SOMEONE HAD TO BE FIRST

The seaplane was essential to our Navy and Marine Corps in the earliest days of military aviation.  With the aircraft carrier years away from reality, planes operating from ships at sea needed to be hoisted overboard to take-off and land on the water.  It was not uncommon for the more popular land-based planes to be fitted with floats or skids for such duty.  But these floats added extra weight and drag and decreased performance.  So much so that a stall in a seaplane always resulted in an unrecoverable spin and the loss of both the pilot and plane.

The Curtiss N-9 (and a knock-off built by Burgess) was the seaplane version of the famous JN-4 “Jenny” in which so many early military pilots had learned to fly.  Fitted with a large midline float, and smaller wingtip floats for balance on the water, the N-9 was a familiar biplane trainer at the newly established Naval Aeronautic Station in Pensacola.  Here 1^st LT Francis T. Evans, USMC, had come to do his part to advance Marine Corps aviation.  He listened to the debates over whether a seaplane could perform the aerobatics necessary to dogfight in combat, and he bravely set out this day to prove it once and for all.

Out over Pensacola Bay at 3500 feet he pushed the nose over into a dive to gain enough speed to go “over the top” in a loop.  The 100 HP Curtiss OXX-6 engine strained as Evans pulled the stick back and the nose pitched up.  Slowly the biplane clawed its way to a vertical attitude.  But before it reached the top, the aircraft stalled, fell over backward, and plunged headlong, spiraling toward the water.  Resisting the temptation to counter-steer with the stick (which has no effect in a spin), Evans instead threw the stick forward and used the rudder to steady the biplane.  In doing so he converted a terminal spin to a dive and pulled out well above the surface–the first time in history a seaplane had recovered from a spin!  He then climbed back up and tried a loop again.  Several times he tried, stalling, spinning, and recovering each time until he had finally gauged the right dive length and speed that took the N-9 up and over the loop in controlled flight.  On his last attempt his boxy N-9 glided through the loop in a manner that would have been the envy of any barnstormer.  And just to make sure his new technique was witnessed, upon his return to the base he repeated the loop over the hangars.  Evans’ techniques were quickly incorporated into flight training at the station. 

By risking his own life, Evans had solved a major shortcoming of seaplanes.  However it was not until thirty years later in 1936 that Evans was recognized for his achievement, receiving then the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  18 FEB 26

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Condon, John P.  U.S. Marine Corps Aviation.  Washington, DC: GPO, p. 5.

“Curtiss N-9H.”  Smithsonian Air and Space Museum website.  www.nasm.si.edu/research/aero/aircraft/curtiss_n9H.htm, 19 March 2006.

Department of the Navy, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (Air Warfare).  United States Naval Aviation 1910-1980.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1981, p. 24.

“History of Marine Corps Aviation, The Early Years.”  Ace Pilots website, www.acepilots.com/usmc/hist1.html, 19 March 2006.

Larkins, William T.  U.S. Navy Aircraft 1921-1941, U.S. Marine Corps Aircraft 1914-1959.  Atglen, PA: Schiffer Pub. Ltd., 1995, p. 2.

Mersky, Peter B.  U.S. Marine Corps Aviation:  1912 to the Present, 3rd ed.  Baltimore, MD: Nautical & Aviation Pub., 1997, pp. 5-6.

Taylor, Michael J.H.  Jane’s American Fighting Aircraft of the 20th Century.  New York, NY: Mallard Press, 1991, p. 115.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  A spin is a precipitous nose-down fall to the ground in which the aircraft spirals around one wingtip.  The natural reaction of many novice pilots is to counter-steer with the ailerons, though in a spin airflow across the wing is disorganized and ailerons are ineffective.  Evans reasoned that the rudder could be used to slow the spin, in a similar manner to that used by land-based pilots.  Though the extra drag created by the floats makes this maneuver less efficient, it is nevertheless effective.

To accommodate the weight of the floats the wingspan of the N-9 had to be increased 10 feet over that of the “Jenny.”  The fuselage had to be lengthened and larger tail surfaces added.  Used primarily as a trainer, the Navy purchased 560 N-9‘s starting in 1917, some of whom were fitted with stronger 150 HP Hispano-Suiza engines (the N-9H) for use as bombers during WWI.  The N-9 remained in service with the Navy until 1926.  Only one example of an N-9 survives today, restored by the Naval Air Engineering Laboratory in 1966 and transferred to the Smithsonian Institution.

The post Someone Had to Be First appeared first on Today in Naval History.

                                           THE FIRING OF JUDAH

Had other theaters of the early Civil War not been in the limelight, the tension at Pensacola might have been keener.  The Confederates held the Pensacola Navy Yard and Forts Barrancas and McRee guarding the harbor, but a Union garrison had secured Fort Pickens on the Santa Rosa barrier island at the outbreak of fighting.  Pickens was the strongest position in the Pensacola area.  Her guns could reach all of the other installations, and from atop Pickens’ walls Union soldiers and sailors regularly monitored the goings-on across the bay.  In fact, when a large floating drydock was moved into the bay, Pickens’ guns bombarded and sank it, lest it be used as an artillery platform.

In September 1861. the Federals observed more activity at the Navy Yard.  The schooner William H. Judah had been moved to the yard and was apparently being fitted out and armed for privateering.  CAPT William Mervine, responsible for the Union blockade of that portion of the Florida coast, decided on a daring raid that would prevent Judah from ever getting underway.  He landed 100 sailors and Marines from USS COLORADO at Fort Pickens, who on this moonless night shoved off to cross the bay.  LT John H. Russell led the four longboats, detaching one to the dock to quiet the guard and spike a 10-inch Columbiad mounted there.  The other three boats slid up to Judah completely unnoticed.  The men swarmed across and quickly overpowered the only two rebels aboard the schooner.  Meanwhile, the men of the single boat ably dispatched the guard on the dock and disabled the gun with an iron spike driven down the firing hole.  In a short 15 minutes Judah was ablaze and the attackers were pulling away.  But the activity roused other Confederates who reached the dock in time to open fire on the departing Federals.  Three Union sailors slumped over in their boats, 13 were wounded.  Judah drifted into the bay where she burned and sank.

Local Confederate commander MGEN Braxton Bragg was furious over the affair and on 8 October launched a retaliatory strike on the Federals.  At 2200 that night 1000 Confederate volunteers boarded three steamers and several barges and crossed the bay to Santa Rosa Island.  They landed east of Fort Pickens and sneaked upon the 6^th Regiment of New York Zouaves, bivouacked outside the walls at Camp Brown.  In a classic example of “the boy who cried wolf,” 6^th Regiment pickets had been in the habit of shooting game while on duty, so the fire at the advancing Johnny Rebs did not raise an alarm with the Yankees.  The Zouaves were overrun, and only after troops inside Fort Pickens rallied to their aid did the Federals turn back the attack.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  20 SEP 25

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 2 “C-F”. Washington, DC: GPO, 1977, p. 144.

Ogden, David P.  The Fort Barrancas Story.  Pensacola, FL: Eastern National, 1998, p. 19.

Parks, Virginia, Alan Rick and Norman Simons.  Pensacola in the Civil War.  Pensacola, FL: Pensacola Historical Society,  1978, pp. 16-18.

Pearce, George F.  Pensacola During the Civil War:  A Thorn in the Side of the Confederacy.  Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2000, pp. 111-13.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Western Florida remained a quiet theater throughout the Civil War, in fact the above action anywhere else would likely have been labeled only a skirmish.  In the battle of Santa Rosa Island, Bragg suffered 18 killed, 39 wounded and 30 captured.  Fourteen Zouaves lost their lives, 29 were wounded and 24 were taken prisoner.  The engagement was characterized by ineptitude on both sides.  Part of the reason the Confederates were so easily reversed was that discipline broke down when rebels began looting the tents they had overrun in Camp Brown.

CAPT Mervine is best remembered for his earlier actions in California during the Mexican War.  By 1861 he had been on active duty for 52 years, indeed ill health forced his retirement on 16 July the following year.  He was subsequently promoted to RADM on the retired list.  His name has graced two Navy destroyers, DD-322 and DD-489.  John Henry Russell also reached the rank of RADM before retiring from active duty 27 August 1886.  For this and other actions he is remembered with the pre-WWII Sims-class destroyer RUSSELL (DD-414).  Braxton Bragg is of course the namesake of the US Army’s Fort Bragg in North Carolina (“Bragg” restored in 2025 from “Fort Liberty”).

Spiking was a means of permanently disabling a muzzle-loading cannon.  An iron spike was driven into the tiny touch hole in the breech of the gun.  This blocked the hole from being used to ignite the powder charge.  The action often cracked or weakened the breech, and at the very least left a large hole that vented the firing pressure.  Once spiked, the only way to “repair” the gun was to melt it down for re-casting.

The post The Firing of Judah appeared first on Today in Naval History.