The first seagoing ship built in the United States with electric propulsion also was the first fuel-carrying auxiliary built to U.S. Navy plans and later the Navy’s first aircraft carrier. The collier Jupiter (AC-3) was laid down on 10 October 1911 at the Mare Island Navy Yard, Vallejo, California. Launched on 24 August 1912 and commissioned on 7 April 1913, she transported Marines to a position off the Pacific Coast of Mexico during the Vera Cruz crisis in 1914 and later that year became the first ship to steam through the Panama Canal from the Pacific to the Caribbean, en route to join the Atlantic Fleet Auxiliary Division. Although the Jupiter had a relatively quiet career during World War I, making three round-trips to Europe and bringing home troops on the final leg, her only sister ship, the Cyclops (AC-4), was lost with all hands after departing Barbados on 4 March 1918, probably as the result of hull structural failure.
On 11 July 1919, Congress authorized the spending of up to $500,000 to convert the Jupiter to an aircraft carrier, the culmination of a campaign by U.S. Navy officers determined to bring air power into the realm of sea power. The work was carried out at the Norfolk Navy Yard, Portsmouth, Virginia, completing on 20 March 1922. On 21 April 1920, the Jupiter’s name was changed to Langley in honor of aviation pioneer Samuel P. Langley, and hull number CV-1 was assigned in July 1921. As a collier, the ship had displaced 19,360 tons full load; when fully fueled and carrying a maximum cargo of 10,457 tons of coal and 2,923 tons of fuel oil, she drew 27 feet, 8 inches, and could make 13 knots on the 19,379 shaft horsepower delivered to the two propellers by her two General Electric propulsion motors. As a carrier, she displaced only 11,500 tons at a draft of 16 feet, 5 inches; her aircraft and additional crew weighed much less than a cargo of coal. The unobstructed, wood- planked flight deck was mounted atop girder towers some 30 feet above the main deck and had the same width as the ship’s beam—65 feet, 2 13/16 inches. Two 145-foot-long catapults were mounted forward, retractable palisades were installed at the sides of the flight deck and across the deck just abaft the catapults to protect aircraft from cross- winds, and a single aircraft elevator was mounted above its lift machinery, which was contained in a former coal hold. The elevator could transport aircraft only to and from the main deck to the flight deck; traveling hoists on rails beneath the flight deck moved aircraft into and out of the four former coal holds before and abaft the elevator. Two jib cranes were fitted on the main deck to hoist seaplanes into and out of the water.
At first, exhaust from the three boilers could be routed via an athwartships plenum to a pivoting funnel to port or to a fixed horizontal exhaust in the side of a deckhouse to starboard; the latter proved unsatisfactory, however, and a second pivoting funnel was installed to port. For armament, the ship’s four single 4-inch/50-caliber guns were replaced by 5-inch/51-caliber mounts, but no provision for antiaircraft defenses was made.
On 17 October 1922, the Langley launched her first aircraft, a Vought VE7-SF single-seat fighter equipped with floatation gear. The first landing aboard the moving ship was made nine days later. On 18 November, the Langley’s first commanding officer, Commander Kenneth Whiting, made the first catapult take-off from the ship. The “Covered Wagon” then enjoyed a 14-year career testing aviation technology and air warfare tactics. In her final operational years as CV-1, she was employed as a full- fledged operational carrier, despite her slow 14-knot speed and awkward aircrafthandling arrangements. Under the 1922 Washington Treaty, the Navy was free to replace the inadequate Langley with new carrier tonnage after April 1933. Before her replacement, the Yorktown (CV-5), was commissioned, the older ship entered Mare Island Navy Yard on 25 October 1936 to be converted into the Navy’s third dedicated seaplane tender.
The flight deck forward of the elevator bay was removed, and an additional air- craft-handling derrick was stepped to port, just abaft the bridge superstructure; otherwise, the ship—now no longer capable of landing or flying off aircraft from the truncated flight deck—was little altered. Displacing some 11,050 tons, she could maintain 15 knots. After four years transporting and tending seaplanes and personnel of the Aircraft Scouting Force in the Pacific, the Langley was lost while ferrying 32 Army Air Forces P-40 fighters to Java from Australia. Damage from five Japanese bombs on 27 February 1942 killed 16 sailors and eventually left the defenseless ship immobile. Her escorts, the destroyers Whipple (DD-217) and Edsall (DD-214), sank her with two 21-inch torpedoes and nine rounds from their 4-inch guns, some 75 nautical miles south of Tjilijap, Java.