• Sea-Based Airpower Is Protected from the Effects of International Politics-Unlike land-based air and ground units, which can't operate without the approval of a regional ally or host country, naval forces (and air units in particular) are not affected by such issues. They are also less vulnerable to attack by enemy forces or acts of terrorism. Shielded by the international laws covering freedom of navigation, sea-based units are free to act independently. Since each ship and aircraft is the sovereign territory of the owning country, any attack or intrusion becomes a potential act of war and a violation of international law. Since few nations have the will to violate these accords, this makes naval aviation a force that does not have to ask permission to act.
• Sea-Based Airpower Provides Long-Term Presence and Power-Maritime nations have long made allowance for resupply and support of their forces at sea. As long as proper sea lines of communications can be maintained, and replacement ships and aircraft can be rotated, ships and sea-based air units can be sustained almost indefinitely on station, and mission durations of months or even years can be supported. This is a key attribute of great maritime nations, and the addition of sea-based air units to their force mix greatly enhances the power and presence they can generate. Recent examples of this kind of forward naval presence are the naval embargoes of Iraq and the Balkans, and the lead-up to the 1991 Gulf War.
• Sea-Based Airpower Can Conduct Multiple Missions at the Same Time-Since naval forces are designed with robust command-and-control capabilities, and sea-based aircraft are multi-mission-capable by necessity, sea-based air units are capable of many types of missions, and can conduct them simultaneously. Thus, attack aircraft can conduct suppressive missions on enemy air defenses, while other units are engaging in precision cruise-missile strikes, armed helicopters are securing the battlespace around the naval force, and SAM-equipped ships are conducting defensive operations against enemy ballistic- and cruise-missile strikes. Such flexi-bility gives naval leaders a critical edge when fast-breaking, rapidly changing crisis and combat situations are in play.
• Sea-Based Airpower Can Generate a Wide Variety of Effects-A naval force generates reactions that range from coercion to terror. Sea-based air units add to this power, by adding a wide variety of weapon and mission effects, ranging from the use of surveillance aircraft and the delivery of special operations forces to more traditional results like the aerial delivery of munitions onto targets. Yet even here, variety is the watch-word. Because naval air units are based at sea, there are no restrictions upon the munitions they can carry and employ. This means that an enemy can expect to face everything from precision-guided penetration bombs to cluster munitions-or even a nuclear strike. Such threats can often deliver the most useful of all weapons effects, deterrence from acting with hostile force against a neighboring nation.
• Sea-Based Airpower Keeps Threats Far Away-America's Navy has historically displayed its greatest value by keeping the threat of enemy military action on the other side of the world's oceans. In fact, no hostile military force of any size has intruded upon our territory since the War of 1812. Today, our sea services continue this mission, and sea-based airpower provides our naval forces with much of the muscle that makes it possible. By keeping the enemy threats against our homeland at arm's length, sea-based airpower keeps our nation strong, and our people safe in an otherwise uncertain world.
Milestones: The Development of a Modern Weapon
It goes without saying that institutions as large, diverse, and powerful as naval aviation do not just happen overnight. They evolve over time, and are the product of the forces and personalities that impact upon them. In fact, naval aviation grew to maturity surprisingly quickly, and most of the critical events and trends that shaped it happened in the roughly five decades stretching from 1908 through the mid-1950's. During that time, the basic forms and functions that define carriers and their aircraft today were conceived and developed. Let's take a look at a few of the most critical of these events and trends. We'll start with the first act in the birth of the world's most powerful conventional weapons system.
Eugene Ely's Stunt
Our journey begins in 1908, just five years after the Wright brothers' first flight, when Glenn Curtiss, an early aerial pioneer, laid out a bombing range in the shape of a battleship, and simulated attacking it. Though the U.S. Navy took notice of Curtiss's test run, it took no action. Several years later, after word reached America of a German attempt to fly an airplane from the deck of a ship, the U.S. Navy decided to try a similar experiment. They built a wooden platform over the main deck of the light cruiser Birmingham (CL-2) and engaged Eugene Ely, a stunt pilot working for Curtiss, to fly off it. At 3 P.M. on the afternoon of November 14th, 1910, while Birmingham was anchored in Hampton Roads, Virginia, Ely gunned his engine, rolled down the wooden platform, and flew off. He landed near Norfolk several miles away. A few months later, Ely reversed the process and landed on another platform built on the stern of the armored cruiser Pennsylvania (ACR-4), which was then anchored in San Francisco Bay. Soon afterward, Congress began to appropriate money, the first naval aviators began to be trained, and planes began to go to sea with the fleet. It was a humble beginning, but Eugene Ely's barnstorming stunt had started something very much bigger than that.
The First Flattop: The Conversion of the USS Langley (CV-1)
Stunts were one thing, but making naval aviation a credible military force was something else entirely. During World War I, U.S. naval aviation was primarily seaplanes used for gunnery spotting and antisubmarine patrols. However, the British achieved some fascinating results using normal (wheeled) pursuit aircraft (fighters) launched from towed barges, and later from specially built aircraft carriers converted from the hulls of other ships. These aircraft attacked German Zeppelin hangars and other targets.[6] The benefits of taking high-performance aircraft to sea were so obvious to the British that the Royal Navy rapidly set to converting further ships into aircraft carriers. This move did not go unnoticed by other Naval powers after World War I. By 1919, the Japanese were also constructing a purpose-built carrier, the Hosho. Meanwhile the British continued their program of converting hulls into aircraft carriers, and began work on their own from-the-keel-up carrier, the Hermes.
These programs spurred the General Board of the U.S. Navy to start its own aircraft carrier program. In 1919, the board allocated funds to convert a surplus collier, the USS Jupiter, into the Navy's first aircraft carrier, the USS Langley (CV-1)-nicknamed the "Covered Wagon" by her crew. For the next two decades, the little Langley provided the first generation of U.S. carrier aviators with their initial carrier training, and offered the fleet a platform to experiment with the combat use of aircraft carriers. When World War II arrived, the slow little ship was converted into a transport for moving aircraft to forward bases, and was sunk during the fighting around the Java barrier in 1942. However, the Langley remains a beloved memory for the men who learned the naval aviation trade aboard her.
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The primary Zeppelin base for operations against England and the North Sea fleets was at Tondern near Whelimshaven (on the German/Danish border). In July of 1917, seven Sopwith Camels flying from the flying-off deck of HMS Furious attacked the Zeppelin sheds there; three Zeppelins were destroyed in their hangar.