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First Carrier Landing: October 26, 1922

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famousdayandyear:


Lt. Commander Godfrey de Courcelles Chevalier makes the first aircraft-carrier landing on the deck of America’s first carrier, USS Langley (CV-1) on Oct. 26, 1922

 

Rapunzel:
How far out to sea???  One thing they probably didn't need a lot of deck space to land into the wind.

famousdayandyear:

--- Quote from: R²apunzel on October 27, 2012, 03:39:09 am ---How far out to sea???  One thing they probably didn't need a lot of deck space to land into the wind.

--- End quote ---

All I can find so far is that she was NINE DAYS out to sea when the aircraft landed:
Carrier

Jupiter was converted into the first U.S. aircraft carrier at the Navy Yard, Norfolk, Virginia, for the purpose of conducting experiments in the new idea of seaborne aviation. On 11 April 1920, she was renamed Langley in honor of Samuel Pierpont Langley, an American astronomer, physicist, aeronautics pioneer and aircraft engineer, and she was given hull classification symbol CV-1. She recommissioned on 20 March 1922 with Commander Kenneth Whiting in command. The naming of Langley was one of many shots in a long feud between Orville Wright and the U.S. Government.[clarification needed]
Langley being converted from a collier to an aircraft carrier at Norfolk Naval Shipyard in 1921.

As the first American aircraft carrier, Langley was the scene of numerous momentous events. On 17 October 1922, Lt. Virgil C. Griffin piloted the first plane—a Vought VE-7—launched from her decks.[13] Though this was not the first time an airplane had taken off from a ship, and though Langley was not the first ship with an installed flight deck, this one launching was of monumental importance to the modern U.S. Navy. The era of the aircraft carrier was born introducing into the Navy what was to become the vanguard of its forces in the future. With Langley underway nine days later, Lieutenant Commander Godfrey de Courcelles Chevalier made the first landing in an Aeromarine 39B.[13] On 18 November, Cdr. Whiting—at the controls of a PT—was the first aviator to be catapulted from a carrier's deck.[14]

Rapunzel:
Nine days out is quite a distance. AC probably knows how far these biplanes were able to fly... if they were anything like the scale models my husband used to build they were pretty fuel efficient as they had so much lift...

Oceander:
Pretty cool!  Thanks for posting!

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