America's First Aircraft Carrier: USS Langley and the Dawn of U.S. Naval Aviation

By David F Winkler

America’s First Aircraft Carrier tells the remarkable story of the USS Langley. The narrative provides an in-depth discussion of the ship’s origins as the collier USS Jupiter, which was built with a “first of” propulsion system that has been adapted for use in present-day Ford-class carriers. Author David F. Winkler considers the post–World War I debate for procuring carriers, the decision to convert Jupiter, and the identification of constructor Clayton Simmers as the father of the American aircraft carrier. The evolution of the Langley as an experimental ship was tied to the introduction of new doctrine for the United States. Promoting an independent naval air arm against Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell’s vision of an independent air force, the U.S. Navy saw Langley as an operational aircraft carrier that would change the way the Navy fought wars at sea. While the story of Langley is that of the origins of naval air combat, it is also a record of the vessel’s service in World War II until the ship’s final posting to the Asiatic Fleet, where she met her demise on February 27, 1942, off the southern coast of Java.      
  
Many of the U.S. Navy’s pioneering naval aviators are closely associated with this ship, including Kenneth Whiting, John H. Towers, Godfrey DeCourcelles Chevalier, Virgil C. Griffith, Mel Pride, Patrick N. L. Bellinger, Joseph M. Reeves, Gerald Bogan, Aubrey Fitch, Felix Stump, Ernest J. King, Warren G. Child, Dan Gallery, and Frank D. Wagner. A number of these individuals would go on to play critical roles during World War II. Langley’s story is their story.   
 
Aircraft carriers remain the centerpiece of American sea power projection. America’s First Aircraft Carrier provides the context on how CV 1, the “Covered Wagon,” and carrier development and utilization came to be.  

• Language: English
• Publisher: Naval Institute Press
• Release date: Feb 15, 2024
• ISBN: 9781682475102

Book preview

Cover: America’s First Aircraft Carrier edited by David F. Winkler

AMERICA’S FIRST

AIRCRAFT

CARRIER

USS LANGLEY AND THE DAWN OF

U.S. NAVAL AVIATION

DAVID F. WINKLER

2020–2021 Charles A. Lindbergh Chair of Aerospace History

National Air and Space Museum

Smithsonian Institution

Naval Institute Press

Annapolis, Maryland

Naval Institute Press

291 Wood Road

Annapolis, MD 21402

© 2024 by the U.S. Naval Institute

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Winkler, David F. (David Frank), 1958– author.

Title: America’s first aircraft carrier: USS Langley and the dawn of U.S. naval aviation / David F. Winkler, 2020–2021 Charles A. Lindbergh Chair of Aerospace History, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institute.

Other titles: USS Langley and the dawn of U.S. naval aviation bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2023035544 (print) | LCCN 2023035545 (ebook) | ISBN 9781682475010 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781682475102 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Langley (Aircraft carrier) | Aircraft carrier—United State—History—20th century. | World War, 1939-1945—Pacific Ocean. | World War, 1939–1945—Naval operations, American.

Classification: LCC V874.3 .W56 2024 (print) | LCC V874.3 (ebook) | DDC 359.948350973—dc23/ eng/20230829

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023035544

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023035545

♾ Print editions meet the requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

Printed in the United States of America.

32 31 30 29 28 27 26 25 249 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First printing

Contents

List of Photographs

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1.USS Jupiter: A Collier

2.Debating an Experimental Carrier

3.Conversion

4.Commissioning

5.Public Relations

6.Joining the Battle Fleet

7.Bull Reeves

8.The Full-Fledged Combatant

9.Lex and Sara Arrive

10.To the Scouting Fleet

11.Back in the Pacific

12.Transitioning to a New Mission

13.With the Asiatic Fleet

14.World War II and Escape

15.The Loss of Langley

16.The Aftermath

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Photographs

Acknowledgments

A decade ago Norman Polmar observed over lunch at the now closed Athena Pallas restaurant in Arlington, Virginia, that no book had ever been written about the U.S. Navy’s first aircraft carrier and proposed to coauthor a book on the subject. Interested in his kind offer, I took extended lunch breaks at the Naval Historical Foundation (NHF), with the support of executive director Capt. Todd Creekman, to conduct research at the Navy Department Library with the help of the late Glenn Helm to copy officer registers, collect biographical materials, and review secondary source materials. Former NHF president Vice Adm. Bob Dunn also assisted, providing me some materials he held on Langley including an abridged 1996 edition of a scrapbook compiled by former signalman Paul St. Pierre.

Unfortunately, I had to set aside the potential partnership with Norman when the Friends of the World War II Memorial approached me about writing a book to be published by the Naval Institute Press that would eventually be published late in 2020 under the title Tribute to a Generation: Haydn Williams and the Building of the World War II Memorial. In the interim, I was selected to be the Class of 1957 Chair of Naval Heritage at the U.S. Naval Academy for the 2019–20 academic year. Again, I thank Vice Admiral Dunn, who then urged me to approach the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. He had been a Ramsey Fellow and had used his time to write a study on the transformation of naval aviation safety and suggested that the Langley topic would be worthy for a one-year Charles Lindbergh Chair of Aerospace History fellowship.

While I awaited my tenure at the Smithsonian, I had an opportunity to conduct some preliminary research as the Class of 1957 Chair of Naval Heritage at the Naval Academy. I thank Capt. Bill Peerenboom and the Class of 1957 for providing me the opportunity to teach some of our future admirals and for the support I received from then department chair Rick Ruth and fellow faculty within the History Department.

At the Smithsonian I was paired with Dr. Lawrence Burke, who shared advance chapters of his recently published U.S. Naval Institute book on early military aviation and his files on the 1919 General Board hearings on naval aviation. Within the Aero department at Air and Space, successive department heads Jeremy Kinney and Lee Russ were always supportive, as was the museum’s writers support group, an informal band of brothers and sisters that encouraged each other on, which was led by Margaret Weitekamp and usually included David DeVorkin and Michael Haskins. Bill Trimble, a respected naval aviation historian, also provided feedback on some sample chapters.

At the Naval History and Heritage Command, Laura Waayers and Timothy Duskin made Bureau of Aeronautics newsletters and other Langley records available.

Thank you to Richard Ditlevson, who shared digital files of Warren G. Child’s diary from the Library of Congress. Down in Pensacola at the National Museum of Naval Aviation I thank Mark Levitt and his staff for access to their Langley files. Volunteer Robert Thomas scanned numerous newspaper articles about Langley’s visits to Pensacola; Ross Patterson at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Museum in Portsmouth, Virginia, helped to track down some newspaper articles on Langley’s conversion from a long-defunct paper.

As I compiled material on America’s first aircraft carrier, I was able to publish several outtakes and overviews from the growing narrative. Rick Burgess, an editor with the Navy League’s Sea Power magazine, published several snippets of my research in its Historical Perspective column. Eric Mills and Richard Latture at the U.S. Naval Institute’s Naval History journal accepted and worked with me on article about Chief Electrician’s Mate Joseph Weller and the initiation of flight operations on Langley. Just before that article went to press Weller descendant Jonathan Wigginton came forth with a photo of his great-granduncle. Burchie Green and Deirdre O’Regan published my overview of the Langley narrative in Sea History. All of these editors provided feedback that assisted in the writing of this narrative.

Also helpful was feedback on papers I presented at history conferences hosted by the Naval Academy History Department (McMullen Naval History Symposium), the Western Naval History Association, the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, the North American Society for Oceanic History, and the Naval Order of the United States. Thanks to the organizers of these forums for allowing me to share my work.

Appreciation is due to former Naval Institute Press director Richard Russell (2007–2020); his son Jack; acquisitions editor Glenn Griffith; the legendary Janis Jorgensen, who assisted with photo research; and Pelham Boyer … the extraordinary word crafter that Naval Institute Press brought on to get this manuscript up to the flying deck and ready for launch.

Finally, big hugs go to my wife Mary and my daughters Xepher and Carolyn for keeping the home front secure during all the research trips and allowing me the time to complete the final manuscript.

David F. Winkler

Alexandria, Virginia

January 2023

INTRODUCTION

With the arrival of the aircraft carriers USS Lexington and USS Saratoga at the West Coast early in 1928, the Navy’s first flattop, USS Langley, ended her reign as the fleet’s showcase ship for naval aviation. However, during that year’s autumn months she once again became America’s lone operational carrier, as Lexington headed to Hunters Point in San Francisco and Saratoga steamed farther north to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, each for an initial upkeep period. With those two carriers off line, the remaining flight deck of the Battle Fleet took quite the beating during October as Langley, under the command of Capt. Arthur Cook, continually steamed past San Diego’s Point Loma to conduct carrier qualifications for new pilots arriving from Pensacola. Langley’s participation in the Battle Fleet’s monthly Tactical Exercise (TacEx) also kept the flight deck crews busy. For October’s TacEx, the Battle Fleet, commanded by Adm. William V. Pratt, steamed down from San Pedro. For the first phase, Cook launched scout planes to search for enemy vessels and protect observation planes catapulted off the Battle Fleet’s battleships and cruisers. For the next phase, Langley’s fighters attempted to rush to the Battle Fleet’s defense to fend off an air assault. For that air assault, the Commander Aircraft Squadrons Battle Fleet, Rear Adm. Joseph Mason Reeves, employed the five squadrons of bombers and torpedo planes from Lexington and Saratoga left behind at Naval Air Station San Diego, on North Island.

For Reeves, now completing his third year in charge of the West Coast naval air armada, it must have been one of his most satisfying experiences to date. Smoke-laying aircraft initiated the synchronized attack by flying along a track parallel to Pratt’s battle line, spewing thick smoke behind them. Just as the various ships’ antiaircraft guns began to draw beads on the smoke layers, down descended Reeves’ dive-bombers. Then, seconds after the defenders adjusted their guns upward to meet the oncoming swarm, the VT-1B torpedo planes burst through the smoke screen to make own their drops, in synchronization with high-altitude bombers also making their releases. Langley’s fighters simply were overwhelmed. Reeves must have reveled in the ironic satisfaction of having Langley scored as a victim of a successful attack.¹

♦♦♦

In his foreword to the 1988 edition of U.S.S. Langley CV-1 AV-3: America’s First Aircraft Carrier, Paul A. St. Pierre, who served on board Langley as a teenaged signalman a decade after this mock attack, wrote, "It is not my intention to re-rewrite the history of the U.S.S. Langley CV-1 AV-3. Many good historians have already done that." This is a curious statement, given that of the thousands of books on the shelves of the Navy Department Library, his 484-page scrapbook of articles, stories, maps, photographs, poems, and other Langley material stands alone in its attempt to capture the history of America’s inaugural aircraft carrier.² That observation made, many books on the history of naval carrier aviation more generally have been written. Langley’s fledgling role as an experiment platform, one that evolved into an operational asset of the fleet, is usually placed within a framework in which it was the big guns of the ships of the line that would prevail in the decisive battle. Of course, on the morning of December 7, 1941, with many of those ships of the line settling into the mud bottom of Pearl Harbor, the Navy had no choice but to turn to aircraft carriers as its primary conveyors of offensive power. Six months later, during the battle of Midway, neither of the two engaged American task forces—Task Force 16 or Task Force 17—had battleships in its order of battle.

That American fleet commanders were capable of shifting to this new paradigm so readily reflects an appreciation of and comfort level with naval aviation. That familiarity existed by 1941 thanks to the fact that in the interwar period the Navy had conducted twenty-two fleet problems, a number of joint Army-Navy grand exercises, and the monthly tactical exercises noted above. In these exercises naval aviation demonstrated its potential over the waters of the eastern Pacific, western Atlantic, and Caribbean, and reports made their way to the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, where they influenced the conduct of mock battles on the war-gaming floor.

For the majority of these exercises, beginning with a cameo appearance during Fleet Problem I in February 1923, Langley was present, initially serving as the Navy’s sole operational carrier; then operating in concert with Lexington, Saratoga, and then Ranger; and finally servicing long-range patrol bombers as an seaplane tender.

Langley’s role in these fleet problems and exercises has been noted in a recent spate of studies on the fleet’s preparation for World War II. Langley also has a prominent place in biographical narratives about pioneers in naval aviation, such as William A. Moffett, Joseph M. Reeves, John H. Towers, Patrick N. L. Bellinger, and Marc A. Mitscher.

Yet no biographical work has been written about the ship itself. After discovering this void in the naval historiography, I conducted preliminary research and narrative outlining before spending a year at the U.S. Naval Academy as the visiting Class of 1957 Distinguished Chair of Naval Heritage. In the meantime, a former president of the Naval Historical Foundation urged me to apply for the prestigious Charles Lindbergh Chair of Aerospace History at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. The one-year, $100,000 fellowship enabled me to pursue research and write about Langley full-time, bringing this narrative to near completion.

America’s First Aircraft Carrier covers the story of the first American aircraft carrier, a vessel commissioned as an experimental platform to launch and recover land planes. The narrative stretches back in time to cover the collier Jupiter—the ship that would be selected for conversion to the aircraft carrier Langley. The inclusion of Jupiter into the narrative is significant for several reasons. Jupiter and near sister ships Cyclops and Neptune had been built in response to national embarrassment at having to rely on British merchantmen to haul coal to support the Great White Fleet’s venture around the globe in 1907–1908. An interesting aspect of this trio of colliers was that each received a different kind of engineering plant. In essence, the colliers served as test beds for the propulsion plants that would power the fleet’s next generation of battleships being laid down in the years leading up to World War I. Jupiter would be the first naval ship to feature a General Electric turboelectric transmission to drive two shafts. This propulsion plant would be used in some of the Navy’s battleships, such as California, but would lose favor to the steam turbine plant that the British had introduced with the commissioning of Dreadnought. Of note, the Navy has again reintroduced this technology in the name ship of its newest class of aircraft carriers—USS Gerald R. Ford.

In Jupiter’s narrative are some of the personalities that will loom large in later Langley chapters, starting with Jupiter’s first commanding officer—Joseph Mason Reeves. Jupiter, in fact, can claim she too served as an aircraft carrier. Following America’s entry into World War I, Jupiter, along with Neptune, ferried Kenneth Whiting’s squadron of seaplanes to France—the first introduction of American combat forces into the war theater. Whiting would go on to serve as Langley’s first executive officer and initiate many of the flight deck practices that endure till the present day.

Though it was the U.S. Navy that first launched and landed aircraft on board ships, World War I drove the British to launch combat aircraft from ships to counter German dirigibles that were bombing London. By the end of the war the Royal Navy had converted several ships to be capable of both launching and landing aircraft. In contrast, the U.S. Navy focused on deploying seaplanes, as part of the effort to counter the German U-boat threat.

The British development of full-fledged aircraft carriers did not go unnoticed at Main Navy in Washington. When the General Board of the Navy convened in the spring of 1919, the future of naval aviation appeared to be heading down three separate glide paths: continued seaplane development, the development and employment of dirigibles, and the introduction of aircraft carriers to the fleet. With postwar funding limited, the conversion of Jupiter to Langley as an experimental carrier was adopted as a compromise solution. While the tragic losses of airships Shenandoah, Macon, and Akron marked a dead end to one glide path, the seaplane trajectory would continue through World War II. From 1937 until 1942 Langley would play a significant role in that narrative, serving as the Philippine-based mother ship to PBY Catalinas that kept tabs on Imperial Japanese Navy activity in the Far East. Fortunate circumstances enabled Langley to escape from Manila unscathed in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Sadly, the aircraft tender’s luck ran out off the southern coast of Java in late February 1942, during what was in retrospect an ill-advised mission to transport replacement pursuit aircraft to defend the Netherlands East Indies from the Japanese onslaught.

Langley’s service as first an experimental and then an operational aircraft carrier during the 1920s and early 1930s is truly an untold story. Perhaps one reason for this oversight has been a historiographical tendency to skip over the interwar Navy. Langley itself may have contributed to the problem. Hardly a pretty ship, Langley was suggestive of a giant Gilbert Erector Set contraption atop the former collier hull. It was little wonder that the ship earned the nickname Covered Wagon. Yet while Langley may have scored low in appearance, it made up for it in practicality. The ship’s evolution to meet increasing demands is one of the story lines that will be traced herein. Shortly after his arrival to the West Coast in 1925 to command Aircraft Squadrons Battle Fleet, Commodore Reeves concluded his 1001 Questions Speech to a group of gathered naval aviators by asking: I do not know the answer to these questions and dozens like them any more than you do, but until we can answer them, we will be of little use to the fleet. That means we must become a school before we can become an air force. Langley would be that school.³

Whereas the Gun Club admirals were content to have Langley’s aircraft scout for an enemy battle fleet and fix its position, report the fall of shot, and defend the battle line against air attack, Reeves foresaw naval aviation as a potent offensive weapon in itself. As illustrated by the opening paragraphs of this narrative, Reeves envisioned enemy surface ships being overwhelmed by swarms of attacking aircraft. Eventually American naval dive-bombers and torpedo planes would employ the tactics used against Pratt’s battleships to sink Musashi and Yamato—the two largest battleships ever to be placed in commission.

To swarm an enemy fleet required an aircraft carrier to launch its air group quickly, so that its aircraft could form up and fly off toward the reported position of the foe before the carrier itself was detected and attacked. Bringing up airplanes from the hangar deck and flying them off one at a time as the British were doing simply didn’t cut it. To mass aircraft in the sky meant massing them on deck. When Langley was placed in commission, it was envisioned that she would operate between twelve and eighteen aircraft. Reeves managed to cram forty-two planes on her.

Against the background of the recent centennial of Langley’s commissioning and the subsequent first launch and landing of aeroplanes on the flying deck of an American aircraft carrier, this narrative goes beyond celebrating a ship to tell the story of the avant-garde individuals who pioneered carrier aviation, overcoming both internal and external challenges while experimenting with untried technologies. Long before Top Gun (1986) captured the imagination of viewers, the carrier Langley starred in the Hollywood drama The Flying Fleet (1929). Both films portray cultural elements that have stood the test of time. The men and women who today fly F-18 Hornets continue to fill proudly the brown shoes first worn by naval aviators almost a century ago. In their efforts to establish the aircraft carrier as the preeminent ship in the American naval order of battle, those associated with carrier aviation deservedly conducted themselves with more than a little swagger.

1

USS JUPITER

A Collier

On December 16, 1907, the U.S. Navy dispatched sixteen battleships from Hampton Roads, Virginia. For fourteen of these ships, it was the beginning of a 434-day, 42,227-mile voyage around the world. Steaming in a column into the Atlantic Ocean, each ship rendered honors to President Theodore Roosevelt, who observed the pageantry of the departure from the weather deck of the presidential yacht Mayflower. With their white-painted hulls and gilded bows, the battleship flotilla would earn its place in history as The Great White Fleet.

With the exception of some battlewagons of Spanish-American War vintage and three that would be commissioned during the Great White Fleet’s deployment, President Roosevelt had sent every battleship in the U.S. Navy on the global cruise. Why did Roosevelt do it? According to historian Lori Bogle, the cruise would demonstrate to the Japanese that the United States could maneuver its fleet in the Pacific Ocean and that the fleet would arrive battle ready. In his autobiography, Roosevelt claimed his primary motivation was to stimulate additional interest in the Navy—which certainly was true, given that he was lobbying Congress to authorize funds for more battleships. During their fourteen-month voyage, the battleships and the escorting ships of this circle-the-globe armada made port visits to South America, New Zealand, Australia, Asia, Africa, and Europe, returning to Hampton Roads on February 22, 1909.¹

The voyage was not without concerns. If the Great White Fleet had an Achilles heel it was logistics. To keep the fireboxes stoked required constant deliveries of coal. To supply the needed black rock for overseas steaming, Roosevelt authorized the Navy to charter thirty-eight colliers. Only eight of the colliers were U.S.-flagged; the remaining thirty were registered overseas, the majority of them flying the Red Ensign of the British merchant fleet.²

The situation had not gone unnoticed in Congress. Speaker of the House of Representatives Joseph Cannon recalled, When we read of the splendid American fleet sailing around the world accompanied by colliers flying foreign flags, we were humiliated. I was humiliated.³

As the fleet made its way around South America, several naval officers made statements before inquiring congressional committees and subcommittees. Cdr. Cleland Davis, assigned to the Bureau of Equipment, in charge of coaling and transportation of coal, noted that only four of the eighteen existing U.S. Navy colliers were capable of supporting extended operations. The others were not able to keep up with the warships they needed to fuel, nor did they have enough stowage capacity. The collier fleet, ranging from ten to twenty-nine years in age, predated the battleship building programs of the McKinley and Roosevelt administrations and could not meet the coal-eating demands of the bunkers in those new battlewagons.⁴

Congress had begun to address the problem back in April 1904, with the authorization of the first two fleet colliers. Named Vestal (later AC 1) and Prometheus (later AC 2), they were built in Navy yards in Brooklyn, New York, and Mare Island, California. For California, this represented a major breakthrough. Established as the Navy’s first base on the West Coast in 1854, the Mare Island Navy Yard had served as mainly a repair and upkeep facility. Despite calls for major shipbuilding at that yard dating back to 1857, at the turn of the century the yard had produced mostly tugboats and yard craft. The Navy had contracted with private shipyards on the West Coast to build warships, such as the cruiser Olympia. The reluctance to place orders at the federal yard centered on the issue of costs. West Coast labor wages were upward of 25 percent higher than in East Coast yards, and transporting to California steel, machinery, and other items manufactured on the East Coast also raised price tags. Advocates for West Coast shipbuilding countered that California’s year-round good weather limited delays and reduced production costs.

On October 18, 1907, Mare Island’s workers laid down Fleet Collier No. 2. The ship’s launching just over a year later, on December 5, 1908, marked a milestone in the region’s history. Thousands watched the 466-foot hull slide down the ways and hit the water. Unfortunately, after a celebratory luncheon hosted at the Navy yard for three thousand visitors, some one thousand would fall ill to food poisoning caused by diseased meat. On a more positive note, when the final costs were added up, Mare Island had proved its case. Mare Island brought in the new Prometheus for $110,000 less than the $1,623,664 the Navy spent on Vestal in Brooklyn.⁵

However, Vestal and Prometheus would have relatively short lives as colliers with the Naval Auxiliary Service. Within a few years the Navy converted both ships to repair ships, as which both would serve the nation well during two world wars. During the attack on Pearl Harbor, Vestal, berthed alongside Arizona, would survive the detonation of the forward magazine of the doomed battleship, get under way, and support recovery operations in the aftermath of the attack.⁶

That the Navy’s first two fleet colliers would undergo conversion so quickly after being placed into service was a result of recognition of a design flaw. With the ship’s pilothouse amidships in a then-standard merchantman configuration, it was difficult to operate coaling rigs both forward and aft. Future replenishment ships would have the pilothouse situated closer to the bow.

As part of the congressional fiscal 1909 appropriation for the Navy passed on May 13, 1908, Congress authorized the Navy to construct two fleet colliers of fourteen knots trial speed, when carrying not less than twelve thousand five hundred tons of cargo and bunker coal, cost not to exceed $1.8 million each. Congress further directed the Navy to build one of the ships at a government yard on the West Coast. The other ship would be bid on by private shipyards on the East Coast.

In the pecking order of naval vessel prestige, replenishment ships rank far below battleships, cruisers, and other combatants. However, few pairs of American warships authorized by Congress achieved as much historical renown as this one. As provided by Special Order 92, signed out on September 12, 1908, by Secretary of the Navy Victor H. Metcalf, the two ships were to become Jupiter (Fleet Collier No. 3) and Cyclops (Fleet Collier No. 4).⁷

Although Cyclops followed Jupiter in numerical sequence, the former was the lead ship. The Navy issued a request for proposals on October 9, 1908, to private shipyards for a steam collier of about 12,500 tons cargo and bunker capacity. Competing shipyards received more detailed specifications six days later; two months after that, on December 15, 1908, the Navy opened bids submitted from four companies. William Cramp & Sons Ship and Engine Building Company of Philadelphia stunned the Navy with an offer of $775.000, which was less than half of what Congress had appropriated to build the ship. An article in The Nautical Gazette speculated that Cramp & Sons submitted the low bid so as to keep its skilled workforce employed during a period of construction stagnation. Given the unexpectedly low bid, Truman H. Newberry, now Secretary of the Navy, approached the House Naval Affairs Committee to change the language of the appropriation to allow Jupiter to be built in a private East Coast yard. He did not succeed in this, but he would eventually be given the discretion to spend the unspent appropriation for a third collier, Neptune, to be built by the Maryland Steel Company facility at Sparrows Point, near Baltimore.⁸

Work began on Cyclops during the summer of 1909, and on May 7, 1910, the huge ship went down the building ways into the Delaware River. Thus Cyclops—and Neptune, for that matter—were completed before any work was started on Jupiter. The third ship would be laid down on October 18, 1911. President William Howard Taft attended the ceremony. For Mare Island’s Naval Constructor Lt. Cdr. Holden A. Evans, the Jupiter project, with its high-level interest, offered an opportunity to further his convictions and career ambitions, which often placed him at odds with his union workforce and out of line with his superiors. If denied in some matter by a flag officer, Evans would seek support from the Secretary of the Navy. If the secretary demurred, he simply would go to the president.⁹

With Jupiter the cost-cutting bar had been set much higher by the two East Cost shipyards, building Cyclops and Neptune for under $900,000 each. To meet the challenge Evans, who had the support of the Navy yard commandant, Capt. Thomas S. Phelps Jr., proposed a sweeping reorganization of the yard along industrial rather than traditional military lines.

Victory for Evans would be temporary. Jupiter would become, while still only a set of blueprints, a focal point of struggle between the line officer and naval constructor communities regarding the management and administration of the Navy yard infrastructure. When William Howard Taft became president in March 1909, in came a new Secretary of the Navy, George von L. Meyer. Following visits to Navy yards in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Norfolk and meeting with their commandants, all line officers, Meyer came to sympathize with the line community, which saw its prerogatives undermined.¹⁰

After briefing President Taft on June 3, 1909, Meyer implemented a plan to reorganize the yards around separate hull and machinery divisions. His Meyer Plan eliminated the industrial-style management scheme. As for Mare Island, the Navy detailed Rear Adm. Hugo Osterhaus to relieve Captain Phelps to implement the new directives. Eventually, on August 1, 1910, Holden Evans, who had earned the nickname the Pacemaker, would be sent north to Seattle to replace Cdr. Thomas F. Ruhm as the Navy’s representative superintendent to oversee contract construction in Seattle. Commander Ruhm came south to replace Evans at Mare Island.¹¹

Jupiter would be launched on August 24, 1912, with Commander Ruhm’s wife as sponsor. Larger than Prometheus, Jupiter was built in four months less time and for $350,000 less. Despite the savings, the Navy-built ship still cost more than her two sisters built in private yards on the East Coast. Undoubtedly Secretary Meyer’s inclination to build ships in private yards was reinforced by the cost comparisons.¹²

The ship that slid down Mare Island’s No. 1 ways on that August day had been built to Cramp & Sons plans and would appear as a clone of the Sparrows Point–built Neptune. Mare Island Navy Yard workers had built a ship that had an elevated pilothouse forward of her midships cargo holds and the engineering plant astern. The collier featured two tall, side-by-side stacks to belch out smoke from her three coal-fired boilers. Between the forward protruding pilothouse and the after stacks, the sixty-five-foot-wide hull contained thirteen cargo holds. Given the transformation then in progress of the fleet from coal fuel to black oil, the first four holds, in two side-by-side pairs, were reserved for oil. Holds 1 and 2 each held 80,900 gallons, Holds 3 and 4 each held 107,300 gallons. The next four, going aft, were mixed-product holds, also arranged side by side. Holds 5 and 6 could each take either 15,675 cubic feet of coal or 120,500 gallons of oil. Holds 7 and 8 had slightly larger capacities, holding either 16,700 cubic feet of coal or 128,650 gallons of oil. The remaining five holds each stretched the width of the ship and were designed to carry strictly coal. The capacities of these holds ranged from 82,000 to 91,100 cubic feet of coal. In addition, Jupiter would maintain a separate bunker aft for her own coal supply.

1.1 ♦ The new collier is readied for launching at the Mare Island Navy Yard, California, August 24, 1912. Naval History and Heritage Command

Following Jupiter’s launch, work commenced on the installation of her replenishment equipment. Whereas Cyclops featured an array of seven pairs of vertical posts and connecting horizontal supports, giving the appearance of a box-like trestle structure, Jupiter’s replenishment rigs copied a design change that had been installed on Neptune, which had what looked like oil derricks.¹³

A unique distinction of Jupiter was the Navy’s decision to install in her a General Electric turbine-electric (or turboelectric) propulsion system. Her steam-turbine engines powered two huge electric motors that drove the ship’s port and starboard propeller shafts. With new classes of battleships under design, the Navy decided to select the three large fleet colliers being constructed to install three different propulsion systems for evaluation. Cyclops received the three-cylinder, vertical, triple-expansion steam plant that was the standard for the era. Neptune introduced a steam-turbine plant, similar to that installed in Britain’s revolutionary battleship HMS Dreadnought. Jupiter too would receive a steam turbine; however, whereas Neptune’s steam turbines would transfer power through mechanical reduction gears directly to each shaft, Jupiter’s steam turbine would power electric motors that drove the shafts. Jupiter’s system was known as the Melville-McAlpine Electric Drive.¹⁴

Unlike Cyclops and Neptune, assigned to the Naval Auxiliary Service, the Navy placed Jupiter in commission as a regular Navy ship with a uniformed Navy crew. Entering service on April 7, 1913, Jupiter had an acting commanding officer, Lt. Ernest A. Brooks. The new crew would have to wait a month, until May 5, for their new commanding officer to arrive—Cdr. Joseph Mason Reeves. Reeves did not have to travel far to reach his new assignment. As officer-in-charge of the naval coaling station at nearby Tiburon, California, Reeves had overseen the transformation of the facility into the largest of its type in the Navy, increasing its capacity from twenty to ninety thousand tons of coal. That the Navy chose Reeves to run Tiburon and then command Jupiter reflected the skill sets he had demonstrated in previous assignments.¹⁵

A graduate of the Naval Academy in the Class of 1894, Reeves was assigned to the cruisers Cincinnati and San Francisco as a passed naval cadet—the designation given to future engineering officers. His high scores in a battery of tests administered back at Annapolis in 1896 had earned him orders to the just-commissioned battleship Oregon. Reeves served in that ship’s engineering department during the battleship’s famed race around South America to reinforce the Atlantic Fleet in the days before the Spanish-American War. From the Oregon Reeves received orders to the presidential yacht Sylph. During this period the Navy abolished the Engineering Corps as a separate staff community, and Reeves morphed into a line officer, with prospects of eventual command at sea. He then was assigned as a gunnery officer in the new battleship Kearsarge. After that experience he was back in Washington, as assistant inspector of ordnance at the Washington Navy Yard. Assigned once again to San Francisco, he later was transferred to Wisconsin as the aft-gunnery officer, responsible for all guns aft of whatever caliber, especially a turret with twin 13-inch barrels. Cross-decked to the battleship Ohio, Reeves there further enhanced his gunnery reputation.

Jupiter’s future commanding officer returned to Annapolis in 1906 for instructor duty and to coach the football team. Promoted to lieutenant commander, Reeves moved on in 1908 to become the ordnance officer of the new battleship New Hampshire. Reassigned as the Atlantic Fleet’s gunnery officer, Reeves found his career jeopardized when diagnosed with an enlarged heart. After appearing in Washington in January 1910 before the Retiring Board for a medical examination, he was elated to learn that he would be retained.¹⁶

With his string of assignments as a plank owner (a member of a commissioning crew) and a strong engineering background, Reeves was ideally suited to prepare Jupiter to get under way. On August 20, 1913, following a series of successful dock trials in late July, in which the twin shafts turned but the ship remained secured to the pier, the maiden voyage began. With thousands of well-wishers lining the shoreline and tugs sounding their whistles, Jupiter left Mare Island for a short trip across the bay to Tiburon. Over the next three weeks, Reeves continued to prepare Jupiter for deployment.¹⁷

During a forty-eight-hour trial in late September the electric drive worked perfectly. The boilers, however, developed an issue: water foaming in the boilers impacted their ability to maintain pressure to the steam turbine. As a result of this and subsequent sea trials, Reeves recommended numerous minor and major improvements, ranging from placing a thermometer in cold storage to increasing the size of the ship’s rudder. Many of these changes were approved and installed during the December and January the ship spent at Mare Island. Finally, in mid-February, the collier cleared the Golden Gate for open-sea trials. On completion, Jupiter reentered San Francisco Bay, anchored, and received two lighters along the port side from which to load coal.¹⁸

Having completed her trials, Jupiter prepared for what was billed as the ultimate endurance test—steaming down the Pacific coast of the Americas through Cape Horn and into the South Atlantic en route to Norfolk. However, Jupiter would head south without her first skipper: Reeves had received orders to command the armored cruiser St. Louis. He placed his executive officer and chief engineer, Samuel S. Robinson in acting command. On Saturday, April 11, the ship loaded ballast at the Tiburon coaling station in preparation for departure, perhaps the last naval vessel to plan to make the trip around the South American continent before the opening of the Panama Canal. The voyage would never happen.

Relations between the United States and Mexico had deteriorated following the seizure of power by Victoriano Huerta in February 1913. Executing his predecessor, Huerta established a dictatorship that was not recognized by the Woodrow Wilson administration. Given this nonrecognition, Mexican authorities were indifferent to the protection of Americans. President Wilson sent naval units to both coasts to put pressure on Huerta. Among the ships assigned to support them was the collier Cyclops; Jupiter’s sister ship had arrived off Vera Cruz on March 6, 1914, to deliver coal, food, and other supplies to other ships on station.¹⁹

With the situation deteriorating off Vera Cruz, the Navy Department put a hold on Jupiter’s planned departure to await the arrival on April 21 of the armored cruiser South Dakota, crammed with 450 Marines from the Puget Sound Navy Yard, in Bremerton. South Dakota would embark an additional 150 Marines at Mare Island, while Jupiter’s crew readied accommodations for three hundred more. Departing early on the April 22 in company with South Dakota for San Diego, Jupiter had taken on not only Marines but also a new commanding officer.²⁰

On the bridge stood Cdr. Samuel S. Robison, who had just arrived from the Asiatic Fleet, where he had commanded Cincinnati. An 1888 graduate of the Naval Academy, Robison had had a tour with the Bureau of Engineering, which prepared him to command the electric-drive ship. With Robison’s arrival, Lieutenant Commander Robinson reverted back to his prior executive officer and chief engineer duties.²¹

Following a brief stop in San Diego, the two warships continued down the West Coast of Mexico as Army troops were occupying Vera Cruz, on the Gulf of Mexico. Jupiter and South Dakota met other U.S. Navy units off Mazatlán, Mexico, on April 27, 1914; their arrival and that of their Marines proved timely for the Navy’s effort to maintain a presence off the West Coast of Mexico as the Atlantic Fleet engaged Mexican forces at Vera Cruz.²²

In July, Huerta resigned, and with a new government in place that was more agreeable to the U.S. president, the American forces were withdrawn. Jupiter’s service off Mexico from April 27 to July 9, 1914, earned Robison, his crew, and the ship the Mexican Service Medal. Promoted to the rank of captain on July 1, 1914, Robison found himself promoted out of a job. Relinquishing command on August 8, he turned over the ship to an officer nine years his junior. A native of Mare Island and an 1897 graduate of the Naval Academy, Lt. Cdr. Clarence S. Pluvy Kempff had served in the battleship Oregon, Joining Reeves for the dash around South America. After subsequent tours with the Asiatic Fleet and the battleships Michigan and New Jersey, Kempff had drawn an ashore assignment as the inspecting officer at the Mare Island