Captain Washington Irving Chambers, USN was a 43-year, career United States Navy officer, who near the end of his service played a major role in the early development of U.S.Naval aviation, serving as the first officer to have oversight of the Navy's incipient aviation program through the Bureau of Navigation. In that capacity from 1910 to 1913, he consulted and worked with early civil aviation pioneers Orville Wright and Glenn Curtiss; organized the first airplane landing (1911) and takeoff (1910) from a ship in collaboration with pioneer aviator Eugene Ely; recruited the first naval aviators; established aviator training; oversaw the first budget appropriation of $25,000 from which he purchased the first aircraft for the Navy; designed a catapult to launch aircraft from warships and led a Board that recommended establishment of the first naval air station at Pensacola, Florida and advocated for the establishment of a "national aerodynamic laboratory". Chambers has been called "the Father of Naval Aviation".

Naval aviation is the application of military air power by navies, whether from warships that embark aircraft, or land bases.