Coming in for a landing

As if piloting the earliest flying machines wasn't tricky enough by itself, someone nine decades ago got the bright idea to try to use a ship as an airfield. Gone would be the relatively luxury of a grassy swath of land or a lengthy dirt strip that stayed where you expected it to stay. In its place would be a deck of moderate proportions (and perhaps crowded to boot) with a sharp dropoff on all sides and a marked tendency to rise, fall, and sway with the ocean's waves.

But who could resist the potential for air supremacy at sea? On March 20, 1922, the U.S. Navy took a big step in that direction when it commissioned the USS Langley as its very first aircraft carrier, with the designation CV-1. This photo is from October of that year, when flight operations began to and from the Langley. (Judging by the silhouette of the aircraft, it could be a Vought VE7-SF, the first plane to take off from the Langley.)