As discussed previously in this series, locating and tracking the enemy has always been one of the more significant challenges of Naval warfare. From the biremes and triremes of ancient antiquity to the turn of the 20th century the primary sensor system of any warship was the Mark 1 Mod 0 Eyeball. Effective sensor range was largely a function of atmospheric conditions (weather) and height above the water[1]. To this end almost every ship designed prior to the modern era included a dedicated lookout platform called a “top” at or near the ship’s highest point (typically the mainmast of a sailing vessel)[2]. For the vast bulk of history the range at which an enemy could be detected had always been many times greater than the range at which an enemy could be engaged. To illustrate, a typical vessel of the Napoleonic era had a top-height between 100 and 200 ft which equates to a horizon range between 11 and 16 nautical miles. Meanwhile, the effective range of artillery in that age (including the cannon that comprised a warship’s broadside/primary armament) was typically less than one nautical mile. This changed at the close of the 19th century. With the advent of steam power and heavy naval rifles, horizon to horizon combat became a genuine possibility, and the ability to detect and track targets beyond the horizon became a necessity.

Aircraft were seen as an obvious solution to this problem. Observation balloons had been used to great effect on both sides of the 1870 Franco-Prussian war and a balloon at 3,000 ft could theoretically quadruple the range at which a vessel could be spotted from 16 nm to 64 nm. However two significant advances were required before Naval aviation could be of practical use, powered flight, and radio transmitter/receivers light enough to be carried aloft without the need for an extension cord[3]. The British Royal Navy became the first to formally embrace airpower in 1908 with the commissioning of HMA(His Majesty’s Airship) Hermione, a rigid hulled airship based on Ferdinand von Zeppelin’s LZ-4 and built at the Vickers Naval Works in Barrow-in-Furness. Nicknamed the Mayfly (she may fly, she may not) she was never flown operationally but the lessons learned in her design and construction proved invaluable. By the start of World War I in 1914 airships were in regular service with the navies of England, France, Germany, and Italy, as scouts and commerce raiders. However their delicacy and limited endurance prevented them from operating far from shore.

Meanwhile on the far side of the Atlantic Orville and Wilbur Wright had demonstrated the feasibility of heavier than air flight in 1903 and by 1909 had developed thier experimental Flyer into a practical two-seat biplane with a 95 nautical mile range and 35 knot cruising speed. The Wright Model B was the first aircraft to enter mass production, and the first to be made available for sale to the public. It’s design was emulated[4] and improved upon by numerous inventors including fellow bicycle mechanic Glen Curtiss.

An avid motorcycle builder and racer Curtiss immediately set about adding a more powerful engine and experimenting with various landing gear configurations (all Wright Brothers’ designs had used skids up to this point) including pontoons for landing on water and the first example of the 2 -1 tricycle suspension used by almost all modern aircraft[5]. In 1910 Curtiss met Captain Washington Chambers, who’d been tasked by the Secretary of the Navy to investigate potential uses for aviation and together they made arrangements to test the feasibility of operating from ships. On November 14, 1910, pilot Eugene Ely launched himself from the deck of the USS Birmingham (CL-2) not into the waters of Chesapeake Bay as everyone expected but into Naval aviation history. Two months later, on January 18, 1911, Ely successfully landed on a custom 120 ft long platform built on the fantail of the USS Pennsylvania (ACR-4) using a Curtiss-designed tailhook to catch a series of ropes weighted with sand-bags and strung across the deck to arrest his momentum. After lunch with the ship’s captain and interviews with the press, the deck was cleared and Ely took off, returning to shore. The success of the Pennsylvania demonstration convinced the US Navy to allocate $25,000[6] to Curtiss for the purchase of 3 airplanes further development and company and prompted Curtiss to establish the first formal training camp for pilots and aircraft mechanics on the north shore of Coronado Island in San Diego bay.

The first nation to use an aircraft in naval warfare wasn’t actually a nation at the time. In May of 1913 a group of Mexican revolutionaries traveled to Los Angeles to purchase an airplane. They had it shipped in crates to the border town of Naco where it was reassembled and christened “Sonora”. Armed with homemade pipe-bombs and a .30 cal rifle Pilot Gustavo Salinas Camiña and Mechanic/Bombardier Theodore Madariaga set out in Sonora to break the Federalist blockade of Guyamas. Finding the Gunboat Guerrero (Warrior) anchored in the harbor the two men pressed the attack, dropping their bombs and firing on any sailors who showed themselves above deck. Several officers on the Guerrero’s bridge attempted to return fire with their sidearms but their shots had no effect. While the Sonora’s attack dealt little or no damage to the Guerrero herself, they did inflict several casualties among her crew and forced the remainder to take shelter below decks leaving her primary battery unmanned. Unable to effectively fight back (anti-aircraft guns having yet to be invented) the Federalist Navy was eventually forced to abandon the harbor and withdraw beyond the range of the Revolutionary Air Force effectively ending the blockade.

While the navies of both Britain and Japan both took note of the Mexican Revolutionaries’ success, and responded by sending representatives to the US to be trained by Curtiss, the US Navy seems to have taken the opposite lesson. The fact that the Guerrero, a mere gunboat, took no significant damage would be cited, for years to come, as “proof” that airplanes posed no threat to armored vessels. (It would take a World War and an insubordinate general to disabuse them of this notion) As a result naval aviation in the US stagnated as Britain surged ahead.

In spring of 1912 the British pre-dreadnought HMS Hibernia was fitted with a 100-foot long platform above her forward 12-inch turret and Lieutenant Charles Samson, became the first man to take-off from a ship while underway. Participating in a series of exercises off of the coast of Sheerness, the performance of the Hibernia and her air detachment convinced the admiralty that while airplanes were undoubtedly the future, the makeshift platforms, and the limits they imposed on a ship’s primary armament made operating them from a conventional warship impractical. As such, a new class of ship dedicated to carrying aircraft needed to be developed. The first ship to carry the designation “Aircraft Carrier” was commissioned in 1914 as the HMS Ark Royal[7]. Built on a merchant’s hull she lacked the full length flight deck that we associate with carriers today and as such would be more accurately described as a “Seaplane Carrier”. Instead of taking off and landing conventionally, her complement of 9 seaplanes was launched from a platform (later a catapult) on the bow and were recovered by landing on the water alongside and being lifted aboard by crane.

By the outbreak of World War One in July of 1914 the Royal Navy had the largest air force in the world with six rigid-hull airships and over ninety airplanes. Though their primary mission remained reconnaissance, the Admiralty encouraged experimentation and when it was discovered that the new Short Folding Seaplanes[8] had sufficient lift to (barely) carry the same Whitehead torpedoes used by Royal Navy destroyers and patrol boats they immediately ordered the development of dedicated attack aircraft to “carry the fight to the enemy”. The first two prototype torpedo bombers were embarked upon the converted tramp steamer HMS Ben-my-Chree and dispatched to the Aegean sea to take part in the Gallipoli campaign where Flight Commander (and Future Air Marshal of the RAF) Charles Edmonds would become the first pilot to successfully sink an enemy ship in combat. [Bean: The first aircraft torpedo to kill an enemy ship unaided was actually launched while the airplane was landed on the water.] The Japanese, in partnership with the British, would follow suit one month later using their own aircraft to attack the German-held port of Tsingtao (Qingdao) China. The concept of strike warfare had been born.

I have more but I’m running late, and the war itself along with Billy Mitchell’s efforts to convince the US military to embrace airpower really warrant their own post.


[1] Maximum spotting range in nautical miles/minutes of latitude is roughly equal to 1.17 multiplied by the square root of the lookout’s elevation in feet above the water. (Warning: equation not valid on celestial bodies other than Earth)

[2] The term “crow’s nest” refers specifically to an enclosed top. These were more typical of whalers and exploratory vessels than dedicated fighting ships.

[3] The German Navy experimented with towing gliders behind fast cruisers and stringing a telephone cable up the tow rope in 1901 but somehow this failed to catch on.

[4] Disputes with Curtiss over the similarity of his Reims Racer to the Model B lead to the infamous Wright Brothers patent war.

[5] Two large wheels that support the bulk of the aircraft’s weight and absorb the force of landing with a smaller “castor” wheel at the nose or tail for balance.

[6] Approx. 6 million dollars today

[7] Aircraft Carriers named Ark Royal are to the Royal Navy as Starships named Enterprise are to Starfleet. Every time one goes down they build another.

[8] Named for the company that built them, Short Brothers of Belfast, rather than their length.