November 14, 1910: Eugene Burton Ely takes off in a Curtiss Pusher airplane, from the deck of the U.S. Navy cruiser USS Birmingham, off Norfolk Navy Base in Virginia. Thus was born the aircraft carrier.
On January 18, 1911, Ely landed his Pusher on a platform on the armored cruiser USS Pennsylvania, anchored in San Francisco Bay, proving that a ship could be safely used as a landing point as well as a takeoff point. On May 9, 1912, Commander Charles Samson of Britain's Royal Naval Air Service made the 1st takeoff from a ship already in motion, off the HMS Hibernia.
On September 6, 1914, the Imperial Japanese Navy ship Wakamiya conducted the 1st successful ship-launched air raid, against the German gunboat Jaguar and the Austrian cruiser SMS Kaiserin Elisabeth. Perhaps "successful" is too strong a word: Although the attack was launched, and the planes returned safely, they did no damage to the enemy vessels. (We hear so much about how Japan was part of Nazi Germany's "Axis" during World War II that we often forget that, in World War I, they were on the same side as Britain, France, Russia, and, eventually, America.)
On August 2, 1917, Squadron Commander Edwin H. Dunning became the 1st pilot to land on a moving ship, the HMS Furious, in his Sopwith Pup, at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. Landing on the forward flight deck required the pilot to approach round the ship's superstructure, a difficult and dangerous maneuver. Just 5 days later, Dunning was later killed when his airplane was thrown overboard while attempting another landing on Furious. He was 25.
On March 20, 1922, the USS Langley was commissioned, as America’s 1st ship specifically designed as an aircraft carrier. It was named for Samuel Langley (1834-1906), astronomer and aviation pioneer. It was sunk by the Japanese during World War II. A 2nd carrier named Langley was launched in 1943, but only remained in service until 1947.
Eugene Burton Ely died in a crash in 1911. He was just short of turning 25. Charles Samson was a little luckier: Heart trouble forced him into early retirement, and he lived to be 47.
The USS Birmingham was in service from 1907 to 1923, and scrapped in 1930.
Carriers such as the original Enterprise, the Lexington, the Ranger, the Yorktown, the Hornet and the Essex were vital in winning World War II. In the post-Vietnam era, the U.S. Navy has tended to name carriers after Presidents, or people involved with the Navy in some capacity (or, in some cases, both). Carriers have been named after Presidents George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. A 3rd carrier named USS Enterprise is now under construction.
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November 14, 1910 was a Monday. Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. Professional basketball barely existed. And hockey season hadn't yet started. So there were no scores on this historic day.
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