Pensacola's association with naval aviation dates back to 1914
and the creation of the country's first naval air station.
And in this episode of Naval Legends,
we'll be tracing over the development of the Air Arm of the US Navy.
In 1910, one of the aviation pioneers, Glenn Curtiss, supported by US Navy,
prepared an ambitious experiment.
It included cruiser USS Birmingham and an aircraft constructed by Curtiss,
piloted by Eugene Ely, a test pilot.
As he strapped himself into his Curtiss Hudson flyer
aboard the light cruiser USS Birmingham on the 14th of November 1910,
Eugene Ely, then 24 years of age, could hardly have known that he was partaking
in the birth of one of the most powerful weapon systems of the 20th century.
Only a few minutes later he'd make history
as the first man to ever launch an aircraft from the deck of a ship.
Two months later, in January 1911, Curtiss, Ely, and US Navy
carried out another demonstration in the San Francisco bay,
where cruiser USS Pennsylvania, with a flight deck on her, was moored.
Ely flew from the Presidio,
which is an army fort in San Francisco, about 15 miles down the bay,
and landed on the flight deck, which had been equipped
with about 20 manila ropes, with sea bags at the end of the ropes.
The airplane had a grappling hook underneath it,
and when he touched down on a flight deck,
the grappling hook caught five of the wires, he stopped in about 30 feet.
And that was the first landing of an aircraft on a ship at sea.
Aircraft specifications for the Curtiss Pusher (Model D-4)
Length: almost 8 meters (7.85 m)
Wingspan: more than 10 meters (10.15 m)
Take-off weight: 590 kg
Engine: Curtiss
Power: 40 hp
Maximum speed: 80 kph
Crew: 1 person
Despite the obvious success of Curtiss' experiments,
the idea of specialized aircraft-carrying ships
did not come to fruition for a very long time in the USA.
The high command of the US Navy
treated airplanes as auxiliary equipment of warships.
Admirals believed that aircraft could not become
a fully-fledged strike force for the fleet.
They were restricted to reconnaissance and artillery-spotting missions
and were mostly seaplanes.
World War I spurred the progress of US naval aviation to some extent,
but it was aimed mostly at increasing the number of seaplanes.
When we entered World War I in April 1917,
we had no carriers at this time yet, but we had many-many flying boats,
and when the World War I ended in November 1918,
we had over 200 twin-engine Curtiss flying boats flying combat.
So, the first submarine ever sunk by aircraft
was sunk by a Curtiss H-16 flying boat, in 1918.
During World War I, aircraft began to change shape and form,
gone were the fragile-looking open trusses with webs of bracing wire,
replacing them came more modern biplanes
with continuous skin covering on a fuselage,
more powerful engines, and more powerful armament.
Case in point, this VE-7 Bluebird.
VE-7 was to become the US Navy's first carrier-launched fighter.
Aircraft specifications for the VE-7 Bluebird
Length: 7.5 m
Wingspan: 10.5 m
Take-off weight: 879 kg
Engine: Wright-Hispano E-3
Power: 180 hp
Maximum speed: 171 kph
Service ceiling: 4,500 m
Armament: 1 or 2 machine guns, caliber: 7.62 mm
Crew: 1 person
At the end of World War I,
when the British built their first true aircraft carrier
with a flight deck stretching from aft to bow,
everyone understood that planes would be an integral part of future naval fleets.
That's why in 1920, the US Navy bought an old collier, USS Jupiter,
removed a part of its superstructure
and constructed a 160-meter long flight deck on her.
Renamed USS Langley, the ship was commissioned in 1922
and became the first aircraft carrier of the US Navy.
Initially, Langley served as an experimental platform
where the basis for battle application of deck aircraft was laid down,
and a new school of shipbuilding was created.
Taking off was not an issue, we didn't use a catapult in those days—
the planes were able to take off from the flight deck.
But the landing was the issue.
So initially, not only did they have the arresting wires
that go across the flight deck, like you see on modern carriers,
they also had cables that ran perpendicular with the flight deck,
in other words, fore and aft.
You had a tail hook,
and you also had what looked like an anchor or several anchors,
little small anchors on a rod between the main wheels—
and they hooked into the fore and aft wires…
So, it's kind of a spiderweb nightmare.
After about a year, we realized that we did not need the fore and aft wires,
so we just went with the cross-deck wires. And it worked out fine.
In the autumn of 1920,
the deputy commander of the US Air Force, Brigadier General Mitchell,
declared that aviation could destroy, disable,
and sink any existing warship as well as any other built in future.
The following year, in summer, tests were conducted
which showed that aircraft were quite capable of sinking even a battleship
by dropping a sufficient number of powerful bombs on it.
The results of these tests led the Navy to the conclusion that their ships
needed reinforced anti-aircraft defenses and thicker horizontal armor.
Advocates of naval aviation were already imagining
squadrons of deck aircraft sinking enemy ships—all they needed
was to modernize airplanes and develop a bomb-dropping technique.
In the mid-1920’s, Curtiss presented to the Navy
their design for a land-based fighter, the F6C.
It had a powerful engine and great maneuverability and speed,
as befitted Curtiss' legacy for making maneuverable sports aircraft
and breaking speed records.
It even came with an auxiliary fuel tank as an option.
The aircraft was famous
for being one of the first to try dive bombing as a technique,
and the aircraft entered service particularly taking part
in Lexington's commissioning ceremony as part of her Air Wing.
Aircraft specifications for F6C Hawk
Length: almost 7 m (6.98 m)
Wingspan: 11.5 m (11.43 m)
Take-off weight: 1,238 kg
Engine: Pratt & Whitney R-1340-3 «Wasp»
Power: 410 hp
Maximum speed: 255 kph
Service ceiling: 7,000 m
Armament: 2 Browning machine guns, caliber: 7.62 mm
2 bombs weighing 52.6 kg
Crew: 1 person
The F6C’s biggest problem was that it had a water jacket around it,
and it was built kind of like a car.
The engine was called an in-line engine.
It's a better-looking airplane, but warplanes get shot at,
and a water jacket around, just like on your car,
you put one bullet in that water jacket—the water is going to go out,
and the plane is going to stop. So, it was not a successful airplane.
F7C that followed it was.
They used what they called jugs— separate individual cylinders.
The advantage to that for the Navy, as opposed to a liquid-cooled engine,
was that you eliminated the entire cooling system,
which involved a radiator, water lines,
some sort of cooling scoop or vent or something for the radiator,
and you also eliminated a massive amount of maintenance.
So, after the F7C in the late 20’s, every Navy operational fighter,
reciprocating fighter, had a radial engine that operated off a carrier.
Everyone knows and associates Boeing with airliners—
but Boeing back in the 20’s was a very big supplier of fighters to the Navy.
They had one particular line of fighters, the F4B fighters,
of which the last version came out in 1932, the F4B-4.
Aircraft specifications for the F4B
Length: 6.2 m
Wingspan: more than 9 m (9.14 m)
Take-off weight: 1,323 kg
Engine: Pratt & Whitney R-1340 E “Wasp”
Power: 550 hp
Maximum speed: 301 kph
Service ceiling: 8,400 m
Armament: 2 Browning machine guns, caliber: 7.62 mm
In the bomber variant, the aircraft could carry up to 227 kg of bombs
Crew: 1 person
Especially in the 20’s,
when aviation advancements were happening at a very high rate—
aerodynamics, engines, airframes—
there was a lot of competition amongst the manufacturers,
because people were making better airplanes every year.
So, someone would turn out a very good fighter,
and a year later somebody would turn out an even better fighter.
In the early 1930’s, the Bureau of Aeronautics—the organization
responsible for the development and acquisition of naval aircraft
and its associated materiel— allegedly asked Grumman
to design a retractable gear system for the Boeing F4B-4.
Well, Grumman's engineers had patented their design
and weren't inclined to share it with anybody else.
Besides, they said,
you couldn't actually fit a retractable system to the Boeing aircraft.
Only a month later, however,
they developed and presented to the Navy a new two-seat fighter aircraft.
Coincidentally, the Navy had only recently issued a requirement
for a new series of fighter aircraft— the Grumman FF1, known as the Goblin,
which met all these requirements.
The FF1 was revolutionary, with duralumin skin and a closed cockpit,
and of course, retractable gear.
In 1933, 25 of these aircraft formed the air group for the carrier Lexington.
Aircraft specifications for FF1 Goblin
Length: 7.5 m
Wingspan: 10.5 m
Take-off weight: 2,111 kg
Engine: Wright R-1820-78
Power: 700 hp
Maximum speed: 323 kph
Service ceiling: 6,700 m
Armament:
3 Browning machine guns, caliber: 7.62 mm
2 bombs weighing 52.6 kg
Crew: 2 persons
This is the only one in the world, the one that we have.
We found it in a junkyard down in Nicaragua, as a matter of fact.
A Navy pilot found it down there,
it was crop-dusting down there several decades back now.
And he called the Navy, and he called the Grumman people,
and they said, "We'll be right down".
Eight years later, it came up here to the museum.
They flew it into the museum.
It’s one of just a few that's been flown into the museum,
most of these airplanes come in pieces and we put them together here.
The Great Depression of 1929 ruined many enterprises
and almost destroyed the Curtiss company,
which had been supplying the Army and the Navy
with cutting-edge aircraft throughout the course of the 1920’s.
However, Curtiss survived, and in 1933 followed Grumman
in constructing an airplane with a retractable chassis and duralumin skin.
The Navy planned to put the new Curtiss aircraft into service
aboard a freshly-built carrier, launched the same year.
However, its fighter wing had already been completed
and command decided to re-purpose the new Curtiss plane as a bomber,
with the BF2C-1 designation.
Curtiss' engineers reworked their design according to its new specialization
and installed additional gear for bomb suspension.
It was one of the early dive bombers again.
They started trying to dive bomb by simply putting a bomb on the fuselage.
A bomb has better aerodynamics than an airplane—so the bomb would accelerate,
when you're going in 60-70-80 degrees nose-down,
the bomb would accelerate and go into the propeller.
And what they did, is they had this trapeze-like outfit undercarriage
that would swing out and allow the bomb to clear the propeller.
In the 1930’s, the biplane began to give way to the monoplane.
And the US Navy did not feel like being left behind
in the midst of these advancements.
It was at this point that Grumman presented to the Navy
their new fighter design for a monoplane, the F4F-3.
Now the Navy already had the Buffalo, but the Grumman design intrigued them.
Firstly, it was very fast—the prototype in trials hit a speed of 287 knots.
It was highly maneuverable,
it had a powerful armament of four caliber 50 Browning machine guns.
The pilots sat high—the nose had an 8-degree downward slope,
which meant that the pilot could then keep visual contact with the target
even at high angles of lead.
After a number of modifications to the prototype,
the Navy ordered it into series production.
Aircraft specifications for F4F-3 Wildcat
Length: almost 9 m (8.8 m)
Wingspan: 11.5 m
Take-off weight: 3,367 kg
Engine: Pratt & Whitney R-1830-76
Power: 1,200 hp
Maximum speed: 533 kph
Service ceiling: 9,950 m
Armament: 4 Browning machine guns, caliber: 12.7 mm
The aircraft could carry two 50-kg bombs
Crew: 1 person
The design was so successful
that both the British and French became interested in the aircraft.
As a result, the Wildcat was put into service by the Royal Navy
earlier than in the US Navy.
Now, one of the rather sort of obsolete features of the Wildcat
was it did have retractable landing gear, so that was the good news.
But the bad news was the pilot had to crank the gear up by hand.
So, when you’d launch off the carrier,
you spent the first minute airborne cranking the landing gear up.
So, you couldn't form up or do anything much apart from get the gear up,
so that was a little hard to deal with.
But of course, the advantage to that
was there was no hydraulic system to shoot out.
So, by cranking the gear up you eliminated the system.
By the end of the 1930’s, US deck aviation had grown quite big muscles.
The Navy had 7 aircraft carriers in active service
and several more were being constructed.
Airplane designers supplied the American fleet
with the most modern aircraft almost every year.
In the 1920s and 30s, the US Navy carried out a number of exercises
which demonstrated an enormous potential of strike air groups.
In 1938, squadrons from the carrier USS Saratoga
conducted a successful training attack on the naval base at Pearl Harbor.
The results of this operation didn't draw too much attention.
Nothing interesting, just another exercise.
Special thanks to the United States Department of Defense