PART 2

Test of Strength

1917-1919

A small group of pioneer Navy and Marine Corps

aviators had nurtured the early growth of Naval

Aviation, but it was too small and poorly equipped to

wage war. When the call came in April 1917, one air

station was operating, 48 aviators and students were

available; 54 aircraft were on hand, but none of them

had been designed for the work that would be

required.

In the 19 months between declaration of war and

the armistice, expansion was remarkable (see

Appendix 4). Air stations sprang up on both sides of

the Atlantic. Training programs were established at

new air stations, on university campuses, and even

with private industry. The Naval Reserve Flying Corps

produced thousands of aviators, ground officers,

mechanics and technical specialists. Aircraft of many

types were produced, and one aircraft engine

advanced from concept to mass production and

operation.

The speed and breadth of the expansion produced

expected chaos, but Naval Aviation nonetheless

achieved a good wartime record. One of its units was

the first from the United States to reach France. Naval

aircraft flew more than 3 million nautical miles and

attacked and damaged a dozen U-boats. By war's end,

Navy and Marine Corps squadrons had organized the

Northern Bombing Group which was preparing a

round-the-clock air campaign which would have been

the first strictly American air offensive of the war.

When hostilities ceased, Navy and Marine Corps avia-

tors were using 27 bases in Europe, two in Canada,

one in the Canal Zone, one in the Azores, and 12 in

the United States.

Naval Aviation's outstanding technical product of

the war was the long-distance flying boat. Numerous

types appeared but they all bore the look of a single

family. The design progressed through the HS-l and

H-16 to the British original known as the F-5L, but all

could trace their ancestry to the earlier work of Glenn

H. Curtiss. The culmination of work with flying boats

in the war was the Curtiss NC type. A product of naval

constructors, a Yankee builder of aircraft, and New

England yacht manufacturers, the NC type secured a

place in aviation history in 1919 as the first aircraft to

fly the Atlantic.

The flying boat was so impressive that many Naval

Aviators urged its adoption as the major means of

taking air power to sea. Others remained of the opin-

ion that aircraft should fly from combatant ships of

the fleet, and enthusiasts of lighter-than-air pointed

to airship success in the war and urged development

of their specialty. The logic of these claims, and the

usefulness of these aeronautic types, were not

ignored. The 1920s saw development in each area.

But even as the war ended, sentiment in favor of the

aircraft carrier was gaining currency. In 1919 the

Navy decided to convert a collier to a carrier. This

decision represented a modest beginning for a pro-

gram which would occupy the attention of a host of

ship builders, aircraft designers and naval tacticians

for years to come.

1917

6 January A board of Army and Navy officers rec-

ommended to the Secretaries of the War and Navy

Departments that an airship of the Zeppelin type be

designed and constructed under the direction of the

Chief Constructor of the Navy with funds provided

equally by the Army and the Navy, and that a board of

three Army and three Navy officers be created to

insure effective interservice cooperation in prosecution

of the work.

8 January A Benet-Mercie machine gun, installed in

a flexible mount in the Burgess-Dunne AH-lO, was

fired at altitudes of 100 and 200 feet above Pensacola,

Fla. Both the gun and the aircraft operated satisfactori-

ly during the test.

10 January The first production order for aerial

photographic equipment was initiated when the Naval

Observatory issued requisitions for 20 aero cameras

and accessories to be manufactured by the Eastman

Kodak Company.

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