The Curtiss Aviation Book

by Glenn Hammond Curtiss; Augustus Post

The rest of the experiment was performed with equal promptness and ease. After a stay of ten minutes on the cruiser, the aeroplane was dropped overboard by the big boat crane, the propeller was cranked by one of the military pupils in aviation, and I got under way for the return trip to the island. Two minutes later I brought the hydroaeroplane to a stop a few yards away from the hangar on the beach. The entire time taken from the moment I left North Island for the cruiser to the moment I landed on the water at the hangar on my return was less than half an hour, and yet within this brief space had been written one of the most interesting chapters in the history of naval aviation.

I regard this experiment as one of the most interesting, from my idea of a military experiment, that had been attempted up to that time, for the reason that no special equipment was needed on board the ship. Obviously the objections to the landing of an aeroplane on deck from a flight had to be overcome, and this could be done with a machine that could land on the water and be picked up. For a flight from the ship, all that was necessary was to drop it over the side and watch it rise from the water into the air. Such a machine could be "knocked down" and stored in a very small space when not in use; and when wanted for a flight, it could be brought out and set up in a short time on deck.

An aeroplane sent from a scout ship on a scouting flight must, to be efficient, be able to carry a passenger, especially if it be sent for any purpose other than as a messenger, where speed would be the first consideration. But if sent to seek information as to an enemy's position, to take observations and make maps of the surrounding country, or with any of a dozen other objects in view where a trained observer would be necessary, it seems to me it should be equipped to carry at least two, and possibly three, persons the aviator and two passengers. There were many machines capable of carrying one or more passengers on land flights, so I set about equipping one to carry passengers on water flights.

This I first succeeded in doing on February 23, when I took up Lieutenant T. G. Ellyson of the Navy, in the hydroaeroplane. We rose from the water without difficulty, flew over San Diego Bay and returning, alighted on the water with perfect ease.

This was all very well and good where a flight was to be made from the water and back to the water; but I believed we should go further and provide a machine that would be able to go from one to the other from water to land and land back to water before it could be said that all the difficulties of making the aeroplane adaptable to both Army and Navy uses had been overcome. This was of comparatively easy accomplishment, and on Sunday, February 26, I made the first flight from water to land and from land back to water. Starting from North Island, on the waters of Spanish Bight, I flew out over the ocean and down the beach to a point near Coronado Hotel, where I came down on the smooth sand of the beach. Returning, the machine started from the beach and came back to the water on Spanish Bight whence I had started.

With these achievements it seems to me the aeroplane has reached the point of utility for military purposes either for the Army or Navy. It now seems possible to use it to establish communication between the Navy and Army, when there are no other means of communication. That is, a warship could launch an aeroplane that can fly over sea and land and come to earth on whichever element affords the best landing. Having fulfilled its mission on shore it could start from the land, and, returning to the home ship, land at its side and be picked up, as I was picked up and hoisted aboard the Pennsylvania at San Diego.

Here let me call attention to the splendid field that California offers for the development of aviation, with its climate, permitting aviation to be pursued all the year, and its large winter tourist population with wealth and leisure to devote to furthering the art of flight. In California even the legislature recognises the increasing popularity of flying, and it has given careful attention to the formation of laws to protect the aeroplane and the aviator.

There remained one thing further to accomplish complete success with the hydroaeroplane, and that was to devise a method of successfully launching the machine from a ship without touching the water and without resorting to any cumbersome platform or any other launching apparatus that would interfere with the ship's ordinary working. To accomplish this would solve the principal obstacle that stood in the way of using the hydroaeroplane at sea.

Lieutenant Theodore G. Ellyson, of the United States Navy, had been working out a plan for doing this and it was not until September, 1911, that the experiment was finally completed at Hammondsport, where operations were continued after breaking up the camp at San Diego, late in the spring.

A platform sixteen feet high was erected on the shore of Lake Keuka and a wire cable two hundred and fifty feet long was stretched from the platform to a spile under water out in the lake. The hydroaeroplane was set on this wire cable near the platform on which the men stood to start the propeller. A groove was made along the bottom of the boat in which the cable fitted loosely, to guide it as it slid down, until sufficient headway was obtained to enable the wings of the aeroplane to support the weight of the machine. A trial of this method of launching was entirely successful. The machine started down the cable gathering headway and we all watched it gracefully rise into the air and fly out over the lake. This launching from a wire is the last step in the development of handling the aeroplane and it is hardly possible to foresee all the many important applications which will be made in the future of this type of machine, since a cable can be easily stretched from the bow of any vessel, which can then steam into the wind, easily enabling an aeroplane to be launched in almost any weather, while it can without difficulty land under the lea of the vessel and be hoisted on board again.