When
a young, self-taught pilot named Eugene
Burton Ely left the deck of the U.S.
Navy cruiser USS Birmingham in a primitive
stick, bailing wire, and canvas
winged Curtis pusher biplane he
barely escaped with his life and his
aircraft intact but raised the
curtain on naval aviation.
Ely,
a 24 year old Midwesterner from Iowa, may seem like an unlikely aviator.
But in those early days of aviation, he was not untypical of the
kind of day dreaming tinkerers and speed enthusiasts who were drawn to the
new opportunities in the sky.
He
was born in the farming community of Williamsburg,
Iowa on October 21, 1886. His family
soon moved to the nearby river port and
industrial center of Davenport.
There he graduated eighth
grade from Davenport Grammar School
4 in January 1901. He would later
claim to have attended and graduated from Iowa
State University in 1904. But
neither the University at Ames nor
any other Iowa college or university has any record of his attendance. Neither does Davenport High School. It is
safe to say his formal education ended, as it still did for a majority of young
Americans, after grammar school. The higher education claims were simply
pioneering resume padding adopted as
he rose in his chosen field and at the end harbored hopes for a commission and career in as yet unformed Navy aviation service.
The
boy was attracted, like many clever lads, to thing mechanical and fast. He taught himself, somehow, to drive in the relatively few autos chugging up and down the bluffs of his home town. He also learned how to repair them, even
making parts himself. His first known
job was as the mechanic and chauffeur to the Father Smyth, a Catholic
priest in Cosgrove who was
himself bitten by the speed bug and owned a snazzy red Franklin touring car. In it
young Ely had his first taste of glory, setting a speed record for a run
between Iowa City and Davenport.
Ely
was restless and soon headed west seeking fame and fortune. He was in San Francisco for the 1906 earthquake
and fire. There was plenty of work in the wake for
the fire for drivers. He soon drifted
into car sales and the auto racing that promoted the dozens of
competing brands of cars.
Despite
a somewhat homely long face, he must have cut a dashing figure. He caught the eye of teenager Mabel Hall of the City by the Bay who he married on August 7, 1907 when he was 21 and
she was 17—young enough to require her mother’s consent.
In
1909 he moved to Nevada City, the Northern
California gold mining and timber center where he drove an auto stage shuttling passengers and
parcels between remote communities.
A
year later the couple had relocated to Portland,
Oregon where he got a job as a salesman
for E. Henry Wemme, a wealthy
pioneering dealer of Haynes-Apperson,
Oldsmobile, Reo, and Pierce-Arrow. Wemme became attracted to the infant
aviation industry and became agent of
the Curtiss Aeroplane Company for the entire Pacific Northwest. This was more impressive sounding than it
seems because not a single plane had ever been sold in the area until Wemme
bought one himself to use as a demonstrator. The trouble was that he didn’t buy the proffered
pilot lessens that Glenn Curtis offered with all of his
early sales.
Ely
eagerly volunteered to fly the machine, after assembling it from parts that
arrived in a crate. He was sure flying
could not be harder than driving, or much different. He was wrong.
He crashed and destroyed the plane on his first attempt to take it
up. Embarrassed, he bought the wreck
from his boss, paying it off from his salary
and sales commissions. In his spare time he painstakingly
re-assembled the plane. This time he
taught himself to fly from printed instructions. By spring of 1910 he was making flights
around Portland.
With
just weeks under his belt as a pilot, that June he crated up his bi-plane and
shipped it to Minneapolis, Minnesota to
participate in a major flying festival and exhibition being held there where he
met, and impressed, Glenn Curtis himself.
Curtis hired Ely to be one of his demonstration pilots. A scheduled first flight for the company at Sioux City, Iowa had to be scrubbed
because of mechanical problems so his first exhibition was at Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada on July 10,
1910.
The
rest of the summer and early fall was filled with demonstration dates. On October 5 Ely was issued License #17 from the Aero Club of America, an indication of admittance
to elite status in his dangerous profession.
All of the first 20 license holders, including both Wright Brothers and Curtis were involved in serious crashes, most
on multiple occasions. The majority
would be killed in crashes in their first three years in the air.
Ely's Curtis pusher dips upon leaving the take-off platform on the USS Birmingham. |
That
same month with his license fresh in his pocket Ely joined Curtis in an
important meeting with Captain
Washington Chambers who had been designated by Secretary of the Navy George von Lengerke Meyer to investigate
possible operational uses of aviation by the fleet. Chambers commissioned
Curtis to perform a series of tests, taking off and landing on warships. Ely was selected as the
pilot.
An
83 foot long wooden platform was hastily built on the bow of the two year old light cruiser USS Birmingham. Since no
funds were available from the Navy Budget, early flight booster John Barry Ryan donated $500 for construction
and an additional $500 as a prize for
a successful launch.
The
ship was moored in the waters off of historic Hampton Roads, Virginia, not far from the site of the legendary
battle between the Union ironclad USS Monitor and the Confederate CSS Virginia (the captured and re-fitted former USS Merrimac)
which introduced an earlier new era in Naval warfare. The water was glassy calm and winds light on
November 14 when Ely raced his Curtis pusher down the short makeshift
runway. He barely made airspeed and at the end of the platform
the plane dropped until is wheels splashed in the water. Ely fought to regain elevation and keep the
plane in the air. His goggles were
covered by brine spray seriously impairing
his vision so that he abandoned the original plan of circling the harbor and
landing at the Norfolk Navy Yard. Instead he made straight to shore to shore
and made a rough but safe landing on the beach.
Still,
it was a successful enough flight to claim the Ryan ship-to-shore flight prize.
Ely comes in for the first landing on the USS Pennsylvania. |
Ely
returned to his civilian demonstration flight for Curtis, now a famous and
acclaimed airman for his naval feat.
Then he crossed the country to his old stomping grounds of San Francisco
where the second half of his original challenge was to be completed—landing on
a ship. On January 18, 1911 Ely took off
from Tanforan Racetrack in San Bruno, California and landed successfully
on the armored cruiser USS Pennsylvania. It was not only the first successful landing
on a ship anywhere, it introduced the tail-hook
landing arrest system designed and built by
aviator and circus performer Hugh
Robinson, which became essential in aircraft
carrier operations to this day.
The
pilot confidently told reporters that the landing “…was easy enough. I think the trick could be successfully
turned nine times out of ten.”
Ely
was now enthusiastic about a possible career with the Navy. He communicated with the Navy Department
offering his services. Capt. Chambers
had to give him the discouraging news that he could not enlist him because the
Navy did not yet have a flying service.
But Chambers gave him every signal that he would be a top candidate as
soon as such a service was inaugurated.
He also had advice for Ely, whose demonstration flights for Curtis,
including dangerous dives and steep turns, strained the capacity of his fragile
aircraft—for the sake of his life and the future of aviation, cut it out.
Of
course Ely, always a daredevil did not take the advice to heart. When asked by his home state newspaper the Des Moines
Register if he would retire on his laurels, he said, “I guess I will be
like the rest of them, keep at it until I am killed.” It proved to be prophetic.
At
an exhibition at Macon, Georgia on
October 11, 1911, just days short of his 25th birthday, Ely failed to pull out
of a dive. His Curtis biplane
crashed. Ely jumped clear just before
impact but broke his spine and died
on October 19. He was buried in his home
town on his birthday.
In
1933 Congress posthumously awarded the Distinguished
Flying Cross to Ely, “for extraordinary achievement as a pioneer civilian
aviator and for his significant contribution to the development of aviation in
the United States Navy.” An exhibit of retired naval aircraft at Naval Air Station Norfolk is named for
him, and a granite historical marker
in Newport News overlooks the waters where he made that first take off from a
ship. To commemorate the 100th anniversary of that flight, Commander Bob Coolbaugh flew a personally
built replica of Ely’s Curtiss from the runway at NAS Norfolk on November 12,
2010.
Lieutenant Theodore Ellyson became the Navy’s
first pilot in 1911 when Curtis offered to train an officer for free. He and Curtis went on to collaborate in the
development of a float plane and he
became the first pilot to be launched from a ship-born catapult. But it wasn’t
until 1914 than a formal Naval Air Service was formed.
The
Birmingham’s place in naval aviation
history was not over either.
Subsequently converted to a Torpedo
tender and was flagship of the Atlantic Fleet Torpedo Flotilla. In 1916 when conducting operations in
support of the landing of an expeditionary
force at Veracruz during the Mexican Revolution, she deployed two
Curtis float planes, launched by catapult to scout for mines. It was the first military mission by a US heavier-than-air aircraft.
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