Wings for the Fleet. George Van Deurs
which promised an unlimited future. His wife, Mabel, was also an aviation fan.
A rain storm stopped the show; by evening tent hangars were blown down and Ely’s planes were smashed. Since nothing could be done at the field in such weather, Gene and Mabel went shopping in Baltimore. When they returned to the hotel at the end of the wet afternoon, they met Captain Chambers.
During their conversation, Chambers mentioned he had just asked Wilbur Wright for a pilot and a plane to fly from a ship. Wright had flatly refused all help, saying it was too dangerous. He would not even meet Chambers to talk it over. Chambers was taken aback because it was Orville’s suggestion in 1908 that had given him the idea. “I had hoped it would get the Navy interested in planes,” he said.
Gene Ely quickly asked for the job. “I’ve wanted to do that for some time,” he told the surprised captain. Ely would furnish his own plane and he asked for no fee. He had three reasons for his eagerness. He had argued shipboard takeoffs with other fliers and he wanted to show them it could be done, he wanted the publicity, and he wanted to do a patriotic service.
Chambers wanted to get Curtiss’ consent. “Not necessary,” Ely assured him. “I make my own dates under our contract.” That was a happy chance. As a matter of fact, Curtiss did his best to talk Ely out of it. Maybe he agreed with Wilbur Wright and thought it too dangerous. He argued that a failure would hurt plane sales. Mabel Ely believed he feared success even more. It might detract from the naval value of his hydroaeroplane.
Back in Washington, Wainwright turned down Chambers’ proposal to let Ely fly from a cruiser. Chambers’ boss, Captain Fletcher, told reporters the Navy had no money for such things. Meyer returned to Washington; in Baltimore that same day, Chambers asked Curtiss and Ely to back his appeal with technical arguments. Only Ely went to Washington with him to confer with Meyer.
Secretary Meyer was back at his desk after his long inspection trip. Undoubtedly Wainwright had coached him before the conference. Ely never forgot how the Secretary covered his technical ignorance of aircraft and ships with an imperious coldness, and he never forgave him for calling Ely’s plane a mere carnival toy when he turned down the proposed shipboard takeoff.
Then John Barry Ryan, a millionaire publisher and politician, got into the act. Two months earlier he had organized financiers, investors, and scientists interested in aeronautics, with a few pilots, as the U. S. Aeronautical Reserve. He furnished this organization with a Fifth Avenue clubhouse, provided several cash prizes for aeronautical achievements by its members, and made himself commodore of the organization. One of these prizes was $1,000 for the first ship-to-shore flight of a mile or more. Ryan was in Washington to pledge the club’s pilots and their planes to the Army and Navy in case of war, when he heard of the Chambers-Ely plan and reopened the subject with Secretary Meyer.
When Ryan urged Chambers’ proposal, Secretary Meyer responded that the Navy had no funds for such experiments. Ryan then offered to withdraw the $1,000 prize, which the non-member Ely could not win anyway, and use it to pay the costs of the test. Meyer had little interest in planes, but he was an accomplished politician, and he knew Ryan could swing votes in both Baltimore and New York. After consulting the White House, he agreed that the Navy would furnish a ship, but no money. Thereupon he left town.
Winthrop, “acting,” acted in a hurry. He rushed the Birmingham, commanded by Captain W. B. Fletcher, to the Norfolk Navy Yard and told the yard commandant to help equip her with the ramp which Constructor McEntee had designed. The ship was a scout cruiser, with four tall stacks. Her open bridge was but one level above the flush main deck. On her forecastle, sailors sawed and nailed until they finished an 83-foot ramp, which sloped at five degrees from the bridge rail to the main deck at the bow. The forward edge was 37 feet above water.
Meanwhile, Henning and Callen, Ely’s mechanics, worked at Piny Beach, where later the Hampton Roads Naval Base would be built. Using bits shipped from Hammondsport and pieces salvaged in Baltimore, they built a plane. Ely got there on a Sunday in foul weather. He added cigar-shaped aluminum floats under the wings and a splash-board on the landing gear. Late in the day he saw the plane—without its engine—aboard the Navy tug Alice, headed for the Navy Yard. The engine had been shipped; no one know when it might arrive.
Gene Ely was not a worrying man. But the storm at Baltimore had cost him money. Shortly before Belmont, a speck of paint in a gas tank vent had robbed him of fame and a $50,000 prize. In previous months other crack-ups had bruised his body and damaged his pocketbook. These mishaps taught him how tiny, unexpected flaws could foul up a flight. Each time he charged it off to experience and tried again. Since his interview with Mr. Meyer, the cruiser flight had become a must. To his original motives, Ely had added an intense desire to show Secretary Meyer the error of his ways. At the same time he knew that, if he failed in his first try, Meyer would never give him another chance. And so Ely was worried when he joined his wife and Chambers.
5. Ely’s plane on the USS Birmingham, just prior to his flight.
At the old Monticello Hotel in Norfolk, Ely told reporters, “Everything is ready. If the weather is favorable, I expect to make the flight tomorrow without difficulty.” Mabel knew that her husband was whistling in the dark. He had not seen the platform. The plane was untested. He hoped his engine would come on the night boat. But she had complete confidence in Gene, so she enjoyed a seafood dinner and untroubled sleep. Ely ate little, turned in early, and slept poorly.
In the morning, as he worried into his clothes, the clouds looked level with the hotel roof. He skipped breakfast and took the Portsmouth ferry.
Callen and Henning had hoisted the plane aboard the Birmingham, pushed it to the after end of the platform, and secured it with its tail nearly over the ship’s wheel. Only 57 feet of ramp remained in front of the plane. Henning was worried. But Callen reassured him. “Old Gene can fly anywhere,” he said. Then Ely’s chief mechanic, Harrington, arrived with the engine. The three were getting it out of the crate when Ely and Chambers boarded the ship.
At 1130, sooty, black coal smoke rolled from the Birmingham’s stacks as she backed clear and headed down river. Two destroyers cleared the next dock. One followed the cruiser; the other headed for Norfolk to pick up Mabel Ely and the Norfolk reporters.
Going down river, Ely helped his men install the engine. He wanted to double check everything to avoid another failure; besides, the familiar work eased his tensions. He blew out the gas tank vent twice. In spite of squalls, they had the plane ready before the ship rounded the last buoy off Piny Beach. They had almost reached the destroyers Bailey and Stringham, waiting with Winthrop and other Washington officials, when another squall closed in. A quarter mile off Old Point Comfort, Captain Fletcher anchored the Birmingham. Hail blotted out the Chamberlain Hotel.
It was nearly two o’clock when that squall moved off to the north. Ely climbed to his plane’s seat. Henning spun the propeller. Under the bridge the wireless operator tapped out a play-by-play account of the engine testing. When the warm-up came to an end, nobody liked the looks of the weather. Black clouds scudded just above the topmast. The cruiser Washington radioed that it was thick up the bay, and the Weather Bureau reported it would be worse the next day. Chambers nodded toward the torpedo boats. “If this weather holds till dark,” he said, “a lot of those guys will go back to Washington shouting ‘I told you so.’”
By 1430 the sky looked lighter to the south. Captains Fletcher and Chambers decided to get under way. Iowa-born Ely could not swim, feared the water, got seasick on ferry-boats, and knew nothing about ships. He thought the cruiser would get under way as quickly as a San Francisco Bay ferry. He had no idea that the windlass he heard wheezing and clanking under the aeroplane platform might take half an hour to heave 90 fathoms of chain out of the mud. So he paced first the bridge, then the launching platform. Then he climbed into his seat and tried the controls. Sixty fathoms of chain were still out. Henning spun the propeller. Ely opened the throttle and listened approvingly to the steady beat. Under the plane’s tail, the helmsman at the wheel took the full force of the blast.
Ely