"Birmingham" was the first ship in the world to launch an airplane, in 1910 with pilot Eugene Ely, who also performed the first landing on a ship the following year, on . The class patrolled the Caribbean prior to World War I, sometimes supporting military interventions, with "Chester" playing a key role at the start of the United States occupation of Veracruz in 1914. The ships escorted convoys in World War I. The class was decommissioned 1921-1923 and sold for scrap to comply with the limits of the London Naval Treaty in 1930.