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.
The third USS Porpoise (SS-7) was an early Plunger-class submarine in the service of the United States Navy, later renamed as A-6.
USS Porpoise (right) and sister-ship USS Shark at New York, 1905