The USS Langley (CV-1), the U.S. Navy's first aircraft carrier with her compliment of Vought VE-7 Bluebird fighters.
When the USS Langley (CV-1)
was officially commissioned on March
20, 1922, the United States Navy took
a semi-timid step into its future.
The Langley was the first American aircraft carrier and the
second in the world, after Britain’s primitive
HMS
Argus in 1918. But the Navy was
already behind the aggressive Japanese who
had already finished and would commission in just months the Hōshō,
the first ship built from the keel up
to launch and retrieve combat aircraft.
By contrast the Langley, which was built on the hull of a decommissioned
collier, was a slow, lumbering tub. But then it’s eventual compliment
of fighter planes—Vought VE-7 Bluebirds—were
already obsolete World War I canvas covered biplanes which were not much
faster. Still, its 540 foot long flight deck gave a generation of naval aviators their sea legs including many who would go on
to become senior flight officers in World War II.
Her origins were somewhat humbler. She was built at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo,
California as the USS
Jupiter, a 19,670 ton collier. President William Howard Taft was on
hand for ceremonies when her keel was laid in 1911. It was highly unusual for a President to
attend such a ceremony for all but the most important capital ships. Maybe it was
just that he was on a rare visit to the West
Coast and need some events to round out his schedule and get his picture in
the newspapers. After all, he was up for re-election the next year. But it might also have been an indication of
the importance of this new class of ships which would dramatically extend the range and time at sea for America’s aging Great White Fleet during an age of an
intense international naval arms race. The sister
ships would follow—USS Cyclops, USS Proteus, and USS
Nereus. Cyclops would
be lost without a trace in the North
Atlantic during World War I and Nereus would vanish in the same waters
in the next war, both presumed to have been sunk by German U-boats.
Jupiter was launched on August 14, 1912. Besides a large capacity for coal and modern heavy equipment to transfer the fuel to warships, she
was the first Navy electrically
propelled ship powered by General
Electric Turbo Electric Motors turning twin propellers.
After completing sea trials and assigned to the Pacific Fleet one of her first missions
was not as a collier but as a troop
transport. During the 1914 Vera Cruise Crisis she carried a contingent
of Marines to stand-by off shore
at Mazatlán, Mexico threatening the
country’s West Coast. After the crisis
passed Jupiter became the first Navy
ship to transit the Panama Canal west to east as she sailed
to join the Atlantic Fleet.
During World War I she supported
Navy operations in the Caribbean and
North Atlantic. Also in the build-up of American
forces in Europe, she made two runs
as a freighter/troop carrier including one that delivered the first American
aviators into the war zone—a naval
aviation detachment of 7 officers
and 122 men to England. At war’s end she supplied coal to the ships
bringing members of the American
Expeditionary Forces (AEF) home through much of 1919.
After a short tour with the Pacific Fleet again, Congress authorized her conversion into an entirely new
classification of warship—the aircraft carrier.
Previously naval aircraft had been launched and retrieved from short
flight decks built onto cruisers like
the USS
Birmingham. While those tests
showed that it was practical, the jerry-rigged conversions could not carry
enough aircraft to be useful in combat beyond reconnaissance duty. The
Jupiter class colliers were just the
right size and had very little superstructure
to remove to add a flight deck.
Jupiter
sailed once again to through the
Panama Canal to report to the Norfolk
Navy Yard in Virginia where she
was decommissioned and work begun on
her conversion. On April 11, 1920 she
was renamed in honor of aviation pioneer
Samuel P. Langley.
Upon being commissioned at Hampton Roads in 1922 Commander Kenneth Whiting, who had
advocated the construction of a carrier and had helped oversee its
construction, assumed temporary command. He would later server as the ships Executive Officer and be directly
involved in the launch and command of the Navy’s first five carriers. Often called the Father of the Carrier Whiting had been the young Lieutenant in command of that naval
aviation detachment that the Jupiter had
delivered.
Whiting recognized that the Langley was more of test
laboratory than an effective member of the battle fleet. She was far too slow to keep up with the
fleet. But he felt sure it would suffice
to train pilots, refine the
techniques for using the catapult launch
and breaking cable tail hook recovery necessary for
operations. In additions crews would
learn how to use the elevator to
bring up aircraft from the below deck
hanger. All of this was essential to
modern aircraft carrier development. The fledgling carrier began to rack up
firsts.
The First tail hook landing on board.
On October 22, 1922 Lt.
Virgil C. Griffin became the first pilot to take
off from the deck in his Vought bi-plane.
Nine days later Lieutenant
Commander Godfrey de Courcelles Chevalier made the first landing in an Aeromarine 39B. Tragically this promising young officer died
of injuries sustained in the crash of a Vought on a routine flight from Norfolk
to Yorktown. On November 19 Cmdr. Whiting himself became
the first flyer to be launched from the ship’s catapult.
In January 1923 the Langley began regular sea duty in the
Caribbean. She would conduct training
off of the East Coast and impress dignitaries
in Washington with demonstrations of her capacities. As expected, the demonstration whetted the
appetite for additional ships. Congress
had already authorized the conversion of another collier, although Whiting had
begged for new construction capable of operating with the fleet.
Fate stepped in before the second
conversion could get underway. The Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 pledged
all of the Great Powers to a level
of naval disarmament. Not only were some in-service capital ships
to be scrapped, but projects under
construction had to be halted. For the
U.S. that meant stopping work on two fast, modern cruisers—USS Lexington and USS
Saratoga both of which had completed, or nearly completed hulls laid
down. But the treaty failed to include
aircraft carriers as capital ships.
Congress quickly scrapped plans to convert another collier and ordered
that the two ships be converted to carriers.
These new ships were a significant upgrade
from the Langley. Their pilots and crews were largely trained
on the original ship.
From 1927 Langley sailed the waters off of California and Hawaii in training fleet units, experimentation, pilot training, and tactical-fleet problems. But by 1936 she was clearly obsolete as a
carrier. She put into Mare Island where she was reconfigured
as a seaplane tender with the new
hull designation AV-13.
She joined the Aircraft Scouting Force of the Pacific Fleet and was on regular sea
and patrol duty until the American entry into World War II. Stationed off
of the Philippines when the Japanese
attack on those islands began on December 8, 1941, Langley was ordered to sail for the Dutch East Indies and from there was forced to retreat to Darwin, Australia where she joined the make-shift American-British-Dutch-Australian Command (ABDACOM) naval forces. She
first assisted the Australians in anti-submarine
patrol.
Seaplane Tender USS Langley under attack off of Java.
Then in February she was assigned a
critical mission, delivering 32 P-40
fighters belonging to the Far East
Air Force’s 13th Pursuit Squadron and their
pilots and ground crews to Java. After departing Melbourne in a strong convoy,
the Langley and the Sea Witch split off to make their
run to Java. After rendezvousing with a two destroyer
screen escorts on February 27, the two transports came under attack by
waves of Japanese Aichi D3A1 Val dive
bombers. In
the third attack the Langley was hit
5 times and 16 of her crew were killed.
The ship was soon dead in the water and listing
badly. An order to abandon ship was given and her escort destroyers sunk her with gunfire to prevent her from falling into the hands of the enemy.
The bad luck of the survivors, however, was just beginning. After being transferred to USS
Pecos, many of her crew were lost when Pecos was sunk en route
to Australia. Then thirty-one of the thirty three pilots assigned to the 13th
Pursuit Squadron were lost with the USS Edsall was sunk on the same day
while responding to the distress calls of the Pecos. The whole operation was a devastating
loss.
The name USS Langley lived on when light Independence class
carrier of the same name was commissioned in 1943 with the hull designation CVL-27.
The new ship saw action in several Pacific battles. After the war she was transferred to France where she was re-named the La
Fayette. She was decommissioned
and scrapped in 1963.
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