The first officer selected for flight training was Lieutenant T. G. Ellyson, who received orders in December 1910 to undergo instruction with Glenn Curtiss, producer of the first practical hydroplane. A month earlier, another Curtiss pilot, Eugene Ely, was the first to take off from the deck of a ship, proving that aircraft could fly from ships. In November 1910, he took off from a temporary platform built on the bow of the cruiser USS BIRMINGHAM, then in Hampton Roads, Virginia. Ely intended to take off while the ship was underway, but a bank of fog kept the cruiser at anchor; Ely took off anyway, as depicted in the Naval Aviation bronze relief. On a subsequent trial in January 1911, he successfully landed and took off from the battleship USS PENNSYLVANIA anchored in San Francisco Bay in what could be considered the first carrier operation. Six months later, the Navy received its first airplanes, and a year after that, Lieutenant Ellyson demonstrated the feasibility of catapult launching of aircraft from ships. Naval Aviation was on its way into the history books.

The Navy has taken different approaches to integrating aeronautics with the fleet‹from yesteryears' flying boats and pontoon aircraft for non-carrier ships and lighter-than-air craft to today's full spectrum of carrier and land-based aircraft. Naval aviators today can pursue or support almost every possible mission faced by naval forces. Fighter planes, bombers and attack aircraft, patrol and electronic warfare aircraft, antisubmarine aircraft, cargo planes, search and rescue aircraft, helicopters‹all of these comprise the Naval Aviation front line, a versatile and powerful extension of the sea-based aircraft carriers and battle groups that are at the heart of the U. S. Navy's effectiveness as an instrument of national policy.

The Naval Aviation bronze relief is sponsored by the Association of Naval Aviation. Sculptor: Giancarlo Biagi.