Kaplan - Naval aviation in the Second World War : rare photographs from wartime archives

First printed in Great Britain in 2013
Pen & Sword Aviation
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Pen & Sword Books Ltd.
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Copyright Philip Kaplan 2013

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PAPERBACK ISBN: 978 1 78159 369 1
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Contents

Photographs from the collections of the author. Reasonable efforts have been made to trace the copyright owners of all material used in this book. The author apologizes to any copyright owners we were unable to contact during this clearance process. All reasonable efforts will be made to correct such omissions in future editions. The author is grateful to the following for the use of their published and/or unpublished material, or for their kind and generous assitance in the preparation of this book: Malcolm Bates, John Bolt, Jennifer Brattle, Eric Brown, James Cain, Shannon Callahan, Larry Cauble, Ed Copeland, Bob Croman, Dale Dean, Robert Elder, Frank Furbish, Tess and George Gay, Jack Glass Stephen Grey, Christy Sheaff-Hagen, Chris Hurst, Imperial War Museum, Kelly Kinsella, Jack Kleiss, Alan Leahy, Paul Ludwig, Richard May, Richard McCutcheon, Hamilton McWhorter, Morris Montgomery, H.B. Moranville, Jeff Mulkey, Bruce Porter, Royal Navy, Henry Sakaida, Doug Siegfried, David Smith, Mark Stanhope, Danny Stembridge, David Tarry, Mark Thistlethwaite, U.S. Navy, Stanley Vejtasa, Danny Vincent, Alex Vraciu, Nigel Ward, Sky Webb, Wilbur Webb, John Wellham, Dennis Wrynn, Aaron Zizzo, HMS Illustrious, USS John C. Stennis.

The First Flattops

An aircraft carrier is a noble thing. It lacks almost everything that seems to denote nobility, yet deep nobility is there. A carrier has no poise. It has no grace. It is top-heavy and lop-sided. It has the lines of a well-fed cow. It doesnt cut through the water like a cruiser, knifing romantically along. It doesnt dance and cavort like a destroyer. It just plows. You feel it should be carrying a hod, rather than wearing a red sash. Yet a carrier is a ferocious thing, and out of its heritage of action has grown nobility. I believe that today every navy in the world has as its number one priority the destruction of enemy carriers. Thats a precarious honor, but its a proud one.

Ernie Pyle, war correspondent, World War II

The first aircraft carriers made their appearance in the early years of World War One. These first flattops were improvised affairs built on hulls that had been laid down with other purposes in mind, and it was not until the 1920s that the first purpose-built carriers were launched, but no one was as yet clear about the role of the carriers and they were largely unloved by the battleship admirals who still believed that their great dreadnoughts were the ultimate capital ships.

The centenary of naval aviation was celebrated in 2011 in remembrance of the pioneering efforts and sacrifices of people like Eugene Ely, an exhibition pilot for aircraft designer and builder Glenn Curtiss. Ely had worked as a chauffeur and then as a salesman for Portland, Oregon auto dealer Harry Wemme who had purchased a Curtiss biplane and then become an agent for Curtiss products. Wemme, however, was afraid to fly and Ely offered to try and fly the plane for him. He crashed the plane and, embarrassed by the accident, bought the wreck from Wemme, repaired it and within a month taught himself to fly. He bagan making appearances at various air meets and at one such event in Minneapolis, he met Glenn Curtiss and some of his associates. Ely also happened to meet Captain Washington Chambers, USN, who had been appointed by Secretary of the Navy George Meyer to investigate military uses for aviation within the Navy. The meeting led to experiments by Ely with a Curtiss Pusher aircraft. He made the worlds first reasonably successful take-off in a fixed-wing plane from the deck of a ship. In November 1910, he flew a Curtiss Pusher down a gently sloping wooden platform on the forecastle of the light cruiser USS Birmingham as the ship steamed slowly in Hampton Roads, Chesapeake Bay, Virginia, In the brief flight, Elys plane actually touched the water when it plunged downward after clearing the eighty-three-foot platform runway, but he managed to retain control and landed safely on the shore at Willoughby Spit, rather than circling the harbour and landing at the Norfolk Navy Yard as planned. On the following January 11th, Ely, wearing a padded football helmet and a bicycle tube as a survival vest, took off from the site of what became the Tanforan race track in San Bruno, California, his aircraft equipped with a system of grappling hooks fitted underneath the airfoil that caught arresting wires attached to sandbags. The system was devised and built by circus performer and aviator Hugh Robinson, and Ely successfully landed the Curtiss Pusher at forty mph aboard a platform on the USS Pennsylvania then anchored in San Francisco Bay. When interviewed after the feat, Ely told a news reporter: It was easy enough. I think the trick could be successfully turned nine times out of ten. Ely continued flying exhibitions for Curtiss and when asked by a reporter for the Des Moines Register if he had any plans for retiring, he replied: I guess I will be like the rest of them, keep at it until I am killed. In October 1911, just before what would have been his twenty-fifth birthday, Eugene Ely was killed in the crash of an aircraft he was displaying at Macon, Georgia. In 1933, the U.S. Congress awarded Ely a posthumous Distinguished Flying Cross for extraordinary achievement as a pioneer civilian aviator and for his significant contribution to the development of aviation in the United States Navy.

above: HMS Eagle; below: HMS Argus