Did you know? - Eugene Ely - Brief Article

Approach, Nov, 2001

The first aircraft to take off from a ship was in 1910. Eugene Ely flew from an 83-foot wooden platform built over the ram bow of the cruiser USS Birmingham in Chesapeake Bay on 14 November. His aircraft was a Curtiss pusher land plane powered by a vertical, four-cylinder, water-cooled 50 hp Curtiss engine.

Two months later, Ely landed on the armored cruiser USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco Bay. His feats opened new vistas for naval aviation--and new hazards that would destroy hundreds of aircraft and kill hundreds of carrier aviators. Ely died in a flying accident the following October.