomaly as aviation fatalities, which totaled thirty-four by the end of 1910, continued to rise. More than two hundred people died in crashes in 1911 and 1912, among them Eugene Ely, several Army aviators, and five of the Wright exhibition team’s nine pilots. These fatalities troubled Chambers who worried about his pilots and recognized that the danger of flying discouraged congressional funding. He increasingly emphasized safety, banned most stunt flying, and worked with the aviation community to improve safety. The growing fatalities also affected his pilots. Cunningham stopped flying because his fiancée refused to marry an aviator. Rodgers left aviation shortly after his cousin Cal, a popular civilian stunt pilot, died in a crash.38

  Whatever the reasons for Navy aviation’s luck thus far—and those reasons clearly included Chambers’ safety campaign and the quality and training of his pilots—that luck ran out on 20 June 1913. Billingsley, piloting the B-2 with Towers as a passenger, encountered a sudden updraft that tossed the men against the controls. Neither had worn the poorly fitting and uncomfortable safety straps mandated by Chambers. The B-2 stalled and then plunged toward the ground. Billingsley, thrown from the plane, died. Towers managed to cling to the rigging and fell 1,600 feet with the plane. Severely injured, he spent four months recuperating.39

  Stalls, often described by pilots as “holes in the air,” contributed to many crashes in these years. Pilots had yet to develop techniques to recover from them and regain control of their aircraft. Poor control systems, which builders had not standardized, made matters worse. The dual levers of several Wright models were particularly non-intuitive. The left lever moved a plane’s nose up and down, while the pilot moved the right lever forward to bank left and backward to bank right. The rudder control was attached to the top of this lever. Wright aircraft were also extremely unstable and placed great demands on their pilots who had to work the controls constantly to keep the plane aloft and prevent stalling. All five Army pilots who died in crashes in these years died in Wright planes. Yet anot
her problem was the pusher configuration of these planes. Mounted in the rear, engines fell forward and crushed pilots in several crashes. This further discouraged them from wearing safety straps. Being thrown from the plane seemed less risky than being trapped in one’s seat and crushed to death. Aeronautic research was critical to improve safety.40

  THE FIGHT FOR A NATIONAL LAB

  The Wrights’ 1903 success obscured the rather poor state of aeronautic research in the United States. Aeronautic research facilities proliferated across Europe in the first decade of the twentieth century, while the only comparable American operation—a small laboratory with a wind tunnel created by Albert F. Zahm at Catholic University in 1901—soon closed from lack of funds. While European scientists and engineers developed a mature aviation technology for war, Americans remained rooted in an experimental era due to small budgets and the limited vision of senior military and civilian leaders. Towers, who attended the Gordon Bennett air meet in Chicago in September 1912, complained bitterly about French aircraft, “which were so far ahead of anything in this country that there is no comparison.”41

  Indeed, aircraft improved dramatically between 1909 and 1913 largely due to the work of European inventors who benefited from a generation of experimentation and generous government funding. Inspired by the Wright flights of 1908 and 1909, Louis Blériot, Henry Farman, Gabriel Voison, and others produced a succession of airplanes boasting steadily improved performance. The requirements for the Bennett Prize, for example, increased from 12.4 miles (20 km) to 124 miles (200 km), while the speeds of its entrants more than doubled. In 1913, aviators flying the latest French airplanes swept international awards and set new records in categories ranging from speed (108 mph) and altitude (18,400 feet) to endurance and distance, the latter marked by Roland Garros’ 453-mile flight across the Mediterranean Sea. No American manufacturers competed for the Bennett Prize that year. None could match the latest French designs. In fact, Curtiss’ 1909 victories in his Reims Racer would be the last speed records won by an American plane until 1925 when Jimmy Doolittle would win the Schneider Trophy in another Curtiss plane, the R3C-2 racer.42

  Making matters worse was a “brain drain”: successful American inventors left for Europe. Lawrence Sperry who developed a gyroscopic stabilizer with the help of Glenn Curtiss and several Navy pilots, left for France where he won lucrative prizes and contracts. Riley Scott, a former coast artillery officer, developed a bombsight that achieved a ten-foot accuracy in 1911 tests. After the Army refused to fund further development, Scott left for Paris where he won a $27,500 prize and a government contract. Shortly afterward, the Army also rejected a lightweight, drum-fed machine gun whose inventor, Lieutenant Colonel Isaac Lewis, also departed for Europe where he quickly arranged production contracts.43

  Long aware of the growing technological gap between American and European aviation and the problems faced by American inventors, Chambers argued for the creation of a national aeronautic laboratory and included recommendations for government prizes for successful inventors in all his official reports. Working with Zahm and Charles D. Walcott, the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Chambers took his campaign for a national lab public in the summer of 1912, and convinced President William Howard Taft to appoint the nineteen-member National Aerodynamic Laboratory Commission. The commission dispatched Zahm and Jerome Hunsaker, a brilliant Navy officer who helped the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) establish its aeronautics program, to tour European labs; their reports confirmed the inadequacy of American facilities. Unfortunately the Taft administration failed to act before leaving office, forcing Chambers and his supporters to resume the campaign in 1913. Walcott briefly reopened Langley’s aeronautical laboratory until Congress and a lack of funds forced him to close it down again. The Navy’s Bureau of Construction and Repair began expanding its facilities at the Washington Navy Yard to support aviation research, but these efforts proceeded slowly.

  Lack of funds created an absurd situation in which leading advocates of aeronautic research assumed the government would fund only one lab. The Smithsonian and the Bureau of Construction and Repair’s Model Basin at the Washington Navy Yard emerged as the leading contenders, though MIT also threw its hat into the ring. Chambers again found himself at odds with the Bureau of Construction and Repair as its Chief, Rear Admiral Richard M. Watt, and his assistant, Captain David W. Taylor, opposed a national aviation research lab, “fearing that it would overlap with the work” of their bureau, which should lead aviation research by focusing on practical issues rather than the theoretical studies favored by Smithsonian scientists. After prolonged lobbying, Chambers and the national lab advocates won their fight in 1915 when Congress created the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). Composed of Army, Navy, and civilian members, it would oversee a national aeronautic lab, placing aviation research outside the squabbling bureaus and inter-Service rivalries. Hunsaker continued to work with MIT, where he built a wind tunnel in 1914. Taylor completed the Navy’s wind tunnel the following year. Together, these laid a broad foundation for aeronautic research that came to fruition after World War I.44

  THE BRISTOL ERA

  For his replacement, Chambers suggested Towers or Lieutenant Commander Henry C. Mustin, who assisted Richardson with experimental work and learned to fly on his own. After a prolonged search, Fiske settled on Captain Mark Bristol who assumed charge of Navy aviation on 17 December 1913, though the Navy did not formally establish the Office of Naval Aeronautics until the following July; only in November did it name Bristol its Director. Bristol’s prior career had much in common with Chambers’. Both were line officers with substantial ordnance experience, and the two had served together for a time at the Newport Torpedo Station. Assured of Fiske’s support, Bristol believed he could build rapidly on the foundation laid by Chambers and perhaps even achieve Chambers’ goal of a seaplane on every battleship in the fleet. Stripped of his authority but essential to the program, Chambers remained on duty despite his retirement and continued to guide experimental work into 1919.

  To allow year-round flying, Bristol relocated the aviation unit, which then totaled seven aircraft, nine officers, and twenty-three enlisted men, to Pensacola in January. He also secured the obsolete battleship Mississippi (BB-23) for aviation training with Mustin as acting Captain. Officially designated a Naval Air Station in November, Pensacola would long remain the center of Navy aviation training. Having just erected their temporary hangars and begun normal operations, most of the aviation unit redeployed to Mexico with the Atlantic Fleet in April after President Woodrow Wilson ordered American intervention in the Mexican Civil War. Towers, Smith, and Chevalier loaded three Curtiss aircraft aboard the Birmingham and sailed to Tampico. Shortly afterward, Mustin loaded a Curtiss seaplane and flying boat on to the Mississippi and sailed for Vera Cruz with Bellinger and three pilots fresh from training. Rear Admiral Fletcher, commanding at Vera Cruz, used his planes extensively. Bellinger scouted for mines ahead of the fleet and reconnoitered Mexican positions during which he was hit by ground fire, the first combat damage of a Navy aircraft. The fighting was brief, though, and the pilots soon settled into routine operations, often taking reporters and photographers for rides. With little to do off Tampico, the Birmingham and her aviators sailed to Vera Cruz, where the combined aviation unit continued daily operations until sailing home in mid-June. Atlantic Fleet Commander Admiral Charles J. Badger praised the aviators, as did Secretary Daniels who declared airplanes “one of the arms of the Fleet, the same as battleships, destroyers, submarines, and cruisers.”45 The government sold the Mississippi to Greece on her return, but Bristol obtained the newer and larger North Carolina (ACR-12), under Captain Joseph W. Oman with Mustin as his Executive Officer, as a replacement.

  Operations at Pensacola had just returned to normal when war broke out in Europe. German troops overran Belgium in August and advanced toward Paris. Assisted by observation aircraft, the French halted the Germans at the Ba
ttle of the Marne. As the war entered its static phase, the U.S. government dispatched the North Carolina, along with the Tennessee, to retrieve Americans trapped by the war. North Carolina sailed with Bellinger and other pilots, but without her aircraft, and spent the next thirteen months in European waters. Mustin blamed Bristol for the abandoned aircraft but took advantage of the voyage to gather information on European aviation. The North Carolina’s absence disrupted aviation training, and Navy leaders compounded this by assigning its most experienced pilots as attachés to observe the war and gather information. Towers went to Britain, Herbster to Germany, and Smith to France. With hardly any pilots left in Pensacola, aviation operations ebbed and focused on experimental work and practice bomb runs, in which pilots tossed small bombs over the side by hand. Command devolved to Chevalier, until Lieutenant Kenneth Whiting, the last naval aviator trained at the Wright school, arrived in September.46

  Mustin arranged his transfer to Pensacola in January, and training resumed in July when the first class of ten officers (two of them Marines) arrived along with twenty enlisted personnel to train as ground crew. Lieutenant Richard C. Saufley took a Curtiss seaplane up to 14,500 feet and set a new endurance record of eight hours and twenty minutes in the air. Richardson completed work on Chambers’ catapult. Installed on a barge, it successfully launched Bellinger, just returned from Europe, in the AB-2 on 16 April 1915. Transferred to the North Carolina after her return from Europe, it launched Mustin, also flying the AB-2, on 5 November.47