Whether you wind up flying fast fighters or colossal cargo planes, helicopters or jets, solo aircraft or in the cockpit of one packed full of crew members, the path to becoming a military aviator is a long and arduous one. And for good reasons.
From mastering the mechanics of flight to training on how to operate aircraft in combat, the people who will one day sit behind the sticks of the various rotary and fixed wing vehicles operated by the U.S. military need to be prepared to quite literally fly into the teeth of danger.
While each branch’s would-be pilots face their own unique challenges throughout the years of training it takes to earn their wings, many of those who serve in the Navy and Marines face one of the most daunting: learning to land on a moving aircraft carrier. Or, at least, they did.
But starting in March of 2025, American naval aviators no longer need to master carrier landings before they receive their coveted “wings of gold.” Many will have to go on to learn how to carry out such landings, but only after they’ve earned those iconic golden wings.
A Brief History of Naval Aviation & Aircraft Carriers
While naval aviation truly began with lighter-than-air rigid airships and seaplanes that took off from and landed on water, the history of airplanes flying off ships began on November 14th, 1910.
On that day, Eugene Burton Ely (a civilian pilot and engineer who’d been working with U.S. Navy Captain Washington Chambers to explore the potential future uses of aircraft in naval warfare since October of that year) clambered aboard a Curtiss Model D airplane took off from a makeshift platform attached to the cruiser USS Birmingham. The experiment nearly ended in disaster when Ely’s plane descended and skipped off the water shortly after takeoff, damaging the propeller, but he managed to keep his craft aloft and land safely on the Virginia coast.
Making History: A Successful Takeoff & Landing on a Naval Vessel
A few months later, on January 18th of 1911, Eugene Ely again made history when he became the first person to complete both a successful takeoff and landing on a naval vessel (the cruiser USS Pennsylvania), an event generally considered the official Birth of Navy Aviation.
Later that same year Commander Theodore G. Ellyson and Lieutenant Colonel Alfred A. Cunningham became the U.S. Navy’s and U.S. Marine Corps’ first official naval aviators, respectively. In July of that year, Ellyson was the first person to pilot a plane launched by a catapult system. A few months earlier, in January, Royal Navy officer Charles Rumney Samson made the first ever take-off from a moving ship. U.S. Navy officer Henry Mustin became the first catapult take-off from a moving ship in November of 1915. And in August 1917 Edwin Harris Dunning, another Royal Navy officer, made the first landing on a moving ship.
Three of those aerial pioneers would tragically die in crashes: Ely during a flying exhibition in October of 1911, Ellyson after crashing into the Chesapeake Bay in February 1928, and Squadron Commander Dunning a mere five days after his groundbreaking accomplishment.
Early Aviators Laid the Groundwork for the Future
Those early aviators may have been some of the first consequential individuals in the establishment of ship-borne aircraft as an essential asset of any modern navy. But the men and women who followed in their footsteps continued to prove the value of naval air power. And, more specifically, the utility of ship-based aircraft.
In 1917, the Royal Navy converted the cruiser HMS Furious into the first carrier with a flight deck, and the HMS Argus, the first one with a full-length flight deck. In 1920, the U.S. Navy converted a coal-carrying ship into its first carrier, the USS Langley, and in 1927 commissioned the first carrier to include a catapult to launch aircraft, the USS Lexington.
And while the earlier ships all had some form of simple arresting gear to assist aircraft in landing and stopping on the relatively short flight decks of the carriers, modern versions similar to the ones still in use today were first deployed in the early 1930s.
Introducing...Military Helicopters & Other Innovations
The development of military helicopters in the middle of the 20th century added further to the types of aircraft that could be launched via ship. This, and the later development of planes capable of vertical take-off and landing (like the famed Harrier jet), allowed for the development of smaller ships capable of carrying aircraft like today’s Navy’s Wasp and America class amphibious vessels.
Other innovations, like optical landing systems to assist aviators coming in for a landing and angled flight decks which lengthened the landing area on carriers (a necessity as powerful jets mostly propellor planes in the decades after WWII). And on November 25th, 1961, the United States launched the world’s first nuclear powered aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise.
Throughout these years and amid these innovations and naval aviation firsts, America’s naval aviators continued to earn their wings of gold and take to the skies and seas in defense of their nation and its ideals. In recent years, their initial phase of flight training for those intending to fly strike aircraft (for the U.S. Navy, that currently means the F/A-18 Hornet, the EA-18G Growler, and the F-35 Lightning II) included learning to successfully land a trainer jet (the T-45 Goshawk) on the deck of an aircraft carrier as it sails the open sea. But no longer.
Why Did the US Navy Remove Carrier Landing Requirement?
The reasons for this are mostly tied to new and upcoming developments in technology. Starting in 2016, the Navy began replacing older lading assistance technology and methods with Precision Landing Mode (PLM), formerly called the Maritime Augmented Guidance with Integrated Controls for Carrier Approach and Recovery Precision Enabling Technologies (usually referred to by the acronym MAGIC CARPET).
This system greatly simplifies carrier landings for fixed wing pilots by breaking up the three factors they have to calculate and adjust for (glide slope, angle of attack and line up) into separate elements. As an officer involved in the implementation process put it,
“Before, if a pilot made one small change to any of these it would affect all the other things. With Magic Carpet, if the pilot wants to adjust glide slope, he just pushes the stick without changing the power or anything else.”
Thus, with carrier landing’s (relatively) simplified, the Navy sees less need to train aviators how to conduct them before they earn their wings.
Additionally, the Navy is planning to phase out the T-45 as its training jet with the replacement. The Undergraduate Jet Training System (UJTS), will reportedly not have the heavy-duty landing gear necessary to land on an aircraft carrier. They will also lack PLM technology, meaning that even with sturdier landing gear they could not utilize the new system to touchdown on the flight deck of a flat top.
Thus, there’s no need for future aviators to train to carry out such landings without the technology they’d use during them for the rest of their careers. Plus, removing the carrier landing requirements will, according to the Navy, shorten the training pipeline and get more aviators to the fleet faster than before.
Which Aviators Will Have to Learn Carrier Landings?
All naval aviators who will deploy aboard aircraft carriers and other aircraft-carrying vessels will, presumably, still have to learn how to take-off and land from them.
Additionally, according to Navy Times, carrier landings with a T-45 are still required for those who will go on to fly the E-2 Hawkeye Airborne and officers from other countries who come to the US for naval flight training.
But for a whole lot of other Sailors and Marines planning on taking to the skies, the training on how to undertake those risky maneuvers will come after they’ve earned their gold wings and the right to call themselves naval aviators.
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