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Eugene Ely Standing on Deck of USS Pennsylvania
18 January 1911
On 14 November 1910, twenty-four-year-old civilian pilot Eugene Ely because the first person in history to fly a fixed wing aircraft off a ship, the light cruiser USS Birmingham. Two months later, on 18 January 1911, he recorded another first when he landed his Curtiss pushed biplane on a wooden platform built atop the after deck of the armored cruiser USS Pennsylvania, marking the start of naval aviation. Here, he stands beside his plane shortly after his historic feat.
Ely died in a plane crash on 19 October 1911. More than two decades later, he was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross "for extraordinary achievement as a pioneer civilian aviator and for his significant contribution to the development of aviation in the United States Navy." |