pagesofhistory By Air and Sea
A number of events are being held across the country to help celebrate achievements in naval aviation — a field that recently reached its 100th birthday.
O
n Jan. 18, 1911, test pilot Eugene Ely landed his biplane on a plat- form built onto the armored cruiser
USS Pennsylvania (ACR-4) in San Francisco Bay. The plane was slowed on landing by ropes held down by sandbags and a type of tailhook. It was the first successful ship- board landing of an aircraft. Glenn Curtiss invented the pusher bi- plane when he became interested in the challenge of using an airplane aboard a ship, after Orville and Wilbur Wright decided it was too risky. The Wright brothers had sold their first plane to the U.S. Army in 1909. Even after Ely’s shipboard landing, Navy leaders were not convinced; they worried adding platforms to ships would interfere with their guns. But Feb. 17, 1911, Curtiss demonstrated his “hydroaeroplane,” which was fitted with floats. Curtiss taxied the hy- droaeroplane alongside the Pennsylvania at anchor in San Diego Harbor, and the plane was loaded on and off the existing deck of the cruiser using a crane. The Navy was sold and agreed to pur- chase its first aircraft May 8, which now is considered the birthdate of naval avia- tion. The Navy pursued aviation in three directions: seaplanes, including what were called “flying boats”; lighter-than-air air- ships; and airplanes landing on shipboard platforms, as Ely had done. The 100th Anniversary of Naval Avia-
tion Foundation, as well as other orga- nizations, will hold a number of events to celebrate and highlight naval aviation
PHOTO: PETTY OFFICER 3RD CLASS NICHOLAS HALL, USN
achievements from the past 100 years. For more information about these events, visit
www.navalaviation100.org/eventlist.
T
World War II Airman Buried he remains of Charles A. Bode, an Army Air Forces sergeant from Baltimore who had been missing
since his heavy bomber disappeared during World War II, were buried Feb. 11 in Arling- ton National Cemetery in Virginia. Bode was part of the 11- man crew of a B-24D Lib- erator bomber that vanished Nov. 20, 1943, after taking off from Port Mo- resby, Papua New Guinea. Initial search- es found no survivors, but in 1984, a U.S. team found wreckage and remains at a site in a ravine in Morobe Prov- ince. The team couldn’t complete its work because of the threat of landsides. Then, in 2004, villagers delivered human remains removed earlier from the area. The remains of the other crew members
were buried together at Arlington National Cemetery March 24. More than 74,000 Americans who served in World War II re- main unaccounted for.
MO MAY 2011 MILITARY OFFICER 67
History Lesson On May 5, 1864, the forces of Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Con- federate Gen. Robert E. Lee clashed in Wilderness, Va. During intense fight- ing along a 2-mile front, whole brigades were lost. Muzzle flashes set the for- est on fire, and hundreds of men died in the blaze.
Retired Navy Cmdr. Bob Coolbaugh pilots a replica of a Curtiss-Ely pusher biplane.
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