Early Carrier Landing

Home Page	First Carrier Landing 1922, USS Langley (CV-1)	Video Index

In October-November 1922, the USS Langley (CV-1, later AV-3) launched, recovered and catapulted her first aircraft during initial operations in the Atlantic and Caribbean areas. The airplane in the video is an Aeromarine 39B that was used extensively as a training aircraft during WW I. It also contributed to the advancement of Naval Aviation as a result of the landing experiments, it was involved in, on the USS Langley (CV-1) in 1922. While this landing may not be the first one, it is the movie clip shown most often of numerous landings. As the first Navy carrier, Langley was the scene of numerous momentous events. On 17 October 1922 Lt. Virgil C. Griffin piloted the first plane, a VE7-SF, launched from her decks. 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 9 days later, Lt. Comdr. G. DeC. Chevalier made the first landing in an Aeromarine 39B. On 18 November Commander Whiting, at the controls of a PT, was the first aviator to be catapulted from a carrier's deck.