Forrest Wysong; Pioneer of Naval Aviation

Forrest Wysong, believed to be the first American flier to take off from a warship, has died.

At his death, Wysong was one of seven survivors of the Early Birds of Aviation Inc., originally a group of 596 men and women who flew by airplane, balloon, glider or airship before Dec. 17, 1916--the 13th anniversary of the Wright brothers’ first powered flight. He was 98 and the nation’s oldest surviving naval aviator when he died Tuesday in suburban Los Angeles, said Jo Cooper, a spokeswoman for the Early Birds.

Wysong became interested in aviation when he heard his family dismiss the Wright brothers’ 1903 flight as a “circus stunt that would never work.” In 1911, he built a working glider from instructions in a 25-cent mail-order book. He built the glider from scrap, and scrap--he recalled in a 1984 interview with The Times--was what was left of the pilot and glider after it crashed.

“I wound up in the hospital with a fractured skull and a couple of broken ribs,” he said.

Wysong, a Cincinnati native who grew up in Greensboro, N.C., later taught himself to fly a powered aircraft. While he was a student at North Carolina State University he built a Curtiss-type pusher biplane with a 75-horsepower engine and on March 16, 1915, flew it from a dirt airstrip near Raleigh. This time he landed safely.

He went to work for Charles Willard, the fourth man to ever fly, and in 1916 was commissioned as an ensign in the New York Naval Militia and assigned to fly a Curtiss Model F, a primitive flying boat. Wysong flew N-9 seaplanes when the United States entered World War I in 1917 and was sent overseas on the battleship Texas.

It had a primitive flight deck over its giant gun turrets, and Wysong took off from it in a single-seat Sopwith Scout while the ship was cruising off Scotland.

“The British had done it (taken off from a ship),” Wysong said in 1984, “but not the U.S.”

After being discharged in 1919, Wysong became a test pilot for several large aerospace firms, worked for Lockheed and Douglas, and returned to aviation during World War II as a test and research engineer. In the 1930s, he worked as a designer on the Lockheed Electra, the type of plane Amelia Earhart was flying when she vanished.

Wysong retired in 1960 and later began a successful career in investment securities. He continued flying into his 90s.

“It’s just like driving an automobile, only when you get a little older you get a little rusty in your landings,” he said.