One Hundred Years of U.S. Navy Air Power

by Smith, Douglas V.

  Chambers had evinced some interest in lighter-than-air craft, but paltry budgets prevented their purchase. By 1915 Towers, Mustin, and most of the other pilots doubted their effectiveness. Bristol, though, became enamored with the craft. After awkwardly comparing dirigibles to aerial battleships in testimony to Congress, he ordered a blimp from the Connecticut Aircraft Company in May. The company lacked experience and the project fell behind. Hunsaker, brought in to save the project, designed a whole a new airship the following year (eventually designated DN-1). Bristol also ordered several balloons, training for which began in June 1916 after the first of them finally arrived at Pensacola.48

  Like Chambers, Bristol experienced constant problems obtaining funds. Congress remained stingy and appropriated aviation funds to the bureaus, which often withheld some of the money. In 1915, for example, the Bureau of Navigation retained a third of its aviation funds.49 Rather than the rapid progress he had expected, Bristol found himself repeating Chambers’ experience of grueling lobbying to obtain a pittance. Bolstered by the reports of the Chambers Board and overseas naval attachés, he redoubled his lobbying in the last months of 1915, repeating Chambers’ previous requests for fifty planes and two planes for each of the fleet’s sixteen battleships. The timing was critical since, despite aggressive lobbying and scheming, Fiske did not become Chief of Naval Operations. Instead, Daniels appointed William S. Benson, a relatively junior Captain, to that position on 11 May 1915. Regardless of his personal ambitions and routine dismissal of serious technical issues, Fiske had favored and supported aviation. Benson gave it little thought and considered the North Carolina and her few aircraft adequate to the Navy’s needs.

  While Congress dismissed out of hand Bristol’s request for $8 million to convert two merchant ships into aircraft carriers, it authorized $1 million for aviation, marking a tremendous victory for Bristol and the culmination of Chambers’ long-delayed hopes. Congress also, however, downgraded Bristol’s title to Officer in Charge of Naval Aeronautics. He became an assistant in the Material Division of the Office of Naval Operations, a position not unlike Chambers’ when he directed Navy aviation, with his authority reduced to making recommendations on the “type, numbers and general characteristics of aircraft.”50

  Bristol chose not to fight this decision, instead focusing on spending the $1 million appropriation and he accomplished much over the next six months. Working with his Army counterparts, he arranged the standardization of airplane controls systems. He sent Mustin to tour American factories, which employed only 168 workers who manufactured mostly obsolete planes. Only Curtiss, already busy filling orders for his JN seaplanes and larger flying boats, manufactured modern and export-worthy airplanes. Towers buttressed Mustin’s report and together they finally convinced Bristol to order modern European aircraft. The war, though, prevented their delivery.51

  To escape Chambers’ fate, Bristol arranged to assume command of the North Carolina in March 1916 while retaining his reduced aviation responsibilities. With four planes aboard, North Carolina joined the Atlantic Fleet off Guantanamo for maneuvers. Flying planes that differed little from those first ordered by Chambers in 1911, the pilots scouted for the fleet and launched mock attacks on shore targets and the antiquated gunboat Petrel. These maneuvers highlighted both the fragility and obsolescence of their equipment, particularly the catapult, which required repair after almost every launching. As Bellinger bitterly noted, the “planes now owned by the Navy are very poor excuses for whatever work may be assigned to them.”52

  Bristol’s relations with Mustin, already poor, worsened in these months while Bristol worked to maintain control of all aviation matters despite his reduced authority and command of the North Carolina. A skilled pilot, Mustin blamed Bristol for aviation’s slow progress and purchase of obsolete pusher aircraft. He routinely derided him for his ignorance of flying and critical technical matters and became particularly irked after Bristol required pilots stationed on the North Carolina to stand watches and perform other duties that took them away from flying. In was time, Mustin wrote his wife, for “Bristol to resign from aeronautics and let a real man take his job.” Bristol, in turn, accused Mustin of failing to prepare the North Carolina for sea and neglecting the development of both the catapult and Pensacola’s training programs. Neither officer understood the other’s problems. Bristol lacked Chambers’ grasp of the technical details of aviation, while Mustin failed to understand the importance of the bureaucratic and political battles that drained Bristol’s time and energy as they had Chambers’.53

  A succession of fatal crashes exacerbated these disputes. On 16 February 1915 Lieutenant (jg) James M. Murray was thrown out of the Burgess D-1 flying boat, a licensed copy of a Wright aircraft, and drowned. The crash reaffirmed Navy suspicions of Wright aircraft, but three months later Lieutenant (jg) Melvin L. Stolz died in a crash after his head was thrown back against the engine. Two more pilots died in crashes the following year, both in pusher aircraft. Bristol blamed Mustin, while Mustin blamed the planes. To keep peace, Benson removed Pensacola and the rest of aviation’s shore establishment from Bristol’s command on 1 June 1916. The dispute simmered over the next year as Mustin continued to press his case. He blamed the crashes on obsolete and dangerous aircraft and pressed the Navy to modernize. Benson quickly tired of this, and he revoked Mustin’s designation as a naval aviator the following year.54

  Otherwise, Benson allowed Navy aviation to languish. Lieutenant (jg) Clarence K. Bronson assumed Bristol’s old Washington duties, representing aviation in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. A personable aviator, he was too junior to challenge his skeptical superiors. His brief tenure ended in November when he died along with Lieutenant Luther Welsh while on a flight to test experimental bombs, which exploded prematurely. Control over aviation matters had already reverted to the bureaus, particularly the Bureau of Construction and Repair. Bristol was detached as Commander of the Air Service on 12 December 1916, and the title ceased to exist as Rear Admiral Albert Gleaves, who commanded the Atlantic Fleet’s destroyers, assumed Bristol’s remaining responsibilities.55

  On 24 June 1916, the General Board issued a report that decried Navy aviation’s slow progress. It repeated Chambers’ and Bristol’s requests for three dirigibles to patrol the Atlantic coast and two planes for each battleship and naval district, and asked for $5 million over the next three years to modernize and expand Navy aviation to European standards. Combined with reports on the importance of aircraft in the European war, the General Board’s recommendations stimulated a reorganization of the Navy aviation establishment. Recalled from MIT, Hunsaker led a new Aircraft Division at the Bureau of Construction and Repair, which ordered thirty Curtiss N-9 seaplanes, the first Navy plane ordered in quantity. Delivered between November 1916 and February 1917, these tractor biplanes replaced the Navy’s obsolete pushers and became its most popular training aircraft during World War I. New orders also separated manufacturing, experimental work, and training at Pensacola, and the base finally began to flourish. After six years of painstaking and often heartbreaking work, damaged and ruined careers, and several fatalities, aviation was emerging as a recognized and important part of the U.S. Navy.56

  CONCLUSION

  When World War I began, the U.S. military had only 23 planes, compared with Russia’s 244, Germany’s 232, France’s 162, and Britain’s 113. A number of historians have commented on the relative developmental failure of American military aviation in these years. Tom Crouch, for example, argues that Congress felt no urgency in the matter since the nation faced no pressing military threat. Herbert Johnson blames the Wright-Curtiss patent dispute for stalling innovation and reinforcing the skepticism of politicians and military leaders. Richard Hallion seconds this but casts more blame on Congress, which would fund demonstrations, but would not “build a robust combat-worthy aviation force.” As 1914 ended, some members of Congress actually congratulated themselves for not wasting money on aviation. Looking within t
he Navy, Charles Melhorn, Andrew Krepinevich, and many others blame a so-called gun club of battleship-obsessed senior officers like Admiral Benson, who claimed aviation was “just a lot of noise.” They, like many in Congress, lacked vision.57

  The lack of an immediate threat, though, had not significantly hindered the dramatic expansion of the Navy Battle Fleet before World War I. Congress funded a succession of ever-larger battleships, but proved less generous with smaller warships and auxiliaries. Its members often proved more skeptical of new technology than did military leaders, and this skepticism mounted as each new battleship cost more than its predecessor. Congress proved even more reluctant to purchase airplanes, even though they cost only a few thousand dollars. The aggressive lobbying by aviation enthusiasts further irritated members of Congress and hardened their attitudes. Wild predictions about the future of aviation, which Chambers discouraged, served only to reinforce the skepticism of doubters. Still, the obvious weakness of aerial weapons provided a ready and easy argument against aviation funding.58

  Chambers understood both the reverence for battleships and the skepticism toward new technology. He worked to present aviation as an adjunct to the battleship—not a threat to its existence, but a necessary complement that would enhance its effectiveness. Chambers became a master of this, putting forth arguments to which his successors would return for the next twenty years. He repeatedly insisted that “no airship or collection of airships” would “ever take the place of a battleship in the maintenance of sea power,” while simultaneously insisting that future battleships would carry airplanes for both defense and offense in addition to scouting. As airplanes’ capabilities improved, battleships would carry ever more planes.59 Essentially, Chambers preached Mahanian battleship orthodoxy while systematically undermining it and building an aviation constituency within the Navy. This careful campaign mirrored that from the 1880s in which Chambers and other young officers carefully, but systematically, undermined the Navy’s adherence to cruiser warfare, paving the way for Alfred Thayer Mahan’s opus and the new paradigm of a battleship-centered fleet.60

  In the absence of a persuasive aerial prophet, Chambers and his successors worked to present aviation within this Mahanian context that accepted the battleship as arbiter of naval supremacy. When they did so, they generally managed to slowly advance Navy aviation. When they overreached, as Bristol and Fiske did when lobbying for aircraft carriers in 1914 and 1915, they found their requests dismissed out of hand. Bristol achieved his greatest lobbying success by emulating Chambers’ careful strategy.

  In these experimental years, Chambers, Bristol, Ely, Ellyson, Towers, Richardson, Mustin, and a handful of other pilots and engineers overcame obstacles both within and outside the Navy to prove the utility of aviation. Given the paltry resources with which they worked, their accomplishments remain a testament to what steadfast determination and careful planning and strategy can accomplish. The Navy’s close relationship with Curtiss lasted another generation as NACA helped put the United States at the forefront of aeronautic research. Seaplanes and the Chambers/Richardson catapult, much refined and improved, eventually found their way aboard almost every battleship and cruiser in the fleet. Many of Chambers’ hand-picked pilots went on to long, successful careers, particularly Towers and Bellinger—both future admirals. While Chambers faded into obscurity, Bristol returned to the fleet and soon hoisted his flag as an Admiral. Ellyson, the Navy’s first aviator, crashed at sea on 27 February 1928. His body washed ashore at Willoughby Spit near the site of Ely’s triumphant 1910 landing.

  NOTES

  1.Richard P. Hallion, Taking Flight: Inventing the Aerial Age from Antiquity through the First World War (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 67–68.

  2.Archibald D. Turnbull and Clifford L. Lord, History of United States Naval Aviation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1949), pp. 1–3; and Henry Woodhouse, “US Naval Aeronautic Policies 1904–42,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 62 (February 1942), p. 163.

  3.Hallion, Taking Flight, pp. 147–57.

  4.George W. Melville, “The Engineer and the Problem of Aerial Navigation,” North American Review 167 (December 1901), pp. 820–21.

  5.Hallion, Taking Flight, p. 185; and Tom D. Crouch, The Bishop’s Boys (New York: Norton, 1989), pp. 256–58.

  6.For more on Squire see Charles J. Gross, “George Owen Squire and the Origins of American Military Aviation,” Journal of Military History 54 (1990), pp. 281–305.

  7.Tom D. Crouch, Wings: A History of Aviation from Kites to the Space Age (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 2003), pp. 95–99; and Turnbull and Lord, History of United States Naval Aviation, p. 4.

  8.Hallion, Taking Flight, p. 257; Turnbull and Lord, History of United States Naval Aviation, pp. 4–5; and Charles Melhorn, Two-Block Fox: The Rise of the Aircraft Carrier, 1911–1929 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1974), p. 118 footnote 3.

  9.Hallion, Taking Flight, p. 258; Crouch, Wings, pp. 114–18; and Turnbull and Lord, History of United States Naval Aviation, pp. 5–6.

  10.Crouch, Wings, pp. 117–18; Glenn Curtiss and Augustus Post, The Curtiss Aviation Book (New York: Frederick A. Strokes, 1912), pp. 105–6; and Turnbull and Lord, History of United States Naval Aviation, pp. 6–7.

  11.Henry P. Beers, “The Development of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations,” Military Affairs 10 (Spring 1946), pp. 59–64; and Secretary of the Navy, Annual Report, 1909, 8–11.

  12.On Chambers see Stephen K. Stein, From Torpedoes to Aviation: Washington Irving Chambers and Technological Innovation in the New Navy, 1876–1913 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2007).

  13.Ibid., pp. 158–59.

  14.Turnbull and Lord, History of United States Naval Aviation, pp. 4–8; and Stein, Torpedoes to Aviation, pp. 160–61.

  15.Winthrop to R. M. Watt, 12 October 1910, “Letters Sent Concerning the Navy’s Early Use of Aircraft,” National Archives, Record Group 24; and Stein, Torpedoes to Aviation, p. 160.

  16.Washington Irving Chambers, “Aviation and Aeroplanes,” U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings 37 (March 1911), pp. 162–208; and Stein, Torpedoes to Aviation, pp. 160–63.

  17.Chambers to the Secretary of the Navy, 23 November 1910, Library of Congress Manuscript Division (LCMD), Chambers Papers, Box 4; Meyer to Ely, 17 November 1910, LCMD, Chambers Papers, Box 15; and George van Deurs, Wings for the Fleet (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1966), p. 25.

  18.Stein, Torpedoes to Aviation, pp. 162–63; Hallion, Taking Flight, p. 305; and Turnbull and Lord, History of United States Naval Aviation, pp. 12–13.

  19.Turnbull and Lord, History of United States Naval Aviation, pp. 13–14.

  20.For more on Ellyson see George van Deurs, Anchors in the Sky: Spuds Ellyson, the First Naval Aviator (San Rafael, CA: Presidio Press, 1978).

  21.For more on Towers see Clark G. Reynolds, Admiral John H. Towers: The Struggle of Naval Air Supremacy (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1991).

  22.Ibid., pp. 28–30.

  23.Hallion, Taking Flight, pp. 304, 397; and van Deurs, Anchors in the Sky, pp. 114–20.

  24.Herbert A. Johnson, Wingless Eagle: U.S. Army Aviation through World War I (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), pp. 104–9; Stein, Torpedoes to Aviation, pp. 166–67; van Deurs, Wings for the Fleet, pp. 35; and Crouch, Wings, p. 145.

  25.Stein, Torpedoes to Aviation, p. 167.

  26.Ibid., pp. 164–66.

  27.Ibid., pp. 161, 165–66; Turnbull and Lord, History of United States Naval Aviation, p. 15; and van Deurs, Wings for the Fleet, p. 38.

  28.Stein, Torpedoes to Aviation, pp. 166–67; and Reynolds, Admiral John H. Towers, p. 49.

  29.Hallion, Taking Flight, p. 299; and Stein, Torpedoes to Aviation, pp. 170–72.

  30.Stein, Torpedoes to Aviation, pp. 164–65; Crouch, Wings, pp. 134–35; and Gross, “George Owen Squire,” pp. 287–88.

  31.Reynolds, Admiral John H. Towers, pp. 55–62; and Stein, Torpedoes to Aviation
, pp. 171–75.

  32.Stein, Torpedoes to Aviation, pp. 171–72; and Turnbull and Lord, History of United States Naval Aviation, pp. 19, 23.

  33.House of Representatives, Hearings, Committee on Naval Affairs, 9 January 1913, p. 543; Chambers to the Chief of the Bureau of Navigation, 22 May 1912; Chambers to Senator Benjamin Tillman, 23 April 1913; and Chambers to George Perkins (Chair of the House Naval Affairs Committee), 24 May 1912, all in Chambers Papers, LCMD, Boxes 5 and 6; and Melhorn, Two-Block Fox, p. 12.

  34.Bradley A. Fiske, From Midshipman to Rear Admiral (New York: Century, 1919), pp. 531–32.

  35.Stein, Torpedoes to Aviation, pp. 182–87.

  36.Fiske, Midshipman to Rear Admiral, p. 538; Stein, Torpedoes to Aviation, pp. 184–90; and van Deurs, Wings for the Fleet, pp. 9, 123.

  37.House Naval Affairs Committee, 53rd Congress (1914), Hearings, 1794–1803; Turnbull and Lord, History of United States Naval Aviation, pp. 33–34; Alex Roland, Model Research: The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, 1915–1958 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1985), pp. 6–20; and Stein, Torpedoes to Aviation, pp. 190–91.

  38.Crouch, Wings, p. 132.

  39.Van Deurs, Anchors in the Sky, pp. 117–24; Reynolds, Admiral John H. Towers, pp. 49, 55; and Stein, Torpedoes to Aviation, pp. 181–84.

  40.Hallion, Taking Flight, pp. xvii, 189–90; Stein, Torpedoes to Aviation, pp. 168–70; and van Deurs, Wings for the Fleet, p. 47.

  41.Hallion, Taking Flight, pp. 245, 391; and Reynolds, Admiral John H. Towers, p. 54.

  42.Hallion, Taking Flight, pp. 261–62, 317, 323–25.

  43.Ibid., pp. 301–3, 326–27.