大日本帝国海军航空队是大日本帝国海军的航空部队。 海军航空队负责海军飞机的运用和航战的任务。日本陆军航空发轫于1910年底德川好敏工兵大尉在本土的首次飞行
The beginnings of Japanese naval aviation were established in 1912, with the creation of a Commission on Naval Aeronautical Research () under the authority of the Technical Department. The commission was charged with the promotion of aviation technology and training for the navy. Initially was focus was in non-rigid airships but it quickly moved on to the development of winged and powered aircraft. That year, the commission decided to purchase foreign winged aircraft and to send junior officers abroad to learn how to fly and maintain them. The navy purchased two seaplanes from the Glenn Curtiss factory in Hammondsport, New York, and two Maurice Farman seaplanes from France. To establish a cadre of naval aviators and technicians, the navy also dispatched three officers to Hammondsport and two to France for training and instruction. After their return to Japan at the end of 1912, two of the newly trained naval aviators made the first flights at Oppama on Yokosuka Bay, one in a Curtiss seaplane, the other in a Maurice Farman.
In 1912, the Royal Navy had also informally established its own flying branch, the Royal Naval Air Service. The Japanese admirals, whose own Navy had been modeled on the Royal Navy and whom they admired, themselves proposed their own Naval Air Service. The Japanese Navy had also observed technical developments in other countries and saw that the airplane had potential. Within a year, the Imperial Japanese navy had begun the operational use of aircraft. In 1913, the following year, a Navy transport ship, was converted into a seaplane carrier capable of carrying two assembled and two disassembled seaplanes. also participated in the naval maneuvers off Sasebo that year.
In 1916, the Commission on Naval Aeronautical Research was disbanded and the funds supporting it were reallocated for the establishment of three naval air units () which would fall under the authority of the Naval Affairs Bureau of the Navy Ministry. The first unit was established at Yokosuka in April 1916, however, the lack of a specific naval air policy in these early years was made apparent by the fact that the Yokosuka Air Group operated with the fleet only once a year when it was transported briefly to whatever training area the IJN was then using for maneuvers. Japanese naval aviation, though, continued to make progress. In 1917, officers at the Yokosuka Naval Arsenal designed and built the first Japanese seaplane, the Ro-Go Ko-gata reconnaissance seaplane, which was much more useful at sea and much safer than the Maurice Farman aircraft that the navy had been using up to that point. The aircraft was eventually mass-produced and became the mainstay of the navy's air arm until the mid-1920s. Japanese factories by the end of the war, in increasing numbers, were beginning to turn out engines and fuselages based on foreign designs. A major expansion in Japanese naval air strength was part of the 1918 naval expansion program which made possible a new air group and a naval air station at Sasebo. In 1918, the IJN secured land around Lake Kasumigaura in Ibaraki Prefecture, northeast of Tokyo. The following year, a naval air station for both land and sea aircraft was established, and subsequently, naval air training was transferred to Kasumigaura, from Yokosuka. After the establishment of a naval air training unit at Kasumigaura, the air station became the principal flight training center for the navy.
