USS Langley (CV-1/AV-3) was the United States Navy's first aircraft carrier, converted in 1920 from the collier USS Jupiter (Navy Fleet Collier No. 3), and also the US Navy's first turbine-electric ship. Langley was named after Samuel Langley, an American aviation pioneer. She was the sole member of her class to be rebuilt as a carrier. Conversion of another collier was planned but canceled when the Washington Naval Treaty required the cancellation of the partially built Lexington-class battlecruisers Lexington and Saratoga, freeing up their hulls for conversion into aircraft carriers. Following another conversion to a seaplane tender, Langley saw service in World War II. On 27 February 1942, while ferrying a cargo of USAAF P-40s to Java, she was attacked by nine twin-engine Japanese bombers of the Japanese 21st and 23rd naval air flotillas and so badly damaged that she had to be scuttled by her escorts.
President William H. Taft attended the ceremony when Jupiter's keel was laid down on 18 October 1911, at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, California. She was launched on 24 August 1912, sponsored by Mrs. Thomas F. Ruhm; and commissioned on 7 April 1913, under Commander Joseph M. Reeves. Her sister ships were Cyclops, which disappeared without a trace in World War I, Proteus, and Nereus, both of which disappeared on the same route as Cyclops in World War II.
Jupiter was the first turbo-electric-powered ship of the US Navy. Neptune had been built with a steam turbine and geared drive but performance was inferior to the earlier Cyclops with its two triple expansion steam engines. Jupiter's electric drive, designed by William Le Roy Emmet and built by the General Electric Company, consisted of two electric motors, each directly connected to a propeller shaft, powered by a single Curtis turbine and alternator set. At 2,000 rpm and 2,200 volts the set delivered a speed of 14 knots (26 km/h; 16 mph) with propellers at 110 rpm. There was also a weight saving with the turbo-electric drive being 156 tons versus the 280 tons of equivalent machinery for Cyclops.
After successfully passing her sea trials Jupiter embarked a United States Marine Corps detachment at San Francisco, California, and reported to the Pacific Fleet at Mazatlán, Mexico, on 27 April 1914, bolstering US naval strength on the Mexican Pacific coast in the tense days of the Veracruz crisis. She remained on the Pacific coast until she departed for Philadelphia, on 10 October. En route, the collier steamed through the Panama Canal on Columbus Day, being the first vessel to transit it from the Pacific to the Atlantic.
Prior to America's entry into World War I, she cruised the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, attached to the Atlantic Fleet Auxiliary Division. The ship arrived at Norfolk, Virginia, on 6 April 1917, and was assigned to the Naval Overseas Transport Service, interrupted her coaling operations by two cargo voyages to France, in June 1917 and November 1918. The first voyage transported a naval aviation detachment of 7 officers and 122 men to England. It was the first US aviation detachment to arrive in Europe and was commanded by Lieutenant Kenneth Whiting, who became Langley's first executive officer five years later. Jupiter was back in Norfolk, on 23 January 1919, whence she sailed for Brest, France, on 8 March, for coaling duty in European waters to expedite the return of victorious veterans to the United States. Upon reaching Norfolk, on 17 August, the ship was transferred to the West Coast. Her conversion to an aircraft carrier was authorized on 11 July 1919, and she sailed to Hampton Roads, Virginia, on 12 December, where she was decommissioned on 24 March 1920.
Jupiter was converted into the first US aircraft carrier at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, Portsmouth, Virginia. On 11 April 1920, she was renamed Langley in honor of Samuel Pierpont Langley, an American astronomer, physicist, aeronautics pioneer and aircraft engineer, and she was given the hull number CV-1. By early 1921, memories of World War I were swaying public opinion away from warship construction toward disarmament. Article VIII of the Washington Naval Treaty provided an exemption for experimental aircraft carriers in existence or building on 12 November 1921. The Washington Naval Treaty was signed on 6 February 1922; and Langley was recommissioned on 20 March 1922 for the purpose of conducting experiments in seaborne aviation. The commanding officer was Commander Kenneth Whiting, who had first proposed conversion of a collier to the General Board of the United States Navy three years earlier. Langley was designed to carry up to 34 airplanes, e.g., 12 single-seaters, 12 two-seaters, and 10 "torpedo-dropping" aircraft.
As the first American aircraft carrier, Langley was the scene of several seminal events in US naval aviation. On 17 October 1922, Lt. Virgil C. Griffin piloted the first plane—a Vought VE-7—launched from her full-length wooden deck. Though this was not the first time an airplane had taken off from a ship, and though Langley was not the first ship with an installed flight deck, this one launching was of monumental importance to the modern US Navy. With Langley underway nine days later, Lieutenant Commander Godfrey de Courcelles Chevalier made the first landing, in an Aeromarine 39B. On 18 November, Commander Whiting was the first aviator to be catapulted from a carrier's deck.
An unusual feature of Langley was provision for a carrier pigeon house on the stern between the 5-inch guns. Pigeons had been carried aboard seaplanes for message transport since World War I, and were to be carried on aircraft operated from Langley. The pigeons were trained at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard while Langley was undergoing conversion. As long as the pigeons were released a few at a time for exercise, they returned to the ship; but when the whole flock was released while Langley was anchored off Tangier Island, the pigeons flew south and roosted in the cranes of the Norfolk shipyard. The pigeons never went to sea again and the former pigeon house became the executive officer's quarters; but the early plans for conversion of Lexington and Saratoga included compartments for pigeons.
By 15 January 1923, Langley had begun flight operations and tests in the Caribbean Sea for carrier landings. In June, she steamed to Washington, D.C., to give a demonstration at a flying exhibition before civil and military dignitaries. She arrived at Norfolk on 13 June, and commenced training along the Atlantic coast and Caribbean which carried her through the end of the year. This publicity cruise stopped at Bar Harbor, Maine, Portland, Maine, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Gloucester, Massachusetts, Boston and New York City. After entering port and anchoring, Langley published a takeoff and landing schedule so interested civilians might watch. Although the aviators did some formation flying over the cities, people were more interested in watching the shipboard takeoffs and landings. The planes seldom attained flying speed on deck when taking off while the ship was at anchor with little or no wind, but the pilots were confident their Vought VE-7s could reach flying speed during the 52 ft (16 m) drop from the flight deck before reaching the water. In 1924, Langley participated in more maneuvers and exhibitions, and spent the summer at Norfolk for repairs and alterations, she departed for the West Coast late in the year and arrived in San Diego, California, on 29 November to join the Pacific Battle Fleet.
Captain Joseph Mason "Bull" Reeves, who commanded all fleet aircraft, went aboard the Langley in October 1925. During the 1925 maneuvers aboard the Langley, Reeves developed dive-bombing tactics to attack enemy ships.
In 1927, Langley was at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. For the next 12 years, she operated off the California coast and Hawaii, engaged in training fleet units, experimentation, pilot training, and tactical-fleet problems. Langley was featured in the 1929 silent film about naval aviation The Flying Fleet.