How a lunch meeting and a football helmet launched naval aviation

History · Published 7 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: In 1910, the Navy was looking for ways to integrate aircraft into naval warfare. The solution didn't come from a laboratory, but from a meeting between a legendary aviator, an ambitious captain, and a wooden platform built on a cruiser.

The transition of military aviation from land to sea began in earnest following the U.'S Army's 1909 purchase of the Wright Military Flyer. By 1910, Captain Washington I. Chambers of the Navy was actively seeking ways to prove that airplanes could operate at sea. During a flying meeting at Belmont Park, New York, in October 1910, Chambers met Glenn Curtiss—then famously known as the 'fastest man alive'—and pilot Eugene Ely. Chambers proposed a daring experiment: if the Navy provided a ship, would they attempt to land an aircraft on its deck?

The first attempt occurred on November 14, 1910, aboard the light cruiser USS Birmingham. A wooden platform, roughly 80 feet long, was erected on the bow. Using a Curtiss Pusher aircraft equipped with floats, Ely attempted the first shipboard takeoff. The maneuver was far from smooth; the aircraft rolled off the platform's edge and skipped across the water, damaging the propeller. While Ely managed to land 2.5 miles away at Willoughby Spit, the experiment proved that takeoff was possible, but landing remained the true challenge.

The second attempt on January 18, 1911, took place in San Francisco Bay aboard the armored cruiser USS Pennsylvania. This time, the Navy prepared a 120-foot platform equipped with a crude arresting system of ropes, sandbags, and a canvas awning. Ely utilised extended wings and donned a padded football helmet alongside bicycle inner tubes to reduce potential injury. At 11:00 a.m., before a crowd of thousands, Ely successfully landed the aircraft, marking a definitive moment in the birth of naval aviation.

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