On this date in 1910, Eugene Ely rumbled his Curtiss Model D down a wooden deck constructed aboard the cruiser USS Birmingham, and flew right off the ship and into history. It was the first time an airplane had taken flight from a naval vessel.
Within seven years, the Royal Navy had launched HMS Furious, the world's first aircraft carrier.
Whats very interesting about that is how long it took the various powers to believe that naval aviation was going to trump the Battleship.
ReplyDeleteHell, it was still being debated up to and into the begining of WWII. The War itself settled that account rather definatively.
Just my two cents
-Jon
The ship was soon nicknamed the "Spurious" by her crew. Alas, I can't remember where I read that decades ago.
ReplyDeleteI can't remember where I saw that either, although it's a fair nickname as the ship's original configuration was a very silly one - a battlecruiser sized vessel with light cruiser armour and 2x18" guns as main armament. She was completed with only the rear gun and a flight deck on the bow.
ReplyDeleteFor being such an otherwise brilliant dude, a lot of Fisher's ideas point towards the drugs being especially good in Edwardian England...
ReplyDelete1910.
ReplyDeleteJust 7 years after the Wrights first got airborne.
During a time in which an aircraft body repair kit included rolls of canvas, heavy thread, and shellac.
That guy had some huevos.