Profiles in Courage: Eugene Ely

With how common air travel is these days, we often forget just what it took to get here. Today, we can fly from New Jersey to Beijing in just about 12 hours, with the comfortable assurance that the plane will not only make it in one piece but will be ready for a return trip with a new crew and a refuel. 

In the early days of aviation, getting into a plane made of canvas and wood could mean taking your life into your own hands when you try to land in the middle of a field. Imagine the trepidation a pilot must have felt the first time they landed on a ship at sea. Now try to imagine being the first pilot to ever actually do it.

That was Eugene Ely's biggest claim to fame. 

Ely was a thrill-seeker from a young age. Some sources say he only graduated from grammar school while others say he attended the University of Iowa, but the only thing we know for sure about his education is that he taught himself to fly. He spent his early adult years as a chauffeur to a Catholic priest who owned a very fast, very red car. It was in this car he set a driving record for the fastest time driving between Iowa City and Davenport, but this was just the beginning.

After marrying his young wife, the couple moved to Oregon, where Ely began selling cars for automobile magnate E. Henry Wemme. Believing that flying a plane was as easy as driving a car, he purchased one of the first Curtiss biplanes, along with a contract to manufacture them in the Pacific Northwest. 

However, when Wemme tried to fly the plane, he quickly realized it wasn't that easy, so his subordinate, Ely, offered to do it. Ely crashed the plane instead, but he wasn't finished with flying. He purchased the plane from his boss, repaired it, and learned to fly it, this time, with success. 

Soon, he was working for Glenn Curtiss, the original manufacturer of the Curtiss biplane. The two men began working with the U.S. Navy at a time when the future of military aviation was uncertain, let alone the future of naval warfare. 

During this time period, the world's great powers were building dreadnaughts, large battleships designed to duke it out on the surface in large formations. It wasn't until after World War I that Army Gen. William "Billy" Mitchell would prove that a focus on naval aircraft was the superior doctrine.

Before carrier-based air combat could happen, someone had to first get planes off and then back onto a ship at sea. This is a very difficult task, even with modern carrier operations, but it was an enormous undertaking in Ely's day.

On a carrier, as opposed to landing on an airstrip, the plane's touchdown point isn't a fixed location. It constantly moves as the ship bobs and weaves, pitches, and rolls. It's one of the most difficult and exacting procedures in naval operations, and it cost many, many lives to perfect. 

So while naval aviation had a long way to go, it had to start somewhere, and it was with Glenn Curtiss and Eugene Ely. Ely's first attempt at a naval takeoff was in a Curtiss Pusher biplane in 1910. He took off from a specially-made deck plate on the bow of the light cruiser USS Birmingham. The plane dipped as soon as it left the platform and nearly plunged into the waters off of Hampton Roads, Virginia. 

Ely managed to pull the plane up and land on a nearby beach. It was a disappointing outcome, as he was supposed to circle the harbor and land at the Norfolk Naval Yard. But it was a start. He would make history two months later, in January 1911. 

Using a similar Curtiss Pusher plane, Ely took off from a Racetrack in San Bruno, California, and landed on the deck of the armored cruiser USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco Bay. It was the first-ever successful shipboard landing and the first use of a tailhook system to decelerate the plane as it landed. 

Eugene Ely did not live to see the development of naval aviation or even aircraft carriers. He died while flying at an exhibition in Georgia when he couldn't pull his plane out of a steep dive. He was just 24 years old. Congress would later award him with the Distinguished Flying Cross in 1933 after the effectiveness of shipborne aircraft was proven.