The 1910s

The first arrested landing was not a Navy exercise. It was a civilian named Eugene Ely, flying a Curtiss pusher, who put the machine down on a wooden platform over the stern of USS Pennsylvania on 18 January 1911, at anchor in San Francisco Bay.

The hooks on the gear caught ropes weighted with sandbags. He left Selfridge Field at 10:48, was aboard at 11:01, and was back in the air at 11:58. Ely was not a naval aviator, and this collection is not a recruiting shirt.