Photo #: NH 70595
USS Pennsylvania (Armored Cruiser # 4)
At the Mare Island Navy Yard, California, in January 1911, after
she had been fitted with a temporary wooden deck in preparation
for Eugene Ely's airplane landing attempt. Ely landed his Curtiss
pusher biplane on board the ship on 18 January, the first airplane
landing on a warship.
The landing deck, 120 feet long and 30 feet wide, was inclined
slightly to help slow the plane as it landed, and had a thirty-degree
ramp at its after end.
The original glass plate negative for this image was cracked,
producing the undulating horizontal line across the middle.
Courtesy of the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, 1970.
U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph.
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