Frank Peak Akers

Frank Peak Akers (March 28, 1901 – March 22, 1988) was an American naval rear admiral who was the first aviator to make an instrument landing aboard an aircraft carrier.

Military career Frank Akers graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1922 and was soon assigned to the , which operated in the Pacific Ocean. On 11 September 1925, he earned his naval "Wings of Gold" and became an aviator. He later earned a master's degree in electronic communications from Harvard University in 1933. After graduation, he became a flight test officer at the Naval Air Station in San Diego, California. 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 . What made this hazardous was that he was fitted with a special hood preventing visual contact with the outside world. He earned the Distinguished Flying Cross for being the first to land a plane on a carrier deck without sight.

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. During World War II, he served as a navigator about the , 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.