November 14, 1910 — The First Airplane Takeoff from a Warship
On November 14, 1910, Eugene B. Ely flew a Curtiss biplane from a temporary wooden platform aboard USS Birmingham in Hampton Roads, Virginia. U.S. Navy historical photograph.
On the afternoon of November 14, 1910, a young civilian aviator named Eugene Burton Ely climbed into the exposed seat of a fragile biplane perched on a wooden platform above the bow of an American warship. Beneath him lay the cold waters of Hampton Roads, Virginia. Ahead lay a short, downward-sloping runway that ended abruptly over the sea.
The aircraft had no enclosed cockpit, no sophisticated navigation equipment, and no reliable way to survive a crash into the water. Its engine produced only about 50 horsepower. The pilot had little more than his flying experience, mechanical knowledge, and confidence in a machine that represented one of the twentieth century’s newest technologies.
At approximately 3:17 p.m., Ely opened the throttle and accelerated toward the end of the platform.
Seconds later, he became the first person to take off from a warship.
The flight was short, dangerous, and nearly disastrous. Nevertheless, it demonstrated something that naval officers and aviation enthusiasts had only begun to imagine: airplanes might someday become an integral part of operations at sea.
The consequences would eventually transform naval warfare.
A Navy Still Thinking in Terms of Battleships
In 1910, the battleship dominated American naval thinking. The world’s leading navies measured their strength largely by the number, displacement, armor, and firepower of their capital ships.
The modern airplane, meanwhile, was barely seven years removed from the Wright brothers’ first powered flight at Kitty Hawk in December 1903.
Aviation remained experimental. Aircraft were mechanically unreliable, vulnerable to weather, and severely limited in range, payload, and endurance. Many military officers regarded them as curiosities rather than practical weapons.
Nevertheless, a few naval officers recognized their potential.
An airplane could observe enemy fleet movements beyond the range of a ship’s lookout. It might locate hostile vessels, report troop movements, or eventually help direct naval gunfire.
Captain Washington Irving Chambers, assigned to investigate aviation’s possible naval applications, became an important advocate for experimentation.
Chambers understood that before airplanes could become useful at sea, one fundamental question had to be answered: Could an airplane operate from a ship?
In October 1910, he approached aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss and members of his exhibition flying team about attempting a flight from a naval vessel.
One of those pilots was Eugene Ely.
Ely’s November 14 flight from a slightly different perspective
Eugene Ely: An Unlikely Pioneer
Born in Williamsburg, Iowa, on October 21, 1886, Eugene Burton Ely came to aviation through his interest in machinery and automobiles.
He worked as a mechanic and automobile salesman before becoming involved in flying. In 1910, he taught himself to operate an airplane and soon joined Glenn Curtiss’s exhibition team.
Like many early aviators, Ely learned in an era when flight instruction was limited, and accidents were common. Flying was a hazardous occupation in which pilots routinely tested the practical limits of equipment that engineers were still struggling to understand.
Eugene B. Ely on January 18, 1911
Ely was not a naval officer. He was a civilian pilot performing an experiment for the Navy.
That distinction is important. Some of the most consequential advances in early American military aviation came through cooperation among civilian inventors, exhibition pilots, manufacturers, and a small group of military officers willing to challenge conventional thinking.
Ely’s mechanical experience and willingness to accept substantial personal risk made him especially well suited to the proposed experiment.
He agreed to attempt a takeoff from a warship.
Preparing the USS Birmingham
USS Birmingham with the temporary launching platform erected over her bow in November 1910. Naval History and Heritage Command collection.
The Navy selected USS Birmingham, a scout cruiser commissioned in 1908.
The ship had not been designed to carry aircraft. Converting it into an experimental aviation platform required building a temporary wooden runway above its forward deck.
Workers at the Norfolk Navy Yard built a platform approximately 83 feet long and 24 feet wide. It extended forward over the bow and sloped downward toward the water.
Although the platform measured 83 feet, Ely’s airplane was positioned so that its front wheel had only about 57 feet of runway available for acceleration.
The airplane was a Curtiss pusher biplane, named for its engine and propeller mounted behind the pilot, pushing the aircraft forward rather than pulling it from the front.
The aircraft also had lightweight flotation equipment in case it came down in the water.
The original plan called for Birmingham to steam into the wind, adding the ship’s forward speed to the airflow across the airplane’s wings. That additional airflow would make the short takeoff more manageable.
Other naval vessels accompanied the cruiser, prepared to assist Ely if the airplane crashed into the water.
Among them were the destroyers USS Roe and USS Terry, early predecessors of the rescue vessels that would eventually accompany aircraft carriers during flight operations.
November 14: A Dangerous Experiment
The weather on November 14 was far from ideal.
Low clouds, rain, mist, and poor visibility complicated the preparations. As the cruiser moved into Hampton Roads, conditions deteriorated sufficiently to delay the planned flight.
The crew waited for an opportunity.
By midafternoon, however, it was becoming clear that the weather might not improve enough to carry out the original plan.
Ely decided to proceed anyway.
At approximately 3:17 p.m., with Birmingham still at anchor, Ely accelerated down the wooden platform.
This was a significant departure from the original plan. Without the ship steaming into the wind, Ely would have to achieve flying speed almost entirely through the airplane’s own acceleration.
The Curtiss biplane rolled down the inclined runway and passed over the bow.
For a moment, the aircraft appeared to be flying.
Then it began to descend.
Instead of climbing safely away, the airplane dropped toward the water. Its landing gear and propeller contacted the surface, sending spray into the air and damaging the propeller tips.
Ely managed to regain altitude.
Water had splashed onto his goggles, obscuring his vision. He removed them and continued flying through the mist, climbing to roughly 150 feet.
He had originally intended to fly back toward the Norfolk Navy Yard, but poor visibility and the damaged propeller made that impractical.
After traveling approximately two and a half miles, Ely landed on the beach at Willoughby Spit.
The entire flight lasted only a few minutes.
The airplane was damaged, and Ely failed to reach his intended destination.
But the most important objective had been accomplished.
An airplane had taken off from a warship and flown under its own power.
From Experiment to Proof of Concept
Ely’s flight did not demonstrate that airplanes could yet be operated routinely from warships.
The conditions were carefully arranged, the airplane had to be lifted aboard by shipboard equipment, and the launching platform was a temporary structure that interfered with normal operations.
Furthermore, once an airplane left the ship, it had no practical way to return.
Nevertheless, the experiment established an essential principle: a naval vessel could serve as a launching platform for a powered airplane.
For naval planners, this offered possibilities beyond those of existing reconnaissance balloons and shore-based aircraft.
A warship might someday launch airplanes to search for enemy fleets, observe coastal defenses, or extend its ability to detect threats beyond the horizon.
The experiment also exposed important technical challenges. Aircraft needed greater reliability, better performance, more dependable navigation, and equipment suitable for operation in the harsh marine environment.
Above all, the Navy needed to solve the problem of landing an airplane aboard a ship.
Ely would help answer that question just two months later.
January 18, 1911: The First Landing on a Warship
Eugene Ely lands aboard USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco Bay on January 18, 1911, using a primitive arresting system of ropes and sandbags.
On January 18, 1911, Ely made another historic flight, this time in San Francisco Bay.
The Navy had prepared the armored cruiser USS Pennsylvania with a wooden landing platform. A system of ropes stretched across the deck, connected to sandbags, was designed to bring an arriving airplane to a stop.
Ely’s aircraft had hooks to catch the ropes.
He took off from an airfield near San Francisco and approached the anchored cruiser.
At approximately 11:01 a.m., he touched down on the platform. The hooks engaged the ropes, and the sandbags slowed the airplane to a stop.
It was the first successful landing of an airplane aboard a ship.
After a brief visit with the ship’s officers, Ely climbed back into his airplane and took off from Pennsylvania, demonstrating that aircraft could both arrive at and depart from a naval vessel.
The improvised arrangement anticipated two fundamental elements of modern aircraft carrier operations: the flight deck and the arresting gear used to stop landing aircraft.
Together, Ely’s November 1910 and January 1911 flights provided convincing evidence that shipboard aviation was technically possible.
A Career Cut Short
Ely’s accomplishments made him one of the best-known American aviators of his time.
He continued flying exhibition demonstrations across the country, performing before crowds fascinated by the new machines.
But early aviation remained extraordinarily dangerous.
On October 19, 1911, at the Georgia State Fair in Macon, Ely lost control of his airplane during an exhibition flight. The aircraft crashed, and he suffered fatal injuries.
He was only 24, two days short of his 25th birthday.
Ely did not live to see the development of aircraft carriers, the expansion of naval aviation during World War I, or the enormous changes in warfare aircraft brought about in the following decades.
In 1933, the United States Navy posthumously awarded him the Distinguished Flying Cross for his pioneering contributions to naval aviation.
The Emergence of the Aircraft Carrier
Naval aviation did not develop immediately after Ely’s demonstrations.
Throughout World War I, battleships remained the principal measure of naval power. Aircraft increasingly performed reconnaissance and other military missions, but their integration into fleet operations was gradual.
The United States Navy commissioned its first aircraft carrier, USS Langley (CV-1), in March 1922. Converted from the collier USS Jupiter, Langley provided a dedicated platform to develop the techniques, equipment, and procedures needed for sustained aircraft operations at sea.
During the 1920s and 1930s, aircraft carriers evolved into increasingly capable warships. Naval aviators developed methods to launch, recover, maintain, and coordinate aircraft in large numbers.
The attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and the subsequent Pacific campaigns dramatically demonstrated the military importance of carrier aviation.
At the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942, opposing fleets fought a major naval engagement without their ships ever coming within sight of one another. Their aircraft carried out the attacks.
The following month, at Midway, carrier-based American aircraft sank four Japanese aircraft carriers, delivering a decisive blow to Japan’s naval offensive capabilities.
By the end of World War II, the aircraft carrier had displaced the battleship as the principal offensive striking arm of the world’s leading navies.
The transformation had required decades of engineering, experimentation, operational experience, and considerable loss of life.
Yet one of its earliest demonstrations had occurred aboard Birmingham in November 1910.
A Few Minutes That Changed Naval History
An important distinction exists between recognizing Eugene Ely’s achievement and treating his flight as the inevitable beginning of modern carrier warfare.
In 1910, no one could confidently predict the aircraft carrier’s eventual dominance. The airplanes of the period were too primitive to threaten heavily armored warships, and the technical obstacles involved in operating them at sea were substantial.
Ely did not invent the aircraft carrier, nor did his flight alone establish naval aviation.
What he accomplished was more fundamental.
He demonstrated that an airplane could be launched from a ship, challenging the assumption that powered flight was necessarily confined to operations from land.
His subsequent landing aboard Pennsylvania extended that demonstration, showing that shipboard flight operations could eventually become a practical military capability.
These experiments gave Navy advocates tangible evidence to support further development.
On November 14, 1910, the United States Navy remained a fleet organized around guns, armor, and ships’ ability to maneuver and fight on the surface of the sea.
Eugene Ely’s flight offered a glimpse of a different future.
The wooden platform aboard USS Birmingham was dismantled shortly after the experiment. The cruiser returned to its ordinary naval duties, and the little Curtiss biplane resumed its place in the hazardous world of exhibition aviation.
But the idea demonstrated that afternoon could not be put away so easily.
In a flight of only a few minutes, Eugene Ely helped open a new dimension of naval warfare—one in which a fleet’s striking power would eventually extend hundreds of miles beyond the ships themselves.
Historical sources and further reading
The following institutional and historical references establish the article’s principal facts.
- Naval History and Heritage Command — USS Birmingham (Scout Cruiser No. 2). The Navy’s official ship history, including the November 14 experiment.
- National Archives — The First Aeroplane Take Off from a Ship, Part II. Detailed historical account of the preparations and flight.
- U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings — Aviation and Aeroplanes (March 1911). A near-contemporary technical account of Ely’s experiment.
- Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum — Eugene Ely and the Birth of Naval Aviation. Historical discussion of Ely’s two pioneering shipboard flights.
- National Naval Aviation Museum — Eugene Ely Makes Naval Aviation’s First Shipboard Launch. Examination of the experiment and its significance.
Historical note: A U.S. Navy aviation chronology contains an apparent 1909 date error for Ely’s Birmingham flight. The Navy’s ship history, contemporary reporting, National Archives material, and Smithsonian records consistently establish the correct date as November 14, 1910.
