The Aircraft Carrier's History Helps Explain How It Became the Ultimate Weapon

Warfare History Network

Security, Americas

And why it continues to serve today.

Key point: The Navy learned how to use it through trial and error.

In 1898, Samuel P. Langley’s first flying prototype sparked interest from the U.S. Navy, which immediately began looking for military applications. Prior to World War I, various navies were experimenting with different forms of vessels to facilitate airpower, but it would be the British fleet who pushed carrier technology to new heights before the interwar period. Like many weapons that evolved out of the Great War, aircraft carriers with the primary mission of combat sorties was a tactic grasped through combat.

As early as 1910, the United States Navy began testing cruisers with modified wooden ramps for launching planes. In November of that year, Aviator Eugene Ely took off from the USS Birmingham Scott modified cruiser and landed two miles away on the mainland. In January of 1911, Ely would again test aviation from a ship when he landed and later look off from the USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco harbor. His landing made use of a primitive version of the modern day tail hook, attaching multiple sandbags to a line of rope, which was hand-stretched across the deck, to slow down Ely’s 60-mile-per-hour landing. Ely was the first man to land and take off from a ship, but at the time, many did not see a future for naval aviation; it was mainly considered an advanced reconnaissance tool. This attitude would persist within the U.S. Navy throughout World War I, and they would not commission an aircraft carrier of their own until 1922, well after their Allied counterparts.

Seaplane Carriers & Advancements in the British Royal Navy