b'U . S .M i l i t a r yJ et aviation began to evolve at the height of World War II, the British be- Pennsylvania, was retrofitted with an improvised flight deck and was the first onto ing the first to build and fly a military jet aircraft, followed soon by thewhich a plane landed, two months later. The British Royal Navy got into the carrier American made Bell P-59 Airacomet, and the first operational jet fighter,business when it converted a cruiser, the HMS Hermes, to carry aircraft in 1913, just the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star. The first landing of a U.S. Navy jet fighteras tensions were rising in Europe that would lead to World War I, a year later. By 1916, on an aircraft carrier, the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt, took place in 1946 two years into the war, the British had outfitted a number of its warships with launch the McDonnell FH-1 Phantom proved that carrier-based jet aviation wasdecks for seaplanes that would fly their missions, and then land at sea elsewhere. Just possible. The second version, the FH-2 Banshee, was a warhorse of the Korean War,before the war ended, in 1918, the Brits christened the very first full-deck aircraft and the F-4 Phantom II, capable of Mach-2 speeds, served as the Navys top warplanecarrier capable of launch and landing, a former passenger liner called the HMS Argus, during the Vietnam War. Navy flight training also entered a new era. the prototype for future aircraft carriers.Ever the military innovators, the British Royal and U.S. Navies were the first to launchA year later, in 1919, the U.S. Congress appropriated funds for the conversion of the and land aircraft at sea. The scout cruiser USS Birmingham was the first ship fromUSS Jupiter, a bulk cargo ship known as a collier, into the Navys first aircraft carrier, which an airplane was launched, in November 1910, and an armored cruiser, the USSlater christened the USS Langley (CV-1) and commissioned March 20, 1922.104THE COASTAL BEND MAGAZINE TheCoastalBend.com'