A century ago, the U.S. Navy purchased its first airplane after a series of tests in which a brave pilot–wearing inflated bicycle inner tubes as a lifejacket–demonstrated one could land safely aboard a ship and then take off from the same vessel. The date of that purchase–May 8, 1911–is considered the birthday of naval aviation. In the hundred years since, the aircraft carrier has evolved from a scouting tool to a leading strike weapon.
During World War II, the dominance of the battleship ended abruptly in three striking examples. For the loss of two outdated biplanes, the British Navy crippled three battleships of the Italian Navy in a 1940 surprise raid at Taranto. That foray served as the blueprint for the attack on Pearl Harbor, which left most of the U.S. battle fleet in ruins. Those who still doubted the waning of the battleship argued that in both cases the surprise attacks against anchored, unprepared ships limited the crew’s ability to defend them. That defense was finally and emphatically laid to rest with the sinking of the fully alerted British battlecruiser Repulse and brand-new battleship Prince of Wales by Japanese aircraft off the coast of Malaysia.
A lifelong aviation enthusiast who joined AIN in 2007, Curt came to the publication from the broadcast industry where he was a national science and technology television reporter and producer. He writes on the FBO field, aviation finance, and sustainable aviation and occasionally contributes to AIN sister publication Business Jet Traveler. Curt was a member of the AINtv reporting staff that won the 2008 Aerospace Journalist of the Year award for Best Airshow Daily. That same year, he was a finalist for another AJOYA award. He earned an AJOYA for Best Business Aviation Submission in 2018 and was a finalist in that category in 2021. He received the National Air Transportation Association’s Aviation Journalist Award in 2012 and won a Pegasus Sapphire Business Aviation Award for outstanding journalism in 2021.
Before joining AIN, Curt worked with Consumer Reports’ television division, CRTV, and for several local television news staffs. An honors graduate of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, he earned a master’s degree in broadcast journalism from Boston University in 1995. Curt lives in New York State with his wife and two young sons.
