Before the Carrier

• Naval ships sometimes carried and launched observation balloons after the Civil War, which proved the advantages of spying on the enemy from above. The first naval aviator received his wings in 1911, courtesy of Glenn H. Curtiss, founder of Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company, who hoped to interest the Navy in his planes.
  
  

The First Launch

• In 1910, Eugene Ely, a civilian pilot, flew a Curtiss aircraft off a special platform built above the American light cruiser USS Birmingham, anchored in Hampton Roads, VA. Ely also became the first pilot to land a plane on a U.S. warship, landing on a platform built on the cruiser USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco on Jan. 18, 1911.
  
  

Army vs. Navy

• In 1921, Brigadier General William "Billy" Mitchell, who had commanded all U.S. aviation forces in France in World War I, set out, against Navy opposition, to prove that airplanes could sink ships at sea. His successful demonstration alienated the Navy but convinced Congress to convert two unfinished cruisers, the Saratoga and the Lexington, to aircraft carriers, joining the very first carrier, the USS Langley (CV 1), which was converted and placed in service in 1922.
  
  

World War II

• Pearl Harbor saw the U.S. battleship fleet devastated, leaving the carriers Saratoga, Enterprise, and Lexington as the backbone of the Pacific Fleet. Pre-war military exercises in which carrier aircraft had proven their worth had radically altered naval thinking. Throughout the war, carriers would take the lead in the Pacific theater as Allied forces "island-hopped" their way toward Japan, eventually claiming air superiority and reducing Japanese tacticians to use of kamikaze attacks by single planes.
  
  

Modern Aircraft Carriers

• Today the aircraft carrier is at the center of naval surface warfare, able to cover vast areas of ocean with its patrol aircraft, working in tandem with a supporting task force of screening ships and submarines. A single carrier and its supporting ships is a formidable weapon, but with resources capable of providing air-sea rescue and civilian disaster relief as well. That was the case during the Indian Ocean tsunami on Dec. 26, 2004, when the USS Abraham Lincoln strike group provided helicopters and personnel during Operation Unified Assistance.
  
  

Fun Fact

• From December 1929 to Jan. 16, 1930, the USS Lexington (CV 2) provided electricity to the city of Tacoma, Wash., after the city's power plant failed. By itself, the carrier provided over 4.25 million kilowatt hours of electricity.