In the last months of World War I, Whiddy became the site of a US naval air station. The US Navy's Air Wing established a seaplane base on the eastern end of the island; this became operational on 25 September 1918 when the first two Curtiss Model H planes arrived. These air crews patrolled shipping lanes around Fastnet Rock – close to where the RMS Lusitania had been sunk some years earlier. One of the base's planes crashed on 22 October 1918, killing one airman, Walford August Anderson.