October 17, 1922: The Takeoff That Helped Launch U.S. Carrier Aviation

Today, launching aircraft from the deck of a U.S. Navy carrier is an extraordinary display of precision that has become routine through decades of experience. But more than a century ago, there was no established playbook for American carrier aviation.

There were no modern catapults. No angled flight decks. No Super Hornets or F-35Cs waiting on the flight line.

There was USS Langley (CV-1), a converted collier with a wooden flight deck — and a group of Naval Aviators learning, quite literally, how to operate airplanes from a carrier.

On October 17, 1922, one of those aviators made history.

America’s First Aircraft Carrier

Before she became USS Langley, the ship was USS Jupiter (AC-3), a collier designed to carry coal for the fleet.

Following World War I, the Navy began looking seriously at the potential of aircraft operating at sea. Jupiter offered something particularly useful for experimentation: large cargo holds that could be converted for aircraft use.

The ship underwent an extensive transformation. Her coal-handling equipment gave way to aviation facilities, and a long wooden flight deck was constructed above the ship.

On March 20, 1922, USS Langley was commissioned as CV-1 — the United States Navy’s first aircraft carrier.

Named for aviation pioneer Samuel P. Langley, she was unlike the massive carriers that would eventually follow. Langley could make only about 15 knots and was never intended to be the final answer to carrier design.

She was a laboratory.

And the Navy had a great deal to learn.

October 17, 1922

While Langley sat anchored in the York River in Virginia, Lieutenant Commander Virgil C. “Squash” Griffin climbed into a Vought VE-7SF Bluebird positioned on the carrier’s flight deck.

Griffin was Naval Aviator No. 41 and already an experienced member of the young Naval Aviation community.

What he was about to attempt had never been done from a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier.

The VE-7SF was a far cry from the aircraft that would one day operate from American flight decks. It was a fabric-covered biplane with fixed landing gear and an open cockpit. The type had a top speed of roughly 117 mph.

It also had no brakes.

That presented an obvious problem: How do you bring the engine to full power while keeping the airplane stationary on a carrier deck?

The solution was remarkably simple by modern standards.

A hold-back arrangement incorporating a bomb-release mechanism and restraining wire kept the airplane in place while Griffin brought up the power. At his signal, a flight-deck crewman released the aircraft.

Griffin accelerated down Langley’s wooden deck.

And took to flight.

On October 17, 1922, the U.S. Navy had launched an airplane from its first aircraft carrier.

Learning How to Operate at Sea

Griffin’s flight was only one step in a much larger experiment.

Nine days later, on October 26, Lieutenant Commander Godfrey D. Chevalier approached Langley in an Aeromarine 39B while the carrier was underway off the Virginia coast.

Chevalier successfully landed aboard the ship, completing the first landing on a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier.

Then, on November 18, Commander Kenneth Whiting became the first Naval Aviator launched by catapult from Langley’s deck.

In the span of barely a month, the Navy was beginning to answer some of the fundamental questions of carrier aviation:

How do you launch aircraft from a ship?

How do you recover them?

How do you arrange aircraft on a crowded flight deck?

How quickly can you launch them?

How do you turn an aircraft carrier from an experiment into an effective part of the fleet?

Throughout the 1920s, Langley helped provide those answers.

From Langley to the Fleet Carrier

Langley was not fast enough or large enough to become the model for every carrier that followed. Her importance came from what the Navy learned aboard her.

Those lessons influenced the development and operation of the carriers that came next, including USS Lexington (CV-2), USS Saratoga (CV-3), and eventually USS Ranger (CV-4), the first U.S. carrier designed from the beginning as an aircraft carrier.

The flight deck was becoming more than a place to experiment with airplanes.

It was becoming a weapon.

Over the decades that followed, carrier aviation would evolve at an extraordinary pace.

Biplanes gave way to increasingly capable propeller-driven fighters and attack aircraft. World War II demonstrated the decisive power of the aircraft carrier. The jet age brought aircraft such as the F-8 Crusader and F-4 Phantom II. Later came the F-14 Tomcat, A-6 Intruder, A-7 Corsair II, F/A-18 Hornet and Super Hornet — and today, the F-35C Lightning II.

The ships changed just as dramatically.

The wooden deck of Langley eventually gave way to enormous nuclear-powered carriers equipped with angled flight decks, sophisticated arresting systems, steam and electromagnetic catapults, and the ability to project air power thousands of miles from home.

But those capabilities were built through decades of lessons that had to start somewhere.

The Legacy of CV-1

Langley’s story did not end with the carrier experiments of the 1920s.

The Navy eventually converted her into a seaplane tender and redesignated her AV-3 in 1937. She continued serving in the Pacific and was still in service when the United States entered World War II.

On February 27, 1942, while transporting U.S. Army P-40 fighters toward the Netherlands East Indies, Langley came under attack by Japanese aircraft. After suffering severe damage, she was abandoned and later scuttled by her escorts.

The Navy’s first aircraft carrier was gone.

Her influence was not.

The techniques developed aboard Langley helped establish the foundation for an entirely new form of naval warfare.

From One Wooden Flight Deck

More than a century separates Virgil Griffin’s VE-7SF from the aircraft launching from American carriers today.

The technology is almost unrecognizable.

The basic idea is not.

Put an aircraft aboard a ship. Take it to sea. Launch it. Recover it. Re-arm it. Refuel it. Do it again.

And build a community of Sailors and Naval Aviators capable of making an extraordinarily difficult operation look routine.

Every carrier squadron that followed became part of the legacy that began during those early experiments.

On October 17, 1922, a small biplane accelerated across the wooden deck of USS Langley and lifted away over the York River.

American carrier aviation was underway.

Carry the Legacy Forward

From the earliest days aboard USS Langley to the squadrons flying from carrier decks today, Naval Aviation has been built on more than a century of aircraft, squadrons, and the people who served with them.

Bent Wing Apparel celebrates that heritage through officially licensed U.S. Naval Aviation apparel inspired by the squadrons and aircraft.

Squadron heritage → Squadron shirts
Aircraft history → FLY NAVY shirts