Frank Peak Akers

While in this assignment on 30 July 1935, he participated in an unusually hazardous experiment and attempted to land about the nation's first aircraft carrier, the USS Langley.

[2] During World War II, he served as a navigator about the USS Hornet, and participated in the famed Doolittle Raid on Tokyo and in the Battle of Midway.

Later in the war, while stationed in Washington as head of the Radio and Electrical Branch of the Bureau of Aeronautics, he received the Legion of Merit for his part in developing more efficient and simplified aircraft electronic systems, including radar bombing.

[2] After the war, as the commanding officer of the USS Saratoga from 1945 to 1946, he amassed a new world's record of 642 carrier landings in a single day.

[1][2] On 11 January 1962, he received the Gray Eagle Award honoring him as the Naval Aviator who had been flying longer than any other on active duty, which he held until his retirement on 1 April 1963.

Lieutenant Frank Akers (wearing flight helmet) shows Rear Admiral Ernest J. King (wearing civilian hat), the chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, the cockpit of the OJ-2 in which he performed the Navy's first demonstration of a blind landing system intended for use on board aircraft carriers. He made the landing "under the hood" at College Park, Maryland.