Page Four CLOUDBUSTER Saturday, September 4, 1943 ANNIVERSARY (Continued from page two) tined to remain Chief BuAer for nearly 12 years, until his death in the crash of the dirigible, USS Akron, April 4, 1933. Because of his many years’ association with development of naval aircraft, bdth heavier-than-air and lighter- than-air, Admiral Moffett was fit tingly called the “Father of Naval Aviation.” Establishment of BuAer in ef fect was part of the reorganiza tion period which followed the close of the World War, It vir tually placed all aviation activities of the Navy under the jurisdiction of a single Bureau, to which were assigned officers expert in many fields of aeronautics. The Bureau came into being a decade after the potential value of aviation to the Navy had been dramatically demonstrated by Eu gene Ely, a pilot for Glenn H. Cur tiss, during the winter of 1910-11 with flights from a platform on the deck of the USS Birmingham at Hampton Hoads, Va., and flights to and from the USS Pennsylvania^ in San Francisco harbor. During the last war training facilities were expanded to com prise 21 schools, and by Nov. 11, J918, a total of 2,835 officers and 30,683 enlisted men were attached to naval aviation. Submarine pa trol, convoy and reconnaisance operations largely marked the work of naval aviation in the last war. Experience gained by naval avi ation during the World War was followed up by amazing develop ments through the 1920’s under the Bureau’s guidance. The Collier Jupiter was decked over from stem to stern with a special superstructure and recom missioned as the USS Langley— our first aircraft carrier, from which the first take-offs were made Oct. 26, 1922, the eve of the first Navy Day in the year following establishment of BuAer. Under the Bureau’s direction, modern torpedo plane and dive bomber designs and techniques were evolved, which today are the envy of our allies and a terror to our enemies. During the last 1920’s plans were made to convert two heavy cruisers scheduled for scrapping under the Washington Arms Lim itation Treaty into aircraft car riers—and they became the USS Saratoga and USS Lexington. They were commissioned in 19^27. One of these, the Lexington, was DC, ‘‘One is of the light is of tl Reprinted a victim of the Coral Sea battle. In the early thirties, a new series of carriers, designed as such from scratch, was started, includ ing the USS Ranger, USS E'nter- prise, USS Yorktown, USS Wasp and USS Hornet. It was also largely due to the insistence of BuAer that radial air-cooled engines became stand ard for the Navy. Anothernotable contribution of BuAer to aero nautics through these years was the substitution of metal for wood and fabric construction in air craft, and extensive studies to pre vent or minimize salt water cor rosion. Today’s overocean air transport triumphs also stem from BuAer’s development of large flying patrol boats, whose mass flights from California to Hawaii and our more remote possessions in the Pacific were dramatic sagas of the late twenties and early and middle thirties. As the war in Europe ushered in a new decade, dubbed the “flying forties” by the aviation industry, so-called “normal” expansion pro grams projected by the Navy were scrapped in favor of plane produc tion and pilot training on a scale hitherto undreamed of. Estimates jumped into the thousands and lit cruiser type and the other heavy class’*