Eugene Ely, the Curtiss Pusher, and the Wooden Platform Off a Cruiser That Gave the Navy Its First Airplane

On November 14, 1910, a race car driver from Iowa named Eugene Ely flew a Curtiss Pusher biplane off an 83-foot wooden ramp bolted to the bow of the cruiser USS Birmingham - the first time an airplane ever left the deck of a ship. Two months later he landed one back onto a ship’s deck using ropes and sandbags, inventing the concept of arresting gear. In two flights, powered flight only seven years old, Ely handed the U.S. Navy the entire future of naval aviation.

Who Was Eugene Ely?

Eugene Burton Ely was born in 1886 in Iowa. Before he ever touched an airplane, he was a restless mechanical soul - a race car driver, a chauffeur, and an automobile salesman, always chasing the next fast thing.

In 1910, the next fast thing was the airplane. Ely more or less taught himself to fly, and he did it the hard way. As the story goes, he bought a damaged airplane, patched it up, and crashed it on his first attempt. Most people would have walked away. Ely bought the wreck outright, fixed it again, and kept at it until the machine did what he told it to.

By the fall of 1910 he had caught on with Glenn Curtiss, the great showman-builder rival of the Wright brothers, and became one of the exhibition fliers on Curtiss’s barnstorming team.

What Was the Curtiss Pusher?

The Curtiss Pusher was a biplane of open framework - bamboo, spruce, and piano wire, with no real fuselage. The engine sat behind the pilot and the propeller pushed from the rear, which is why they called it a “pusher.”

Out front, a small elevator stuck forward on outriggers. The pilot sat right on the leading edge on a little seat, feet on a bar, hands on a wheel, completely exposed. No cowling, no windscreen, no seatbelt worth the name. As pilots of the era put it, if the airplane stopped, you arrived at the scene of the accident first.

To put the era in perspective: the Wright brothers made their first powered hop at Kitty Hawk in 1903, so by 1910 the entire idea of powered flight was only seven years old.

Why Did the Navy Want an Airplane Off a Ship?

A ship can only see as far as its lookout in the crow’s nest - maybe a dozen miles on a clear day. An airplane a few thousand feet up can see fifty. A few forward-thinking officers understood this even when the admirals didn’t.

Captain Washington Chambers had been handed the thankless job of investigating aviation for the Navy - largely so the brass could say they’d looked into it. But Chambers took it seriously and began to wonder: could a real wheeled airplane take off from the deck of a fighting ship at sea? Curtiss said his man could do it. His man was Ely.

The First Launch: USS Birmingham, November 14, 1910

The Navy bolted a wooden ramp onto the bow of the scout cruiser USS Birmingham. It was 83 feet long and sloped downhill toward the water to help the airplane build speed. For context, a typical light trainer today wants around a thousand feet of pavement to get airborne.

The weather over Hampton Roads, Virginia, was lousy - rain squalls and low clouds. The plan was for the ship to steam into the wind to give Ely extra airspeed. But the squalls kept closing in. When a small break appeared in the gray, Ely decided not to wait. The Birmingham was barely moving - some accounts say she was still swinging on her anchor.

He gunned the 50-horsepower engine and rolled down the wet ramp. The airplane came off the end and dropped. The wheels touched the waves, and the pusher propeller behind him bit the salt water and splintered its tips. But Ely held the nose down, let the machine claw for airspeed in ground effect over the water, and slowly climbed away - half-blind, his goggles caked with salt.

He staggered across Hampton Roads and set down on the beach at Willoughby Spit, a couple of miles away. It was the first time in history a heavier-than-air machine had left the deck of a ship.

The First Landing and the Birth of the Tailhook: USS Pennsylvania, January 18, 1911

Skeptics in the Navy argued the real trick would be to land on a ship - to bring a flying machine down and stop it on a deck without running off the end. Ely said he’d do that too.

They set it up for January in San Francisco Bay, using the armored cruiser USS Pennsylvania. This time the platform - roughly 120 feet - was built over the stern, sloping up toward the middle to help slow the airplane down.

The genius was in the stopping system. Chambers’s team stretched 22 ropes across the platform, laid crossways every few feet. Each end of each rope was tied to a sandbag of about 50 pounds. Hooks were rigged beneath Ely’s airplane, sticking down like fingers. As he touched down, the hooks would catch rope after rope, each dragging its pair of sandbags, hauling the airplane to a stop.

That is the arresting gear. That is the tailhook. Every carrier landing since - every jet snatched from flying speed to a dead stop - traces straight back to Ely and 22 ropes with sandbags on the ends. They designed it in a couple of weeks, on a hunch, and got it right the first time.

On January 18, 1911, Ely took off from Tanforan, south of the city, and flew out over the bay. Sailors in their whites lined the rails of the anchored Pennsylvania. He came in from astern, lined up on the little wooden platform, and flew straight down onto the deck. The hooks caught the ropes, the sandbags dragged, and the airplane stopped with room to spare - in about 60 feet.

His wife, Mabel, was aboard and nearly collapsed with relief. The captain hosted the couple for lunch in his cabin. Then, about an hour later, they turned the airplane around and Ely took off from the same deck and flew back to shore. The first arrested landing in history and the first deck launch and recovery - all in one afternoon.

What Happened to Eugene Ely?

Exhibition flying was a killing business. These men flew low and hard for the crowds in fragile machines, and the arithmetic always caught up.

On October 19, 1911 - nine months after the Pennsylvania landing - Ely was flying an exhibition in Macon, Georgia. He came out of a dive and the airplane didn’t recover in time. He jumped clear at the last second, but it was too low and too late. Eugene Ely was killed at age 24.

Friends said he’d had a premonition that season and figured he’d die in an airplane before long, but he kept flying anyway. In 1933, more than twenty years after his death, Congress awarded him the Distinguished Flying Cross, citing that he had “contributed materially to the science of aviation.”

Why Ely Still Matters

Every element of naval aviation - the deck launch, the deck recovery, the tailhook, the arresting gear - was born on a wooden ramp bolted to a cruiser. A race car driver from Iowa in a 50-horsepower bamboo pusher showed the United States Navy the entire future in two flights, two months apart.

Everything after him is refinement. He drew the map.

Key Takeaways

• Eugene Ely made the first airplane takeoff from a ship on November 14, 1910, flying a Curtiss Pusher off an 83-foot ramp on the USS Birmingham at Hampton Roads, Virginia.
• On January 18, 1911, he made the first arrested landing aboard the USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco Bay, stopping in about 60 feet.
• The stopping system - 22 ropes weighted with ~50-pound sandbags caught by hooks under the airplane - was the direct ancestor of the modern carrier tailhook and arresting gear.
• Powered flight was only seven years old (Kitty Hawk, 1903) when Ely proved airplanes could operate from warships.
• Ely died in a crash at Macon, Georgia, on October 19, 1911, at age 24, and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross posthumously in 1933.