spotting was considered essential to Michigans mission when Glenn Curtis offered to train a naval officer to fly the following month, so Theodore G. Ellyson became the first United States naval aviator. Only after Curtiss moved his flying school from San Diego to the east coast was Tower released from Michigan to report to the Curtiss Flying School in Hammondsport, New York, on June 27, 1911, for aviation training. Pioneer naval aviator Under the tutelage of aviation pioneers Curtiss and Ellyson, Towers qualified as a pilot with the Aero Club of America on 13 September 1911, flying the Navy's first airplane, a Curtiss A-1 seaplane. In Sept 1911 Towers and Ellyson created the first official Naval Air Station and flying aviation unit at Greenbury Point, Md across the Severn River from the Naval Academy under orders from Captain Washington Irving Chambers, the first Navy officer assigned to development of the nascent U.S. Naval aviation program. In October 1911, Towers achieved a distance record, flying an A-1 from Annapolis, Maryland, to Old Point Comfort, Virginia, a distance of 112 miles in 122 minutes. He set several speed and altitude records at the time. Due to the winter weather conditions at Greenbury Point they crated the airplanes and Towers et al. traveled to North Island in San Diego, California where, in conjunction with the Curtiss Flying School, he took part in developing and improving naval aircraft types After that winter in San Diego they went back to Greenbury Point. On October 6, 1912, he achieved an American endurance record by rigging extra gasoline tanks to a Curtiss A-2 seaplane, allowing him to remain aloft for 6 hours, ten minutes, 35 seconds. From October to December 1912, Towers conducted tests to spot submerged submarines from the air over the Chesapeake Bay. This later was valuable in leading to the design of the NC boats and the First Crossing of the Atlantic in 1919. He furthered those tests into 1913 during fleet operations near Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Additionally, he investigated the potential for Navy aerial reconnaissance, bombing, photography, and communications. On 8 May 1913, Lt. Towers flew a long-distance flight of 169 miles in a Curtiss flying boat from the Washington Navy Yard down the Potomac River and then up the Chesapeake Bay to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland. The flight took three hours and five minutes. Ensign Godfrey Chevalier was his