Navy Heritage Flight

(this post provided by Ghost Writer Mel)

This year is the 100th Anniversary of Naval Aviation! Given my love of military history I have to throw in a bit of the back story but I’ll try to make it brief.

In 1910, Glenn Curtiss approached the War and Navy Departments offering flight lessons to any officer for free. Aviation was still young enough that each manufacturer had very unique cockpit controls. For pilots to transition to a plane manufactured by a different company they would have to be completely retrained on the instrumentation. By training these officers on his controls, Curtiss made it necessary for the Navy to fly planes build by his company, Curtiss Aeroplane. (Brilliant businessman, right?)

By December he had 3 army and 1 naval officer working with him. They began working on the first seaplane (1 that could land & take off on the water) & after dozens of designs, they flew their 1st model in January of 2011. In February, Curtiss flew the seaplane to tea aboard the Pennsylvania and landed in the water next to the ship’s mooring. This demonstration, and the return flight, encouraged the Navy and who took possession of their first 2 seaplanes that summer.

During this same time Curtiss was also working with the navy to create an aircraft that could take off from and land upon a ship. In November 2010, a contract pilot for Curtiss took off from the cruiser Birmingham, the first take off from a navy vessel. Never mind that the ship's makeshift flight deck was so short he literally drove off the end & touched the water before gaining sufficient air speed... The following January he landed on board the Pennsylvania. Given the shortness of the flight deck, they developed & used the first tailhook to snag a cable strung across the deck to stop the airplane’s progress. Aircraft carriers all over the world today still use this same basic technology.

Sorry, more information than you wanted to know but given this anniversary I was hoping for more naval aircraft demonstrations. Sadly, most of the naval aircraft were only on static display. There were however a few flights, including a Navy Heritage Flight of an F/A-18 Hornet and a F4U Corsair.

It was amazing to watch an aircraft that first saw combat in 1942 flying with 1 introduced to the navy 41 years later. The difference between the 2 aircraft are marked and show how much aviation can change in just a few decades.