Kenneth Whiting was a United States Navy officer who was a pioneer in submarines and is best known for his lengthy career as a pioneering naval aviator. During World War I, he commanded the first American military force to arrive in Europe for combat. After the war, he was instrumental in development of the aircraft carrier in the United States, where he sometimes is known as the U.S. Navy's "father of the aircraft carrier." He was involved in some way in the design or construction of five of the first six U.S. Navy aircraft carriers, and served as acting commanding officer of the first carrier to enter U.S. Navy service and as executive officer of the first two American carriers. In the earliest days of the U.S. Navy's development of an aircraft carrier force, he led many shipboard innovations still in use aboard carriers today.
Commander Kenneth Whiting aboard the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga (CV-3) during his 1927–1929 tour as her executive officer.
Kenneth Whiting undergoing flight training at the Wright Company in Dayton, Ohio, in 1914.
Kenneth Whiting is at far right in this photograph of five early American naval aviators at the Naval Aeronautic Station in Pensacola, Florida.
Real Admiral Ernest J. King, USN, and Captain Kenneth Whiting, USN, at French Frigate Shoals in the Hawaiian Islands in 1937.
Henry C. Mustin (1874–1923)
Henry Croskey Mustin was a pioneering naval aviator who undertook the task of establishing the first Naval Aeronautic Station on the site of the abandoned Navy Yard at Warrington, Florida in 1914. He was designated Navy Air Pilot No. 3 and later Naval Aviator No. 11. Two U.S. Navy destroyers have borne the name Mustin in honor of Captain Mustin and his descendants, three of whom have served as flag officers.
Captain Henry C. Mustin
U.S. Naval Academy midshipmen skylarking aboard USS Essex, 1893. Midshipman Henry Mustin is in the foreground on the left.
The detachment of naval officers who established the Naval Aeronautic Station at Pensacola, Florida. Henry Mustin is fourth from right.
U.S. Navy aircraft over Veracruz, Mexico, in 1914.