The Story of

THE AIRSHIP

(NON-RIGID)

A Study of One of America’s Lesser Known Defense Weapons

BY HUGH ALLEN

AKRON, OHIO, 1943

ADMIRAL W. A. MOFFETT

To whom this book is dedicated

FIRST PRINTING, FEBRUARY, 1942

SECOND PRINTING, FEBRUARY, 1943

THIRD PRINTING, DECEMBER, 1943

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

THE LAKESIDE PRESS, R. R. DONNELLEY & SONS COMPANY, CHICAGO AND CRAWFORDSVILLE, INDIANA

Dedication

To Admiral William A. Moffett, and the men his leadership
inspired—to Landsdowne, McCord and Berry—to Calnan
and Dugan and other able juniors, to Maxfield and Hoyt,
Hancock and Lawrence of an earlier decade—to the Army’s Hawthorne
Gray, and as well to England’s Scott, France’s de Grenadin,
Germany’s Lehmann and Goodyear’s Brannigan and Morton—names
taken from lighter-than-air’s brief but distinguished casualty list—of
men who believed in airships and accepted gallantly the penalty
which progress eternally exacts from men—this book is dedicated.

Not forgetting the living men, the Navy’s Rosendahl, Fulton,
Mills, Settle; Goodyear’s Litchfield and Arnstein, and hundreds of
others who have carried on with unshaken faith, in the face of great
setbacks.

Much of devotion and courage, of scientific research and engineering
achievement has gone into this enterprise—and much has been
proved. Today, airships of the non-rigid type are taking on a new
responsibility to the nation. If they succeed, they may well bring back
the great rigid airships, to act as long range scouts against enemy
raid or surprise fleet movement, as fast moving bases and refueling
points for fighting airplanes far at sea—and as factors in world
commerce in days to come.

It is this impulse which is driving forward the men who believe in
airships—that the sacrifices and efforts of Admiral Moffett and the
rest shall not have gone in vain.

E. J. THOMAS

President of the Goodyear Company

CAPTAIN C. E. ROSENDAHL, U.S.N.

He never gave up his ships

COMMANDER T. G. W. SETTLE, U.S.N.

He explored the Stratosphere

CHARLES BRANNIGAN

His courage still inspires airship men

P. W. LITCHFIELD

An industrial leader, chairman of the Goodyear board,
who has believed for 30 years that airships
would prove useful to his country in peace or war

Foreword

High admirals of the American fleet faced in 1940 the
gravest responsibility in the National Defense the Navy
had ever known. Wherever they turned, north, east,
south, west, perils lurked. If they swung their binoculars toward
Iceland, toward the Caribbean, toward Singapore, Alaska, or the
Canal, everywhere waited potential threats against our American
way of life, which they must meet with ships and men, with guns
and stout hearts. This was not merely national defense, perhaps
not even hemisphere defense, it was World War.

Surveying their gigantic task, and moving swiftly to meet it,
they found a place in their program for half forgotten craft, long
over-shadowed by other arms of the fleet, the non-rigid airship,
sometimes called a dirigible, but more often a “blimp.”

Couldn’t the airship be used as a watchdog along the coast,
against enemy submarines, in discovering enemy mines—relieve
for sterner tasks the destroyers and other craft now wallowing
their innards out in those restless shallow waters? Great Britain
and France had used airships effectively in this service over the
English Channel during the last war.

The areas within their patrol range, a hundred or 200 miles out
to sea, within the 100 fathom curve, was a vital one. There steamship
lanes converge, great harbors lie, coastwise merchantmen
cruise, there is the greatest concentration of military and commercial
shipping.

With depth bombs and machine guns the blimps might strike
a stout blow of their own, even if they weren’t rated as combat
craft. At least they could sound the alarm, call out reinforcements
from swift moving shore-based craft, keep the intruder
under surveillance. After all the main thing was to find the submarines
in those endless miles of water. And in this field the very
slowness of the airship, as compared to the airplane, would be an
advantage, permit a more thorough search of the ocean’s surface,
while its speed as compared to any man-of-war, would enable
it to cover more ground within a given 24 hours.

So on the Navy’s recommendation Congress in 1940 approved
the building of the airship fleet up to substantial proportions,
together with bases from which they might operate along the
Atlantic and Pacific coasts. That program is now being put into
effect and the Goodyear company which had built most of the
airships used in the first World War, began again to build ships.

The story of the great rigid airships, the Los Angeles, the Akron,
Macon and Graf Zeppelin is fairly well known. That of the smaller
non-rigids is less familiar. The larger airships still hold vital commercial
and military promise for the future. However, this book
will confine itself to the non-rigid airship, with only enough
reference to the larger ships to round out the picture.

Every new vehicle of combat or transport has had to fight its
way to acceptance against misunderstanding and lack of understanding.
Steamships had to prove themselves against sailing
ships. Submarines had an uphill battle to establish themselves.
The airplane was long on probation, and now the airship is on
trial.

This book will tell something about these ships, cite what is
claimed for them and what has been reasonably proved they can
do, see what progress has been made in performance, and point
out what may be expected from them hereafter—not avoiding
the moot question of vulnerability.

Lighter-than-air is older by a century than the heavier-than-air
branch of aeronautics. Its history is marked by long research and
experiment and continued progress. Like every pioneering development
it has had its setbacks. But the sincerity of the effort
and solid accomplishment made, entitles the project to thoughtful
consideration.

Contents

Dedication v

Foreword vii

I. German Submarines in American Waters 1

A little known story from the first World War.

II. British Airships in the First World War 9

The use of non-rigid airships in Europe in 1914-18—as convoys, and as scouts against mines and U-boats.

III. American Airships in Two Wars 13

Activities in first war, though building of ships, training of men and erecting of bases had to be done after war broke out.

IV. The Beginnings of Flight 21

Difference between airships and airplanes—classes of airships—progress, from Montgolfiers to Santos Dumont to 1914.

V. Effect on Aeronautics of Post-War Reaction 28

Blimps overshadowed by Zeppelins and airplanes—only rigid airships had anything like continuing program, and they because of possible commercial value—effect on public opinion of Lindbergh flight and first arrival of the Graf Zeppelin.

VI. Airship Improvements Between Wars 32

Helium gas—structural changes—development of mooring mast—Navy experiments in picking up water ballast from the ocean.

VII. Adventures of the Goodyear Fleet 45

Reason for starting—adventures—familiarize country with airships—safety record—evolution of masting technique.

VIII. Results of Fleet Operations 61

Weather information—effect on flying and ground handling practice—on ship design—created bases, ships and construction plants which might prove useful in emergency.

IX. Vulnerability of Airships 67

References 72

Index 73

CHAPTER I

German Submarines in American Waters

In the last six months of the first World War Germany sent six
submarines to America at intervals starting in April, to lay
mines along our shipping lanes, attack merchantmen, drive
the fishing fleet ashore, try to force this country to call back part of
its European fleet for home defense—and in any case to give America,
geographically aloof from the war, a taste of what war was
like.

These activities were overshadowed at the time by graver events,
or hidden by military secrecy. Few people even today know that
ships were sunk and men killed by German U-boats within sight of
our coast.[1]

It was in no sense an all-out effort. Only a handful of submarines
were used. The attack was launched late in the war, in fact one of
the six didn’t even reach American waters, was called back by news
of the Armistice. Submarines of that day had a cruising range of
some three months, could spend only three weeks in our coastal
waters, used the rest of the time getting over and back.

But in those few weeks these six submarines destroyed exactly
100 ships, of all sizes, types and registry, killed 435 people. Most of
the ships were peaceful unarmed merchantmen, coastwise ships
2
from the West Indies and South America, tankers from Galveston,
fishing ships heading back from the Grand Banks, supply ships
carrying guns and war materials to England, a few stragglers from
convoys.

The subs’ biggest catch was the USS San Diego, a cruiser, sunk
by mine off Fire Island, just outside New York harbor, July 19,
1918, with 1,180 officers and men aboard. Only six lives, fortunately,
were lost. The battleship Minnesota, escorted by a destroyer,
struck a mine off Fenwick shoals light ship, early in the morning of
September 29, but made temporary repairs and limped back into
Philadelphia Navy Yard 18 hours later. A fragment of the mine
was found imbedded in her frame work.

Reproduced from U.S. Navy map
showing track of submarines operating
in American waters during
last few months of first World War.

Mines were laid at strategic points. One field, with its mines 500
to 1,000 yards apart was laid off Cape Hatteras, one at the mouth
3
of Chesapeake Bay, one across Delaware Bay, two in between these
key inlets, another off Barnegat, and the last off Fire Island. Some
of the mines drifted ashore, others were found and destroyed—the
last ones not till the following January. But mines accounted for
six of the ships lost.

One of the submarines, the U-117, built as a mine layer, planted
46 of the 58 mines laid along our shores; four others were merchant
subs of the Deutschland type, including the Deutschland itself,
which had twice previously visited this country on ostensibly
friendly missions.

Though the subs encountered a few victims on the way over or
back, most of the ships were destroyed in the shallower waters within
200 miles of the American and Canadian coast. The fishing was
better close in.

Naval Intelligence knew, through Admiral Sims’ office in London,
just when each submarine left Kiel, what its probable destination
was, and its approximate arrival date. The Navy could not
broadcast this information, lest U-boat captains learn they were
expected, but took appropriate defense measures. Even so, each submarine
traveled directly to its destination, carried out its mission.

U-boats operated almost with immunity from Newfoundland to
the Virginia capes. Twice American men of war passed over submerging
craft so close as almost to ram them. The U-151 worked at
cutting cables for three days, near enough to New York City that
the crew could see the lights of Broadway at night. The U-115,
lying off the Virginia capes, came to the surface one afternoon just
in time for its periscope to disclose a cruiser, two destroyers and a
Navy tug a mile away, peacefully returning from routine target
practice, entirely unaware that the U-boat was lurking in the
vicinity.

The submarines got a poor press that summer, not only for reasons
of military secrecy, but because more stirring news held the
attention of the public. The AEF was beginning to see action in
France.

Still headlines flashed occasionally as censorship was raised, or
survivors brought in stories. From the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin
during this period:

“Hun U-boats Raid New Jersey coast—Schooner Edward H.
Cole Attacked by two Submarines, Destroyed—Two Attacked Off
New England—Atlantic Ports Closed”—and the story, under New
York date line: “Germany has carried her unrestricted submarine
warfare to this side of the ocean—at least five vessels sunk—submarine
chasers ordered out from Cape May—Coast Guard stations
on special lookout—marine insurance companies announce sharp
increase in rates.”

News Flash—“Wireless report from passenger steamer Carolina
says she is under attack”—The Carolina is sunk, 300 survivors
are landed at Barnegat Bay, 19 at Lewes Del., 30 at Atlantic City,
others picked up in open boats.

On this map of actual ship sinkings and mine layings in 1918 is superimposed
a sketch of the area which a handful of modern patrol blimps might cover.

Then: “Navy mine sweepers sent out to destroy mines and floating
torpedoes which had missed target—tanker Herbert L. Pratt
strikes mine in shallow water on maiden voyage—War Department
asks Congress for $10,000,000 to set up balloon and plane
stations along the coast to combat sub menace—British steamer
Harpathian torpedoed off Virginia capes—American vessel, name
withheld, puts back to ‘an Atlantic port’ after being chased by
U-boat.”

The record continues: “San Diego sunk by mine—tug and four
barges sunk—British freighter attacked—sub sends landing crew
on board lumber schooner off Maine coast, set her afire—Steamer
Merak sunk off Hatteras—tanker torpedoed off Barnegat Bay,
beaches blanketed with oil—Norwegian steamer Vinland—British
steamer Peniston and Swedish steamer Sydland off Nantucket—nine
U. S. fishing vessels off Massachusetts coast—British tanker
Mirlo—U.S. Schooner Dorothy Barrett—tanker Frederick R. Kellogg”
and so on and on.

Events of the time and since have swept these happenings out of
the minds of most Americans—even if they knew of it at the time.
But somewhere, half forgotten in Naval files, is an official report,
painstakingly compiled after the war, from ship logs, from stories
by merchant captains and crews, even by officers of surrendered
German submarines, to make up as complete a record as possible
of one of the amazing operations of the war—and one whose magnitude,
in territory covered and damage done, few suspected, even
within the Navy, at the time.

Only two subs had so much as a brush with American ships. The
transport von Steuben, former German liner, proceeding to the
rescue of men in life boats from a merchant ship, dropped depth
bombs which the U-boat escaped by diving to 83 meters, lying
low till the enemy had gone.

Closer call had the U-140, largest and most modern of the fleet,
which after sinking several ships off Diamond Shoals, including the
light ship itself, almost caught a tartar when the Brazilian passenger
liner, Uberabe, zigzagging furiously to escape, sent out
S.O.S. messages which brought four U.S. destroyers hurrying to
the rescue. Nearest was the USS Stringham, which proceeding under
full speed, using the Uberabe as a screen, charged on the U-boat,
dropped 15 depth charges when the U-boat dived, timed to explode
at different levels.

Training exercises with U. S. submarines have taught airship captains much about
the habits, movements and characteristics of the underseas craft. (U. S. Navy photo).

The year before America got into the last war the German submarine U-51 sank a half dozen
merchant ships off Nantucket Island then proceeded into Newport. (U. S. Navy photo)

Navy airships in practice patrols identify, as to class and nationality, all surface ships in
their area, learn to recognize the silhouette of a submarine from afar. (U. S. Navy photo)

The U-boat captain, one of the best in the German navy, drove
his craft at a sharp angle to 400 feet. One charge exploding underneath
the sub turned it stern upward till it stood almost perpendicular.
He managed to level out finally at 415 feet, lay there as long
as he dared, finally reached the surface. His ship was so badly crippled
it had to abandon its mission and set out for home—though
it sunk a couple more ships in the mid-Atlantic on the way back.

The only U-boat casualty was the U-156 which after getting 34
victims in American waters, getting eight in one day, was itself sunk
by mines—but off Faroe Island as it was almost home.

This then is the story of submarine operations in U. S. waters in
1918—a half hearted effort of short duration started late in the day—but
which destroyed 100 ships, totalling 200,000 tons, most of
them close to our shores.

No one could doubt but that in the event of another war submarines
would be used again, and in more vigorous fashion. The
American fleet might easily keep major enemy ships at a safe distance,
and bombing attack from any part of Europe or over the
Pacific would have little military value. But certainly submarines
would find their way past the screen of Navy craft, bob up off
American harbors, again to lay mines in the path of coastwise
steamers, deliver hit-and-run attack by torpedo and gunfire at
American craft.

We could be equally sure that these ugly motorized sharks,
churning the muddy sub-surface waters, would not be satisfied to
attack merchantmen only, would be looking for bigger prey.

On the map showing the operations of German submarines in
1918 let us superimpose, as an example, the patrol area which
two blimps, basing at Boston, Lakehurst, Cape May and Norfolk
might effectively cover in a 12 hour period.

A patrol area of 2,000 square miles per ship is conservative. It
assumes the ship flying at no faster than 35 knots, having visibility
of five miles in all directions. As a matter of fact, allowing a little
more than 40 knots speed—and the airship cruises considerably
8
faster than that—we might say that a modern blimp could patrol
an area 10 miles wide and 500 miles long in the 12 hours, or an
area of 5,000 square miles. But by criss-crossing back and forth in
accordance with a progressive plan, an area of 2,000 square miles
could be made reasonably secure—except under extremely adverse
conditions of visibility.

Laying these patrol areas down over the map of submarine operations
of 1918 it is apparent that such patrols would cover much of
the territory where ship sinkings were achieved, cover all of the
areas where mines were laid.

With blimps operating from such bases, in addition to the
patrols being executed by other naval craft, we might conclude
that no submarine could venture within 100 miles of the
American coast during daylight hours without considerable risk
of detection, and that blimps should be able to make contribution
to the safety of coastwise shipping and harbor cities.

The patrol areas assigned to the blimps would have their flanks
exposed, but airship patrol would be co-ordinated with that of
airplanes and surface craft, guarding the areas farther out.

That this conclusion is reasonable is indicated by the fact that
from 1939 on, Lakehurst Naval Air Station, under command of
Commander G. H. Mills had been doing just this, patroling areas
all the way from Nantucket to Cape Hatteras.

CHAPTER II

British Airships in the First War

Germany entered the first World War with high expectations
as to one, perhaps two of its new weapons of war. Its
submarines might offset Britain’s superiority at sea, and
certainly the Zeppelins, which had proved themselves in four years
of commercial flying, would be able to cross the English Channel
and carry the war to the island which had seen no invasion since
William the Conqueror.

No nation except Germany had Zeppelins. And as the German
people began to feel the pinch of the blockade, cutting their life
line of food and supplies, they brought increasing public pressure
on High Command to use these weapons to punish England.

Later commentators have speculated as to whether, if Germany
had held its fire, waited till it could assemble an overpowering
force of Zeppelins and submarines and stage a joint attack, it might
not have been able to force a quick decision.

But the Zeppelins were sent over a few at a time, as fast as they
could be built, and England was given time to devise defenses.
These were chiefly higher altitude airplanes, farther ranging anti-aircraft
guns, sky piercing searchlights, which combined to force
the invaders to fly continuously higher as the war wore on, as high
as 25,000 feet at times, with corresponding sacrifice of bombing accuracy.
And when machine guns, synchronized with the propellers,
were mounted in airplane cockpits, and began to spit inflammable
bullets into the hydrogen filled bags and send them down in flames,
the duel took on more even terms.

Less spectacularly the Zeppelins were used on a wide scale as
reconnaissance and scouting craft, which flying fast and far were
given credit on more than one occasion for saving German Naval
squadrons from being cut off by superior Allied forces, were acknowledged
even by the British to have played an important part
in the Battle of Jutland.

It is a little hard to realize today that whatever air battles were
waged over water in the last war were conducted chiefly by lighter-than-air
craft. Planes staged spectacular battles along the Allied lines
in France, but lack of range and carrying capacity forced them to
leave sea battles to the airship. As a measure of that situation, the
great hangars at Friedrichshafen, spawning ground of the Zeppelins,
one of the outstanding targets in all Europe if England were to
draw the dirigible’s fangs, lay hardly more than a hundred miles
from the French borders, but even that distance was too great for
effective attack.

While these greater events were taking place, British airships,
smaller in size, less spectacular, were playing no small part in repelling
Germany’s other threat, the submarine.

Blimps Used to Search for U-Boats

Navy opinion around the world was skeptical at the beginning
of the War as to whether submarines would ever be practical.
There were mechanical troubles, accidents, usually costly. Even
Germany, prior to 1914, used to send an escort of warships along
to convoy its subs to their station—then send out for them afterward
to bring them home again.

But the war was only a few weeks old when the captain of the
U-9, cruising down the Dutch coast, discovered that his gyro compass
was off, and when he got his bearings saw that he was 50 miles
off course. He wasted no breath, however, on many-syllabled German
swear words, for off on his southern horizon were the masts of
three British ships. He dived, came up alongside, and in 30 minutes,
single handed, with well directed torpedoes, had sunk in turn
HMS Aboukir, Hogue and Cressy.

The morning of September 22, 1914, marked the beginning of a
new era in Naval warfare. The warring nations grew furiously busy
11
building their own U-boats and devising defenses against the
enemy’s. Among these defenses was the non-rigid airship.

These two vehicles, so widely different, have much in common.
If we may be technical for a minute we may say that the airship
and the submarine are both buoyant bodies, completely immersed
and floating in a medium—air and water respectively—of
changing pressures, that each uses dual sets of steering gear and
rudders to control direction and altitude. And further, that the airship
in 1941 faces the same division of opinion as the submarine
faced in 1914, as to whether, particularly with rigid airships, it will
ever be widely used and accepted.

In any event in 1914 there was an urgent and immediate job to
be done.

Indicator nets and high explosive mines might give some protection
to harbors, might be stretched across steamship lanes and
planted around the hiding places of the submarines, if those could
be discovered. But troop ships and munition ships and food ships
must be dispatched without interruption across the tricky waters
of the English Channel to France, and for this purpose convoy escorts
were devised, with camouflaged warships zigzagging alongside,
while high aloft in lookout stations men with binoculars
strained their eyes, searching the waters, ahead, astern, alongside,
their search lingering long over every bit of floating wreckage—and
there was a lot of it—to make sure it was not a periscope.

These lookouts aboard ship quickly had a new ally in the air. As
the submarine menace grew, binoculars began to flash too from the
fuselages of bobbing blimps overhead. At a few hundred or perhaps
a thousand feet elevation they could see deep below the surface,
and quickly learned to recognize at considerable distance the
tell-tale trail of bubbles or feathered waters or smear of oil which
denoted the enemy’s presence, might even pick out the shadowy
form of the submerged craft itself.

The value of the airship in convoy was that it could fly slowly,
could throttle down its motors and march in step with its charges,
cruise ahead, alongside, behind. The very speed of its sister craft,
the airplane, handicapped its use in this field.

This characteristic of the blimp was even more useful in hunting
12
U-boat nests. The blimp could head into the wind, with its motors
barely turning over, hover for hours at zero speed over suspect
areas. It could fly at low altitudes, follow even slender clues. Seagulls
following a periscope sometimes gave highly useful information.
An orange crate moving against the tide attracted the attention
of one alert pilot, for the crate concealed a periscope, and the
blimp dropped bombs—successfully.

When a blimp discovered a submarine, it would give chase.
With its 50 knots of reserve speed it was faster than any warship,
much faster than the poky wartime submarine, which could do
only 10 or 12 knots on the surface, much less than half that when
submerged. If it was lucky the airship might drop a bomb alongside
before the sub got away.

And run for cover the submarine always did. It wanted no argument
with a ship which could see it under water, could out-run it,
and might plunk a bomb alongside before its presence was even
suspected.

Airships did get their subs during the war. The records, always
incomplete in the case of submarines, whose casualties were invisible,
show that British blimps sighted 49 U-boats, led to the destruction
of 27. But their greater usefulness lay in the fact that their
mere presence sent the underseas craft scuttling for submerged
safety.

Between June, 1917, and the end of the war British blimps flew
1,500,000 miles, nearly as many as the Zeppelins. A French Commission
made an exhaustive study of dirigible operations after the
war, and the late Rear Admiral W. A. Moffett quoted from its reports
in summarizing lighter-than-air lessons taken from the war,
when he told the Naval Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives
that “as far as they could learn, no steamer was ever
molested by submarines when escorted by a non-rigid airship.”

France and Italy had long coast lines, used the blimps extensively
along the Bay of Biscay, the Mediterranean and the Adriatic,
but England found still greater use for them because it was an
island. So blimp scouts played a singularly useful role from Land’s
End to the Orkneys, stood watch at the mouth of the Firth of
Forth, the Solway, the Humber, and the Thames.

CHAPTER III

American Airships in Two Wars

Compared to British and French airships, American dirigibles
made a less impressive record during the first war.

This for the reasons that there were few enemy activities in
our waters until the very end, and that there were few American
airships to oppose them. Virtually the entire airship organization
had to be created after we got into the war.

Naval attachés abroad had been watching blimp operations over
the English channel, and on the basis of rather meager information
which they furnished, Navy designers were working on plans, when
the Secretary of the Navy, in February 1917, 60 days before the
declaration of war, ordered 16 blimps started at once.

Nine of these were to be built by Goodyear which had at least
given some study to the principles, had built a few balloons, one of
which, flown by its engineers out of Paris, had won the James
Gordon Bennett Cup Race.

No one in this country, however, knew much about building airships,
and less about flying them after they were built. Operating
bases would have to be built and the very construction plants as
well. The first Goodyear airship under the Navy order was completed
before the airship dock (hangar) at Wingfoot Lake was
ready, and the ship had to be erected in Chicago and flown in.

The engineers who built it, Upson and Preston, made their first
airship flight in delivering the ship to Akron, using theoretical
principles applied in the international balloon race the year before,
to make up for their lack of practical experience.

Those first ships were small, slow, lacked range, uncovered
many shortcomings. Flight training was done under adverse circumstances.
Men had to teach themselves to fly airships, then
teach others to fly them.

The pilots were chiefly engineering students from the colleges,
with a sprinkling of Navy officers. They had to take their advanced
training abroad at British and French bases, because there were no
facilities here, and in fact did most of their flying abroad. By the
end of the war American pilots were manning three British airship
bases and had taken over practically all the French operations, including
the large base at Paimboeuf, across the Loire from St.
Nazaire, on the French coast.

So the war was well along before American bases were set up
and manned. These were at Chatham, Mass., at Montauk and
Rockaway, N. Y., at Cape May, Norfolk and Key West. Like the
airplane patrols the blimps saw little action, though they had an
advantage in that they could stay out all day, while the short range
planes of 1917-18 had to come back every few hours to refuel.

A patrol airship at Chatham, Mass. missed its chance in that it
was adrift at sea with engine trouble when the German U-156
slipped into the harbor at nearby Orleans and wiped out some fishing
boats—though it might have done no better than the first
plane which reached the scene, whose few bombs did not explode.

The blimp patrols, however, uncovered one other type of activity.
More than once they spotted suspicious looking craft emerging
under cover of fog, from remote coves and inlets along the Long
Island coast, fishing boats and barges with improvised power plant
and curious looking paraphernalia on deck. Keeping the stranger
in sight the blimp summoned armored craft from shore which sent
boarding crews on, found mines destined for the New York steamship
lanes.

A more important result of the blimp operations was the improvements
in design which were found, particularly in the “C”
type ship, brought out in 1918, of which 20 were built. They had
much better performance in range, power, could make 60 miles
speed, were faster than any airships except the Zeppelins. Navy
officers and crews came to have high respect for them.

Here’s the gallant C-5, which with a bit of luck would have
been the first aircraft to cross the Atlantic. (U. S. Navy photo)

Wingfoot Lake, Akron,
was a busy place
during the first war,
as the spawning
ground of scores of
blimps, hundreds of
training and observation
balloons.

“Finger patches” of
rope ends raveled
out and cemented to
the outside of the bag
were used in 1918 to
support the weight of
the gondola—an improvised
airplane
fuselage.

During most of the period between World wars the Navy had only a few J-type ships,
but used them effectively in training and experimental work. (U. S. Navy photo)

Which led to one of the interesting aeronautic adventure stories
of the period. It happened just after the Armistice.

Men had come out of the war with imaginations afire over the
possibilities of aircraft. One challenge lay open—the Atlantic—no
one had flown it.

In the breathing spell brought by the Armistice, the British were
preparing their new Zeppelin R-34 for the crossing; two English
planes were being shipped to Newfoundland to try to fly back; the
U. S. Navy had a seaplane crossing in prospect. There was even a
German plan. A new Zeppelin had just been finished at Friedrichshafen
when the Armistice was signed, and the crew planned
to fly it to America as a demonstration—but authorities got wind of
it and blocked the venture.

But of all the Atlantic crossings about which men were dreaming
in early 1919, none is more interesting than the one projected for
the little blimps.

The C-5, newest of the non-rigid airships built for the Navy, was
stationed at Montauk, and there one night a group of officers sat
intensively studying charts and weather maps. St. John’s, Newfoundland,
1,400 miles away, would be the first leg of the trip. It
was easily within the cruising radius of the ship, particularly if they
got helping winds, which they should if the time was carefully
picked. From there to Ireland was another 1850 miles, also within
range with the prevailing westerly winds.

Permission was asked from Washington, and the Navy flashed
back its approval and its blessing, assigned five experienced
officers to the project: Lieut. Comdr. Coil, Lieuts. Lawrence,
Little, Preston, and Peck. The USS Chicago was sent ahead to St.
John’s to stand by and give any help needed.

Shortly after sunrise on May 15, 1919, motors were warmed up
and the ship shoved off from the tip of Long Island with six men
aboard headed for Newfoundland. At 7 o’clock the next morning
they circled over the deck of the Chicago, dropped their handling
lines to the waiting ground crew on a rocky point at St. John’s. The
first leg had been made in a little more than 24 hours, at an average
speed of nearly 60 miles per hour.

The morning was clear and comparatively calm. Coil and Lawrence
16
went aboard the Chicago to catch a little sleep before the final
hop over the ocean. The others saw to re-fueling the C-5, stowing
provisions aboard, topping off a bit of hydrogen from the cylinders
alongside. Mechanics swarmed over the motors. All was well.

But about 10 o’clock gusts began to sweep down from Hudson’s
Bay, dragging the ground crew over the rocks. There were no
mooring masts in those days. A modern mast would have saved
the ship. More sailors were put on the lines and word sent to Coil
and Lawrence. If the ground crew could hold the ship till the
pilots could get aboard and cut loose, the storm would give them a
flying start over the Atlantic.

But the wind blew steadily stronger as the commander was
hurrying ashore. It reached gale force, hurricane force, 40 knots, 60
knots in gusts, varying in direction crazily around a 60-degree arc.
It picked the ship up and slammed it down, damaging the fuselage,
breaking a propeller. Little and Peck climbed aboard to pull the
rip panel and let the gas out. After the storm passed, they could
cement the panel back in, reinflate the bag and go on.

But the fates were against them. The cord leading to the rip
panel broke. Desperately, the two men started climbing up the
suspension cables to the gas bag with knives, planning to rip the
panel out by hand. But a tremendous gust caught the ship, lifted
it up. Seeing the danger to the crew, Peck shouted to them to let
go, and he and Little dropped over the side. Little broke an ankle.

The ship surged upward, crewless, set off like another “Flying
Dutchman” across the Atlantic, was never seen again.

Just three days later Hawker and Grieve set out from St. John’s,
landed in the ocean. Alcock and Brown cut loose their landing gear
a month later and landed in Ireland. One of the three Navy seaplanes,
the NC-4, reached Europe on May 31 and the British
dirigible R-34 set out on July 2 for its successful round trip to
Mitchel Field.

But for a trick of fate and the lack of equipment available today,
a blimp would have been first to get across.

Many things happened in the airship field between the two wars,
but most of them affected non-rigid airships only indirectly, as the
Navy was primarily concerned with the larger rigids.

The loss of the Hindenburg by hydrogen fire (which American
helium would have prevented), coming on the heels of tragic setbacks
in this country was enough to dismay anyone except Commander
C. E. Rosendahl and his stouthearted associates at Lakehurst
Naval Air Station.

They didn’t give up. Setbacks were inevitable to progress. Count
Zeppelin had built and lost five rigid airships prior to 1909, but
he went on to build ships which were flown successfully in war and
peace. If the Germans, using hydrogen, could do this, Americans,
with helium, should not find it impossible, Lakehurst reasoned.
And if they had no rigid airships to fly and no immediate likelihood
of getting any they would use blimps.

The Navy was more familiar than the public with what the
British and French airships had accomplished in the first war.
Studying, as all Navy officers were doing in that period, the various
possibilities of attack and defense, in case the war then threatening
Europe should sweep across the Atlantic, they came to the
conclusion that the coast line of America was no more remote from
German submarines in 1938 than the coast of England was in 1914.

The airplane had improved vastly in speed, range, and striking
power, and their very multiplicity had ruled out the blimps over
the English channel, even if helium was available, but those conclusions
did not hold along the American coast.

The heroic part played by Allied blimps was a part of the legend
of the airship service. Nothing new developed in war had subtracted
anything from the ability of American airships to do in this
war what British non-rigids had done in the last. Commander J. L.
Kenworthy and after him Commander G. H. Mills as commanding
officer at Lakehurst turned to non-rigids.

Under Mills was instituted, quietly, unostentatiously, with what
ships he had, a series of practice patrols to determine the usefulness
of airships in this field, to discover and perfect technique, and
to train officers and men.

Lakehurst had a curious conglomeration of airships to start
with. There were two J ships of immediate post-war type, with
open cockpits, 210,000 cubic feet capacity; two TC ships, inherited
from the Army, of more modern design, and larger size; the ZMC2,
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an experimental job built to study the use of a metal cover, and
about to be scrapped after nine years of existence; the L-1, the
same size as the Goodyear ships, 123,000 cubic feet, the first modern
training ship, which would be joined later by the L-2 and L-3;
the G-1, a larger trainer of Goodyear Defender size, useful for
group instruction, and the 320,000 cubic foot K-1, which had been
built for experiments in the use of fuel gas. Only the K-2, prototype
of the 416,000 cubic foot patrol ships later ordered could be
called a modern airship, though the Army dirigibles also had good
cruising radius.

Yet with this curious assortment of airships of various sizes,
types and ages, the Navy carried on practice patrols covering the
areas between Montauk and the Virginia Capes, flying day after
day, built an impressive accumulation of flight data, missed very
few days on account of weather, made it a point not to miss a
rendezvous with the surface fleet. More than any one thing it was
this demonstration, over an 18-month period, which led to the
revival of an airship program in this country, the ordering of ships
and land bases.

Let us see what a blimp patrol is like. The airship can fly up to
65 knots or better, but this is no speed flight. The motors are
throttled down to 40 knots, so that the crew may see clearly, take
its time, study the moving surface underneath, scrutinize every
trace of oil smear on the surface, alert for the tell-tale “feather” of
the submarine’s wake, air bubbles, a phosphorescent glow at
night, for even a bit of debris which might conceal a periscope.

A school of whales, a lone hammerhead shark on the surface or
submerged stirs the interest of the patrol, offers a tempting live
target for the bombs,—light charges with little more powder than
a shot gun shell uses. Now a ship records a direct hit on a shark’s
back 500 feet below. He shakes his head, dives to escape this unseen
enemy aloft. The airship gives chase, follows the moving
shadow below, so strikingly resembling a submarine, finds the
practice useful.

Of the crew of eight, everyone on the airship is on watch, with
an observation tower open on all sides, without interference of
wings, as in the airplane. Compared with surface craft, the airship
19
can patrol more area in a dawn to dusk patrol because of its speed
and its wide range of unbroken observation.

The submarine is more efficient in relatively shallow depths, but
airships have spotted the silhouetted shadow of U-boats in clear
water as deep as 70 feet below the surface. The submarine will
attempt to maneuver within a mile of its target to launch its torpedoes
effectively. But even at a mile away the ten inches of periscope
which projects above the surface is difficult for other craft to
detect,—either for a cruiser at sea level, or an airplane, flying at
relatively high speed, a threat either may miss.

Airship crews are at action stations even during peace time, on
the alert against the appearance of strange craft. They identify
each passing ship through binoculars, by voice or radio, taking no
chances that attack without warning by a seeming peaceful ship
might not be a declaration of war. As many as 40 or 50 ships may
be encountered and identified in a day’s patrol. The airships are
off at sun-up, back at sundown, unless on more extended reconnaissance,
move quietly into the big dock.

Patrol is tedious work. Occasionally there is a break in the routine.
Lt. Boyd has been assigned command of the big TC-14 for
the next day’s patrol. He is up late studying the curious tracks he
is to follow in coordination with the other airships. At midnight
however the radio brings startling word. An airplane leaving
Norfolk with a crew of ten for Newport, is reported missing.
Nearby destroyers, airplanes, airships, are ordered out as a searching
party. The TC-14, having the longest cruising radius, 52 hours
without refueling, is sent off at once, with a senior officer, Lt.
Trotter, in charge. Men’s lives may be at stake.

By daylight, the TC-14 has flown over the entire northern half
of the plane’s track and back, watching intently for distress signals
or flares or any sign of the distressed plane. Three miles north of
Hog Island light outside Norfolk, the ship encounters fog extending
clear to the water. Search of this area is hopeless and the ship
scouts the edges, waits for the fog to burn off. At noon as it lifts,
pieces of wreckage are spotted at the very area which it had hidden,
and which the TC-14 had flown over five hours earlier.

The airship cruised around, hoping that some bit of wreckage
20
might support a survivor, finally returned to its station after 20
hours, during which time it had covered 1,000 miles, intensively
in parallel courses 20 miles wide. Had the luckless plane or any
of its crew been able to send up flares anywhere within an area of
20,000 square miles of water, the airship could have come up
alongside and effected a rescue in a matter of minutes.

In the meantime, Lt. Boyd, originally assigned to TC-14, was
up at dawn only to learn of the change in plans. He was assigned
to pilot the smaller G-1 trainer to New London, keep a sharp
look-out enroute for the missing plane, then work with the destroyers
on torpedo exercises. The G-1 had no galley aboard and
in the rush the matter of food for an 18-hour cruise was somehow
overlooked, and Boyd and his crew set off with only a couple of
sardine sandwiches apiece and a pot of coffee, which quickly
grew cold.

Late in the afternoon, seeing his crew growing hungrier and
hungrier,—for airshipping is excellent for the appetite,—Boyd
had an idea. He radioed the Destroyer Division Commander:
“After last torpedo recovered, would you be able to furnish us
with some hot coffee and a loaf of bread, if we lower a container
on a 200-foot line across your after deck?”

Never in naval history had an airship borrowed chow from a
surface craft. But the answer came promptly. “Affirmative. Do
you wish cream and sugar?”

There was nothing in the books giving the procedure for borrowing
a meal from the air, but the crew rigged up a line from a target
sleeve reel, fastened a hook with a quick release at the end, attached
a monkey wrench to weight it down, stood by for the word
to come alongside.

Then while the crews of three destroyers watched, the G-1
swung slowly over the destroyer’s deck. One sailor caught the line
held it while a second filled the coffee pot, and a third attached a
load of sandwiches. Then the airship sailors hauled away, radioed
their thanks, set off for the 200 mile trip back to Lakehurst, while
hundreds of sailors below waved their white caps and cheered, a
little inter-ship courtesy between sky and sea which all hands will
long remember.

CHAPTER IV

The Beginnings of Flight

In the spring of 1783, as the American Revolution was nearing
a successful conclusion, two brothers named Montgolfier sitting
before a fire at a little town in France found themselves
wondering why smoke went up into the air.

That was just as foolish as Newton wondering why an apple,
detached from the tree, fell down. Smoke had always gone up and
apples had always come down. That was all there was to it.

But when men wonder momentous events may be in the making.
In these instances epochal discoveries resulted: the law of gravitation
and the possibility of human flight.

The legends of Icarus and the narrative of Darius Green are
symbols of the long ambition of earth-bound men, even before the
days of recorded history, to leave the earth and soar into the air.
The Montgolfiers had found the key.

But a hundred years would pass before the discovery would be
put to use. It was in 1903 that another pair of brothers, the Wrights,
made their first flight from Kill Devil Hill in North Carolina. The
first Zeppelin took off from the shores of Lake Constance in 1900.

The Montgolfiers wasted no time testing out their conclusion
that smoke rose because it was lighter than the air. They built a
great paper bag 35 feet high, hung a brazier of burning charcoal
under it, and off it went. Annonnay is a small town but the story
of that miracle spread far and wide. The Academy of Science
invited them to the capital to repeat the experiment.

But while they were building a new bag a French physicist,
22
Prof. J. A. C. Charles, stole a march on them. He knew that hydrogen
was also lighter than air, so constructed a bag of silk, inflated
it with hydrogen, sent it aloft before the Montgolfiers were
ready.

Still the countrymen were not to lose their hour of glory. Merely
to repeat what had already been done was not enough. Their balloon
was to be flown from the grounds of the Palace of Versailles,
before the king and court and all the great folk of Paris, with half
the people of the city craning their necks to watch it pass over. So
they loaded aboard a basket containing a sheep, a duck and a
rooster, and these three became aircraft’s first passengers.

When the U. S. Army Air Corps years later sought an appropriate
insignia for its lighter-than-air division, it could think of nothing
more fitting than a design which included a rooster, a duck
and a sheep.

Everyone was ready for the next step. A French judge had the
solution. He offered the choice to several prisoners awaiting execution—a
balloon flight or the guillotine. Two volunteered, felt they
had at least a chance with the balloon, whereas the guillotine was
distressingly final. They had nothing to lose. That word rang
through Paris. A young gallant named De Rozier objected.

“The chance might succeed,” he said. “The honor of being the
first man to fly should not go to a convict, but to a gentleman of
France. I offer my life.”

Even the king protested at this needless risk, but De Rozier took
off the following month, flew half way over Paris, landed safely.
This happened on Nov. 21, 1783.

Among the witnesses to these experiments was Benjamin Franklin,
the American ambassador, himself a scientist of no small
renown. He predicted great things for aeronautics.

“But of what use is a balloon?” asked a practical-minded friend.

“Of what use,” replied the American, “is a baby?”

A little later, on January 7, 1785, Jean Pierre Francois Blanchard,
a Frenchman, and Dr. John Jeffries, an American, practicing
medicine in England, inflated a balloon, took off from the cliffs of
Dover at one o’clock in the afternoon, arrived safely in Calais
three hours later.

Santos Dumont startled Paris in 1910, when he let an American girl fly one of his airships
over the city. To descend she threw her weight forward, to climb she moved back a step.

A dramatic meeting of two rivals for the honor of making the first Atlantic crossing. The
Navy’s NC flying boats and the non-rigid C-5, photographed shortly before their take-off.

Blimps too may use masts aboard surface ships as anchorage point on long cruises, as the U.S.S.
Los Angeles successfully demonstrated when moored to the U.S.S. Patoka. (U. S. Navy photo)

The Army’s TC-7 demonstrates the first airplane pick-up at Dayton. Army pilots found that at
flying speed the plane weighed nothing, was sustained by dynamic forces. (U. S. Army photo)

Flight was here, though it would be a long time becoming practical.
Dr. Charles and many others contributed, even at that early
day. Knowing that hydrogen expanded as the air pressure grew
less, at higher altitudes, Charles devised a valve at the top of the
balloon, so that the surplus gas could be released, not burst the
balloon. He devised a net from which the basket could be suspended,
distributing its load over the entire bag.

The drag rope was evolved, an ingenious device to stabilize the
balloon’s flight in unstable air. If the balloon tended to rise it
would have to carry the entire weight of the rope. If it grew sluggish
and drifted low, it had less weight to carry, as much of the
rope now lay on the ground. These ballooning principles, early
found, are still in use. But the “dirigible” balloon, or airship must
wait for light weight, dependable motors, despite the hundreds of
ingenious experiments made by men over a full century.

Since this is an airship story, we should first make clear the difference
between the airship and the airplane.

The French hit on an apt phrase to distinguish them, dividing
aircraft into those which are lighter than the air, such as airships,
and those which are heavier than the air, like airplanes.

Airships are literally lighter than air. So are all free balloons,
used for training and racing, and all anchored balloons, such as
the observation balloon widely used in the last war and the barrage
balloons of the present war.

The airship goes up and stays up because the buoyancy given by
its lifting gas makes it actually lighter than the air it displaces, and
even with the load of motors, fuel, equipment and passengers,
must still use ballast to hold it in equilibrium.

The airplane, on the other hand, is heavier than the air. Even
the lightest plane can stay up only if it is moving fast enough to get
a lifting effect from the movement of air along the wings, similar
to that which makes a kite stay up. A kite may be flown in calm
weather only if the one who holds the cord keeps running. On a
windy day, the kite may be anchored on the ground, and the
movement of the wind alone will have sufficient lifting effect. So
powerful are these air forces that a plane weighing 20 tons may
climb to an altitude of 10,000 feet if its speed is great enough, and
24
its area of wing surface broad enough to produce this kiting effect.

But an airplane can remain aloft only as long as it is moving
faster than a certain minimum speed. Cut the motors, or even
throttle down below this stalling speed, and the plane will start
earthward.

The airship needs its motors only to propel it forward. It can
cut its speed, even stop its engines, and nothing happens. It retains
its buoyancy, continues to float. The airplane’s lift is dynamic,
that of the airship is static.

The airship has some dynamic lift, also, because its horizontal
fins or rudders, and the body of the airship have some kiting effect
in flight. The blimp pilot, starting on a long trip, will fill up his
tanks with all the fuel the ship can lift statically, then take on
another 2,000 pounds, taxi across the airport till he gets flying
speed and so get under way with many more miles added to his
cruising speed.

This dynamic lift however, while useful in certain operations is
still incidental. Primarily the airship gets its lift from the fact that
the gas in the envelope is much lighter than the air.

Hydrogen is only one-fifteenth the weight of air, helium, the
non-inflammable American gas, is a little heavier, about one-seventh.
The practical lift is 68 pounds to the thousand cubic feet
of hydrogen, 63 pounds in the case of helium.

Lighter-than-air ships are of three classes, rigid, semi-rigid and
non-rigid. The rigid airship has a complete metal skeleton, which
gives the ship strength and shape. Into the metal frame of the
rigid airship are built quarters, shops, communication ways, even
engine rooms in the case of the Akron and Macon, with only the
control car, fins, and propellers projecting outside the symmetrical
hull. The lifting gas is carried in a dozen or more separate gas
cells, nested within the bays of the ship.

The non-rigid airship has no such internal support. The bag
keeps its taut shape only from the gas and air pressure maintained
within. Release the gas and the bag becomes merely a flabby mass
of fabric on the hangar floor. Ship crews do not live in the balloon
section, but in the control car below.

The British, apt at nicknames, differentiated between the two
25
types of airships by calling them “rigid” and “limp” types, and
since an early “Type B” was widely used in the first World War,
quickly contracted “B, limp” into the handier word “Blimp.”

The third type, semi-rigid, has a metal keel extending the length
of the ship, to which control surfaces and the car are attached, and
with a metal cone to stiffen the bow section.

The rigid ship is of German origin. Developed by Count Zeppelin,
retired army officer, and largely used by that nation during
the war of 1914-18, it was taken up after the war started, by the
British and Americans, and to a small extent later by France and
Italy.

Non-rigid ships were widely used by the British and French, to a
less extent by Italy and United States.

The intermediate semi-rigid was largely Italian and French in
war use, though United States bought one ship after the war from
the Italians, built one itself. The Germans also built smaller
Parseval semi-rigids.

The rigid airships are the largest, the non-rigids smallest. The
rigid has to be large to hold enough gas to lift its metal frame
along with the load of fuel, oil, crew, supplies, passengers and
cargo. The blimps can be much smaller.

The Army’s first airship, built by Major Tom Baldwin, old time
balloonist, had 19,500 cubic feet capacity. Goodyear’s pioneer
helium ship “Pilgrim” had 51,000 cubic feet. These contrast with
the seven million feet capacity of the Hindenburg, and the ten
million cubic feet of ships projected for the future.

The following table will show the range of sizes:

The Akron and Macon were 785 feet in length, the K type non-rigid,
250 feet long, the Navy “L’s” 150 feet long.

Let’s cut back now to the Montgolfiers. Progress was disappointingly
slow. The simple balloon would only go up and down,
and in the direction of the wind. Before it could be practical, men
must be able to drive it wherever they liked, make it dirigible, or
directable.

Ingenious men, Meusnier, Giffard, Tissandier, Renard, Krebs,
many others worked over that problem through the entire nineteenth
century. They devised ballonets or air compartments to
keep the pressure up. They built airships of cylinder shape, spindle
shape, torpedo shape, airships shaped like a cigar, like a string
bean, like a whale. But the stumbling block remained, the need of
an efficient power plant.

The steam engine was dependable, but once you had installed
firebox, boiler and cord wood aboard, there was little if any lift
remaining for crew or cargo. Giffard in 1852 built an ingenious
small engine using steam but it still weighed 100 pounds per
horsepower, drove the ship at a speed of only three miles an hour.
Automobile engines today weigh as little as six pounds per horsepower,
modern airplane engines one pound per horsepower.

Man experimented with feather-bladed oars, with a screw propeller,
turned by hand, using a crew of eight men. Haenlein, German,
built a motor that would use the lifting gas from the ship—coal
gas or hydrogen. Rennard in 1884 built an electric motor,
taking power from a storage battery.

But real progress would have to wait for the discovery of petroleum
in Pennsylvania and the invention of the internal combustion
engine. When the gasoline engine came in, in the 90’s, the
dirigible builders saw the long sought key to their problem.

While Count Zeppelin was experimenting with his big ships in
Germany, Lebaudy, Juliot, Clement Bayard in France and most
conspicuously the young Brazilian, Santos Dumont, were working
with the smaller dirigibles. Santos Dumont built 14 airships in
the first decade of the century, brought the attention of the world
to this project. He won a 100,000 franc prize in 1901 for flying
across Paris to circle Eiffel Tower and return to his starting point—and
gave the money to the Paris poor.

The Wright Brothers made their historic flight at Kitty Hawk,
in 1903, opening a different field of experiment. France pushed
both lines of research. After Santos Dumont’s dirigible flight,
Bleriot started from the little town of Toury in an airplane, flew
to the next town and back, a distance of 17 miles, making only two
en route stops,—and the town erected a monument to him.

In 1909, Bleriot flew a plane across the English Channel and in
the following year the airship Clement Bayard II duplicated the
feat, carrying a crew of seven, made the 242 miles to London in
six hours.

The year 1910 was a momentous one for all aircraft, with France
as the world center. Bleriot and Farman, Frenchmen, Latham,
British, the Wrights and Curtiss, Americans, broke records almost
daily at a big meet in August that year, while at longer range the
French and English dirigibles and the Parsevals of Germany, and
still more important the great Zeppelins at Lake Constance
droned the news of a new epoch.

A young American engineer, P. W. Litchfield, attended the
Paris meet, saw these wonders, made notes. He stopped in Scotland
on his way back, bought a machine for spreading rubber on
fabric, hired the two men tending it (those men, Ferguson and
Aikman, were still at their posts in Akron thirty odd years later),
hired two young technical graduates on his return, tied in the
fortunes of his struggling company with what he believed was a
coming industry.

The next five years would see the nations of the world bending
their efforts toward perfecting these vehicles of flight,—little realizing
they were building a combat weapon which would revolutionize
warfare.

CHAPTER V

Effect on Aeronautics of Post-War Reaction

Development of non-rigid airships slowed down after
the impetus of the war had spent itself, as was the case
in aeronautics generally and in all defense efforts.

With the Armistice of November, 1918, the world was through
with war. Men relaxed and reaction set in. There would not be
another major war in a hundred years. Well-meaning people
everywhere grasped at the straw of universal peace, of negotiated
settlement of difficulties between nations, of disarmament of military
forces to the point of being little more than an international
police force. Germany, the trouble-maker, had been disarmed and
handcuffed, would make no more trouble. The world, breathing
freely after four years, wanted only to be left alone.

Today with major countries striving feverishly to build guns and
navies, it is hard to believe that naïve nations were scrapping ships
only a few years ago and pledging themselves to limit future building.
No one in the immediate post-war era could believe that men
must prepare for another war, an all-out war more terrible and
ruthless than men had known,—one which would send flame-spitting
machines down from the air and through woods and
fields, against which conventional foot soldiers would be as helpless
as if they carried bows and arrows. Wishing only to live at
peace with other nations, we could conceive no need to make
defense preparation against frightfulness.

Congress was divided between “big navy men” and “little navy
men,” and generals and admirals who brought in programs for expansion
or even reasonable maintenance were shouted down. The
public was in no mood to listen.

If the usefulness of the Army and Navy was discounted during
this period, more so was the rising new Air Force. Few were interested
in airplanes, and these chiefly wartime pilots, who sought
to keep aviation alive, made a precarious living flying wartime
“Jennies” and “Standards” out of cow pastures, carrying passengers
at a dollar a head, or how much have you. The word “haywire”
came into the language, as they made open-air repairs to
wings and fuselage with baling wire.

Lighter-than-air had no Rickenbackers or Richthofens to point
to, but got some advantage during this period from the activities
of the Shenandoah, completed in 1923, and the Los Angeles, delivered
in 1924. These ships could not be regarded as military
craft, carried no arms. The Shenandoah was experimental, based
on a 1916 design. The Los Angeles was technically a commercial
ship, with passenger accommodations built in, could be used only
for training.

This grew out of the fact that the Allies planned to order the
Zeppelin works at Friedrichshafen torn down but had held up
the order long enough for it to turn out one more ship. This last
ship would be given to United States in lieu of the Zeppelin this
country would have received from Germany, if the airship crews,
like those of the surface fleet, had not scuttled their craft after the
Armistice, to keep them from falling into enemy hands. The Allies
stipulated that the Los Angeles should carry no armament. It took
a specific waiver from them for the ship to take part several years
later in fleet maneuvers.

Other airship activities in this country were at a minimum.
The blimps, little heard of in this country during War I, remained
in the background. A joint board of the two services gave the
Navy responsibility for developing rigid airships, the Army to take
non-rigids and semi-rigids. The Navy maintained a few post-war
blimps for training, had little funds except for maintenance.

The Army, having Wright Field to do its engineering and experimental
30
work, fared somewhat better, carried on a training and
something of a development program. It built bases at Scott Field,
Ill., and Langley Field, Va., ordered one or two non-rigid ships a
year, purchased a semi-rigid ship from Italy, ordered another, the
RS-1, from Goodyear, operated it successfully.

The Army’s non-rigids, however, were overshadowed by the
Navy’s rigids and even more by its own airplanes, with the result
finally that the Chief of the Air Corps, Major General O. O.
Westover, a believer in lighter-than-air, an airship as well as airplane
pilot, and a former winner of the James Gordon Bennett
cup in international balloon racing, told Congress bluntly that
there was no point in dragging along, that unless funds were appropriated
for a real airship program the Army might as well
close up shop. And this step Congress, in the end, took, and the
Army blimps and equipment were transferred to the Navy, and
the experimental program started by the one service was carried
on by the other.

The rigid ships were in more favorable position because they
seemed to have commercial possibilities, and it was the long-range
policy of the government to aid transportation. Government support
to commercial airships could be justified under the policy by
which the government gave land grants to the railways, built
highways for the automobile, deepened harbors and built lighthouses
for the steamships, laid out airports for planes, gave airmail
contracts to keep the U. S. merchant flag floating on the high seas
and air routes open over land.

On this theory Navy airships, even though semi-military, got
some support during the reaction period, because they might blaze
a trail later for commercial lines—which, with ships and crews
and terminals, would be available in emergency as a secondary
line of defense, like the merchant marine.

The little non-rigid blimps remained the neglected Cinderellas
of post-war days.

The Goodyear Company at Akron, which had built 1000 balloons
of all types and 100 airships during and after the war,
stepped into the picture during this period with a modest program
of its own. The first of the Goodyear fleet, the pioneer, helium-inflated
Pilgrim, now in the Smithsonian Institute, was built in
1925.

The Atlantic crossing of the Graf Zeppelin in 1928 and its round-the-world flight in
the following year gave new stimulus to all aeronautics. With a relatively tiny
Goodyear blimp as escort, the Graf lands at Los Angeles after crossing the Pacific.

At Lakehurst the Graf tries
out the “Iron Horse,” the U.S.
Navy’s mobile mooring mast,
finds it highly useful, utilized
masting equipment thereafter
to compile an unusual
record for regularity of departures,
even under highly
unfavorable weather conditions.
(U. S. Navy photo)

The U.S.S. Akron, first result growing out of renewed interest in aeronautics after the reaction
period, goes on the mast inside the Goodyear air dock, prior to leaving for her trial flights.

No large ground crews are needed with the mobile mast. Even the mighty Akron swings around
easily at anchorage, heads into the wind like a weather vane, its control car resting on the ground.

In building this ship, Mr. Litchfield and his company indicated
their belief in the value of big airships for trans-oceanic travel, for
which the blimps would provide inexpensive training for pilots,
and experience in operating under varying weather conditions.

The Pilgrim, the Puritan, the Vigilant, the Mayflower and the
rest of the Goodyear fleet which followed—named after cup defenders
in international yacht racing—would also uncover during
the course of day-after-day operations, improvements in ships and
operating technique, which would be available to its customers,
the Army and Navy.

In building its own ships, Goodyear was following the tradition
of American industry, which does not sit back and merely build
goods to order, but has sought by developing better goods to
anticipate and stimulate customer demand. In the automobile industry,
for example, self-starters, closed cars, steel bodies, balloon
tires, streamlining, and the rest were initiated by industry to increase
public acceptance and further popularize the automobile.
By building its own airships and flying them, Goodyear hoped to
expand the market for military and commercial airships.

The doldrum period, which made progress difficult, came to an
end with dramatic suddenness. In the year 1927 a youthful pilot
flew an airplane, alone, across the Atlantic ocean, and in the following
year a middle-aged scientist made a round trip from
Europe to America by airship, with 24 people aboard. The imagination
of America and the world took fire. Aeronautics started
anew.

Perhaps no events in years have appealed so fully to the public
consciousness or had such dynamic effects. Almost from the day of
Lindbergh’s flight and the Graf Zeppelin’s arrival at Lakehurst,
aeronautical engineers found themselves with money to spend in
research and machinery. Airports unrolled across the carpet of
America, night lighting came in, pilots became business men, appropriations
were rushed through Congress, state assemblies, and
city councils, and aeronautics became Big Business almost over
night. The period of inaction and of reaction was over.

CHAPTER VI

Airship Improvements Between Wars

The wartime airship was a cigar-shaped gas bag with an
airplane cockpit, open to the weather, slung below. The
contrast between it and the sleek, fast, streamlined Navy
airship of today is almost as striking as that between wartime
planes and automobiles and modern ones.

Many improvements have been made, even though the airship
has not had the experience of building thousands of units, as the
automobile and airplane have had, or ample funds for research
and experiment. Less than 150 non-rigid airships have been built
all told since 1914.

The “B” type blimp, chiefly used in the World War, contained
80,000 cubic feet of hydrogen, though some British and French
non-rigids were built in larger sizes, and the United States Navy
“C” ships, toward the end of the war, had 200,000 cubic feet of
lifting gas. These compare with the 416,000 cubic feet of helium in
the new Navy “K” ships. Speed, under the pressure of war needs
moved up from 47 miles in the “B” to close to 60 in the “C,” but
is around 80 in today’s “K” ships.

Wartime ships carried three to five men and a day’s fuel. Today’s
carry eight or ten, enough pilots, radio men, navigators,
riggers and mechanics for two full watches, though normally
everyone is on duty during patrols. The “B” was good for perhaps
900 miles, the “K” for well over twice that distance.

Wartime ships had to keep the control car well away from the
bag to prevent sparks from igniting the hydrogen gas. A windshield
was the pilot’s only protection from the elements. Modern
ships, using non-inflammable helium, have closed cars, streamlined
into the bag, ample room for navigation and radio, sleeping
and eating quarters, even a photographic dark room, can be
heated and noise-proofed.

Early airships were pulled down and held by a large ground
crew, a pneumatic bumper bag on the car cushioning its landing.
Today’s ships land on a swiveled wheel, roll up to a mast—or taxi
off across the airport like an airplane and take off.

These, however, are merely flight factors. More important is it
that the wartime blimp was to a large extent hangar-bound. It
could go no further from its base than it could safely return before
its fuel was exhausted.

Today’s ships are expeditionary craft, can go almost anywhere,
stay as long as they want. They are no longer land-bound, can be
refueled and reserviced at sea. They are much safer, rank high in
this respect among all carriers whether on land, sea or in the air.

Three independent lines of study contributed to these results,
those of the Army, Navy and Goodyear, each free to follow its own
ideas, to observe results found by the others, adopt them, use them
as starting points for further developments, or discard them.

The improvements were achieved in a relatively short period.
The army started in after the war and carried on a continuing program
till 1932. The Navy, absorbed in its rigid airships, did not get
into non-rigids till the early 1930’s. Goodyear built the Pilgrim in
1925 but its development program really began with the blimp
fleet in 1929.

Noteworthy improvement was found during this period in materials,
structure, design, engines and radio communication, with
outstanding advances along three major lines.

First was increased safety, permitted by helium gas. Wartime
airships used hydrogen because it was all they had, had to develop
what protection they could against fire through construction devices
and operating technique. Hydrogen was not only inflammable,
but under certain conditions explosive. World War pilots
34
had to fly their hydrogen ships through thunder and lightning
storms, dodge inflammatory bullets if they could. Zeppelin sailors
wore felt shoes, with no nails to create a spark, used frogs for buttons,
had to guard against static.

It was a fortunate thing for the airship world when a gas was
found in 1907 in Dexter, Kansas, which would not burn. Curious
scientists, asking why, found it was helium, a gas previously identified
(in 1869) only in the rays of the sun. Helium gas is inert, refusing
to combine with any other element, does not deteriorate
metal or fabric. It was not much heavier than hydrogen, the
lightest of all gases, so proved a welcome gift to lighter-than-air.

For some reason, not explained except on the theory that Providence
takes special interest in America, helium has been found in
quantity only in this country. It is a component, present to the
extent of two or three percent in certain natural gas, though
ranging as high as eight or ten percent in favored areas. It can be
separated by compression and liquefaction from the natural
gas,—which is that much improved by the removal of the non-inflammable
content.

The world’s chief known supply of helium lies in certain sections
of Texas, Kansas, Colorado and Utah. More important, United
States is the only country having great pipe lines, can distribute
natural gas from Texas to cities as far away as Kansas City, St.
Louis and Chicago. Without such a market operators would have
to separate and release the 95% of natural gas to get the 5% of
helium, and costs would be still higher.

Helium is perhaps the most useful of the few natural monopolies
given to this country.

It was only toward the end of the World War, however, that
Army engineers worked out a process of separating helium from
natural gas. A plant was built at Fort Worth and the first cylinders
of helium had reached New Orleans ready for shipment to France
to inflate observation balloons when the Armistice was signed.

Army, Navy and Bureau of Mine engineers worked thereafter to
increase production and cut costs, but as late as 1925 Will Rogers
called attention to the fact that the Navy had not been able to get
enough helium to supply both the Shenandoah and the Los
35
Angeles at the same time. If one was using the helium the other
had to stay home. Two ships, and only one set of helium, he
commented.

The use of helium cut the casualty list on the Shenandoah,
would have saved the Hindenburg. Non-rigid airships have had
no fire or explosive accidents since helium came into use as the
lifting gas.

It was the loss by a hydrogen fire of the Italian-built Roma,
after it struck a high tension line at Langley Field in February,
1922, which fixed the policy of “helium only” for U. S. Army and
Navy airships. The Army’s C-7 was the first airship to use helium.
In building the Pilgrim in 1925, Goodyear followed the same
policy—even though it had to pay $125 a thousand cubic feet for
helium while it could have obtained hydrogen for $5 per thousand.

Further improvements and increasing volume of production
brought the cost down in time from $125 to less than $20, and helium
expense became relatively unimportant in providing safety
for Goodyear’s airship operations.

Important too during this period was the Army’s development
of tank cars for transporting helium. A large item of helium expense
was freight, the cost of hauling 130 pound metal containers
which held 170 to 200 cu. ft. of the gas. It took 250 such containers
to inflate Goodyear’s smallest ship, the Pilgrim. The tank cars hold
200,000 cu. ft. of gas, almost enough to inflate two Goodyear
airships.

Experiments with specially woven fabric and the use of synthetic
rubber cut down the losses resulting from diffusion, and
where formerly it was necessary to remove the helium and purify
it every six months, diffusion losses were cut to one or two per cent
a month, with purification needed only every other year.

In addition to increasing safety, helium permitted improvements
in airship design. The wartime craft had its control cars suspended
by cables from finger patches cemented to the outside of
the bag. But with helium ships the car could be built into the bag,
attached by an internal catenary suspension system to the top of
the gas section. Each exposed suspension cable, no matter how
small, creates parasitic resistance from the air, so that the removal
36
of yards of steel and rope had the result of increasing the speed of
the ship with the same horsepower.

The second set of major improvements centers around the mooring
mast. The mooring mast idea was not new. The British had
built the first ones during the World War for its large rigid ships,
found that a ship attached to it would swing easily, like a weather
vane, continuing to point into the wind, and that a well streamlined
ship would hold securely even in winds of great velocity.

When Alfred E. Smith ordered a mooring mast built on top the
Empire State building, it was with the assurance from his engineers
that even with the tugging of the 150-ton Graf Zeppelin, the strain
would be little more than the normal push of the wind against the
building itself, that the added stresses would be negligible.

The Germans had had little occasion to use mooring masts.
Friedrichshafen, where most of the Zeppelins were built, lay in a
natural bowl, well protected from the winds, and ships could take
off and land, be walked in or out of the hangar with little risk from
the weather.

Lakehurst, on the other hand, lay in an exposed position, in the
path of coast-wise storms, a frequent battle-ground between onshore
winds from the ocean and storms breaking over the mountains
from the west. A study made later to determine bases for projected
American passenger operations showed that of weather conditions
prevailing between Boston and the Virginia Cape, those at
Lakehurst were almost the most unfavorable.

Four stages in the evolution of the mooring
mast. At the outset large ground
crews held the ship on the ground.

Then a stub mast was placed atop a
truck, to hold the ship on the ground,
maneuver it in or out of the dock.

A high mast, made in sections, can be
erected anywhere, anchored by guy
wires, holds the airship securely
against winds of gale force.

The little brother of the “Iron Horse”,
which will receive the largest of the
new Navy blimps, maneuver them on
the field.

People knew little about airship operating when the Navy base
was moved from Pensacola to Lakehurst on a waste site in the
Jersey pine lands which the Army no longer needed after the war
as a proving ground for its artillery.

This defect proved an advantage. The Navy was forced by the
very nature of things to concentrate on a problem which had been
no problem to Doctor Eckener and his associates. At the urging of
Admiral Moffett, Commander Garland Fulton, Lieutenant Commander
C. E. Rosendahl and others, Navy engineers built a high
mast, 180 feet tall, following British practice, with a service elevator
inside, then tackled the problem of keeping the ship on even
keel against up and down gusts. Since the wind does not come out
of the ground, a low mast was suggested, half the height of the ship,
so that when anchored the ship would all but rest on the ground.
The Navy was working on this when an incident happened to
strengthen the argument.

The co-incidence of a wind shift, and rising temperatures one
afternoon as the Los Angeles was resting comfortably at anchorage,
started the tail rising, and it continued to rise till it reached almost
90 degrees. Then the ship turned gently on its swivel, and descended
easily on the other side, with no more damage than some
broken china in the galley. Still a 700-foot airship has no business
doing head-stands, so the low mast development was rushed
through. It proved successful.

The next step was to make the low mast mobile, so that it could
not only hold the ship on the ground but take it in and out of the
hangar. First of these was Lakehurst’s famous “iron horse,” a giant
38
motor-driven tripod, which rolled out on the airport, hauling incoming
ships into the hangar, took advantage of daylight calms to
take ships out into the field ahead of time so as to be ready to leave
on schedule.

On the Graf Zeppelin’s trip around the world in 1929, hangars
were available for fueling stops at Lakehurst, Friedrichshafen, and
curiously enough in Japan, a German shed turned over to the Nipponese
after the 1918 Armistice, having been re-erected at Tokio.
There was none however on the American West Coast to house the
ship after its long trip across the Pacific. So the Navy, under direction
of Lieutenant Commander T. G. W. Settle, hauled a mast up
to Los Angeles from San Diego (it had been erected there for the
Shenandoah’s flight around the rim of the country in 1923) anchored
it with guy wires. It served the purpose perfectly.

The Germans, skeptical at first, became convinced of the value
of the mast, themselves erected masts at Frankfort, and Seville, at
Pernambuco and Rio de Janiero, used them as terminals.

Once the masting technique had been worked out, the Graf Zeppelin
and the Hindenburg, in the years 1930-6, made a record of
regularity which no other vehicle of transportation has approached.
They took off at times over the ocean for Europe when all other
aircraft in the area was grounded, when the fog hid the entire top
half of the ship, and the ship disappeared into the fog within a few
seconds after the “Up Ship” signal was given. What few delays appear
on the record were due to waiting for connecting airplanes to
arrive with the latest European mail for the Americas.

So far the use of masts had been entirely a matter for the large
rigid airships. The Army did the first development work on high
and low masts for its smaller ships at Scott Field, as well as a landing
wheel for them to ride on. A situation at Akron started experimentation
along a different line. At Goodyear’s Wingfoot Lake
Field, Mr. Litchfield frowned over the expense of having a considerable
crew on hand to land and launch the blimps, with little to
do after the ship was in the air. To an Army or Navy post, with
plenty of men in training, this surplus of men was no difficulty, but
any private corporation operating passenger airship lines would
find the expense burdensome.

The Navy L-2, one of the first ships under the expanded program,
lands at Wingfoot Lake, Akron, is walked to the mooring mast.

Close-up view of engine and cowling, and swiveled landing wheel.

With a drogue or sea
anchor to hold the airship
steady, supplies or
personnel may be taken
aboard at sea.
(U. S. Navy photo)

A newly-hatched airship
breaks its shell at Akron,
will try its wings then join
the Navy.

He put the question to his men in 1930, offering cash prizes for
the best solution. Out of many ideas, one clear-cut line of progress
appeared. This was to make the ground crew truck a maneuvering
base, with a mast on top, which could be folded down when not in
use. The truck then could not only hold the ship on the ground,
but guide it in and out of the hangar with more security than by
using a large number of men. Extra wheels mounted on outriggers
kept the truck from being turned over by side gusts. In succeeding
years the ground crew truck became a traveling mooring point
which could follow the ship across country, give it anchorage when
night fell, and at the same time act as a traveling supply depot,
machine shop, radio cabin, and crew quarters.

A portable mast, built in sections, high enough for ships to mast
at the nose, was the next step. It could be set up on an hour’s notice,
anchored by guy wires and screw stakes for more extended
operations. Gradually the airship became independent of the
hangar, came to use it only for overhaul and the purification of its
helium gas. The blimp could be fueled and serviced completely in
the open.

Lacking a dock in San Francisco, at the time of the Exposition
in 1939, the Goodyear blimp Volunteer moved up from Los
Angeles, based on a mast for five months. The only time it sought
shelter was when a splinter from the propeller pierced the bag,
causing a leak. The ship flew 60 miles down the bay to the Navy
base at Sunnyvale, like a boy coming in from play to have a splinter
removed from his finger, went back again, didn’t even stay over
night.

In the winter of 1940-41 the “Reliance” which had been spending
its winters in Miami, using a wartime Navy hangar which the
city had moved up from Key West, found that building commandeered
for defense work. So a mast was set up on the Causeway,
and the ship operated with no other home than that for six
months, saw no shelter from the time it left Wingfoot Lake in early
December till it returned at the end of May.

The Navy had a different problem as it moved into the non-rigid
picture in the early 1930’s. Its problem was only incidentally
to operate away from its base at Lakehurst. Ships were getting
40
larger in size, and masts were needed where they could be moored
outdoors, or taken in and out of the hangar. The solution was a
smaller replica of the rigid airship’s “Iron Horse” except that it
moved on large rubber tires, and was towed in and out by tractor,
rather than carrying its own power plant.

A portable mast was also developed for the Navy blimps, with a
special car to haul it around. This mast could be sent to Parris
Island or some point in New England, ahead of time, set up and
used as a temporary base for radio calibrating or other missions.

Navy ships basing at Lakehurst have operated for weeks at a
time along the coast as far north as Bath, Maine, and as far south
as the Carolinas, with a portable mast as headquarters.

Utilization of the mast principle by non-rigid airships not only
greatly increased their radius of operation, and cut down landing
crews, but increased the number of operating days per month.

Pilots of early airplanes used to go out on the airport, hold up a
handkerchief, and if it fluttered, conclude it was too windy to fly.
So early airship pilots, with anemometers on the roof of the hangar
and at points over the field, judged it too risky to take the ships out
if the wind was higher than four or five miles an hour, and then
only if it was down-hangar in direction.

Modern airships lose few flying days because it is too windy to go
out. Under war conditions, when risks must be taken, which need
not be taken for passenger or training flights, very few days would
be wasted if there is military necessity for it.

Navy non-rigids miss few rendezvous with the fleet in exercises
out of Lakehurst, regardless of the weather outside.

If the portable mast revolutionized airship operations over land,
experiments started by the Navy in 1938-39, largely under the
direction of Lt. C. S. Rounds, promise to be just as important in
over-water operations. These showed that the airship could pick
up ballast from the ocean, could get fuel from a passing ship, could
change crews at sea.

Ballast is important to a vehicle which growing continuously
lighter as it uses up fuel, must still be kept in equilibrium. Transoceanic
Zeppelins, using hydrogen, had to fly high enough to
“blow off” the surplus gas once or twice during a trip to compensate
41
for the ship growing lighter. But hydrogen was cheap, and
could be manufactured as needed. American ships could not afford
to waste helium, which was a natural resource. Army and
Navy engineers had worked on this, and equipment developed
for the Akron and Macon to condense the gases from the burned
fuel was able to recover more than 100 pounds of water ballast for
every 100 pounds of fuel used.

The blimps didn’t use these since they ordinarily would not be
out for more than a day at a time, still a ready source of ballast
would make it unnecessary to valve helium on long flights.

Ironically enough a whole ocean full of ballast lay below seagoing
airships, but no practical method had been devised to take
the sea water aboard until the Navy tackled the problem in 1938.

That problem may be visualized in the obvious difficulty of
maintaining physical contact between an airship and a surface
ship. The two move in different media, one influenced mostly by
the waves, the other mostly by the wind. The surface ship is moving
up and down, the airship subject to gusts which might break
the contact or thrust it violently against the masts or superstructure
of the surface ship. Servicing has been done under favorable circumstances,
but could not be relied on as standard procedure.

The solution reached was this. The pilot swings his ship down to
within 100 or 150 feet of the water, lowers a hose with a small
bronze scoop, not much wider than the hose, so as to lessen the
drag.

Twenty-five feet up from the scoop is a streamlined cylinder,
blimp shaped, carrying a small electric pump. This cylinder, nicknamed
the “fish”, has tail fins to keep it from spinning, and skims
along the surface or jumps out like a porpoise, but the scoop is far
enough behind and heavy enough to trail easily beneath the surface,
stays directly in the ship’s wake, continues without interruption
to pick up ballast for the airship above.

The whole gear weighs slightly more than 100 pounds, can pick
up water at cruising speed, can function in rough water or smooth.
The Navy J-4, chiefly used in these experiments, normally consumes
500 pounds of fuel in five hours of flying at cruising speed.
It was able to pick up that much water ballast in seven minutes.

The next step was to enable an airship to obtain fuel from a
tanker or other ship without physical contact or advance arrangements—even
from a passing merchantman. The pilot asks by radio
or voice whether the surface ship can spare some gasoline, and on
an affirmative answer, lowers or drops on his deck two rubberized
fabric spheres connected to each other by 14 feet of rope—also a
note of instructions. The smaller sphere is an ordinary air-filled
buoy, the larger, about three feet in diameter when filled, is the
fuel bag. The surface ship fills the fuel bag, then drops both bags
overboard, being careful only that they do not get tangled up.
Then the airship flies over the two bags, drops a hook between
them, hauls away, pumps the gasoline into its tanks.

The third device permits an airship to anchor in the open sea
near a surface ship to transfer crews or take on fuel and supplies.
The anchor is a cone-shaped rubberized fabric bag, ten feet long,
with a diameter of 2½ feet at the top. It is lowered 50 feet below
the airship by two cables connected with each other by rungs to
form a ladder. Half of the cables’ length is made up of heavy exerciser
cord to dampen the effect of wave movements. On top the
cone is a wire mesh cover which allows the water to pass through,
and is strong enough to act as a platform, supporting a man.

As the cone fills up the airship drops ballast till its “mooring
mast” is half submerged. The principle of the drag rope comes into
play—if the airship starts to rise it finds itself lifting an increasingly
heavier load, counteracting the rising tendency. If it starts to
settle down toward the water, the load is correspondingly lessened
and the ship grows lighter. The result is that the airship is held
highly stable, even in a rough sea. The surface ship then sends a
small boat alongside and dispatches the relief crew members or supplies,
them up and down the ladder, or uses a winch, the platform
atop the anchor serving as the operating base. This system also permits
the moving of a sick passenger ashore, or the rescue of a man
overboard.

When the airship is ready to leave its anchorage, the cone is
tipped by a line attached to the bottom, spilling the water, and
hauled aboard. The servicing ship need carry no special equipment.
The weight of cone and ladder is negligible.

By being able to pick up ballast and borrow fuel from a passing
ship, (neither airship nor surface ship need slow down for the fuel
exchange if going in the same direction) the airship greatly increases
its radius of operations.

The advantage of being able to change crews at sea may not be
quite as clear. This, however, grows out of the fact that today’s non-rigid
airship has greater endurance than the crew which flies it.
An anti-submarine, anti-mine patrol calls for constant alertness.
Reduction of vibration and noise, the use of closed cars instead of
open cockpits has lessened fatigue, enabling men to remain on duty
over longer periods than before. But obviously there are limits.

The Navy is conservative in estimating how long its new “K”
ships may stay out without refueling. Weather and the nature of
the mission will have some bearing on that, but if we assume a
cruise of 48, 60 or even 72 hours which might be done under favorable
conditions and idling the motors, we still cannot expect a
crew of men to remain vigilant and alert for that length of time.

Extra men for relief watches can be carried only at the expense
of the fuel load. However, if a fresh crew could be sent aboard every
12 hours from a nearby surface ship, along with fuel, ballast and
supplies, the blimps might operate for extended periods.

No blimps have done this. The fleet might see no need for them
to go out for long periods. However, the possibility has been established,
and might be useful in the emergencies of war, or accident.
While the primary usefulness of the blimp lies in the coastal waters,
it can go to sea if needed—and stay out—can be used in convoy
work or as a listening post.

Other improvements were uncovered during the experiments. A
sea anchor or drogue was devised to enable the airship to “lay to”
for extended periods, without consuming fuel, in case it wishes to
use its listening devices against submarines, make repairs or for
other purposes. Plans have been worked out for landing on the
water in quiet bays in calm weather, utilizing flotation gear, or a
three-point mooring to ordinary mud anchors—facilitating servicing
from nearby Coast Guard stations.

Perhaps a significant thing about these experiments is that the
principles seem applicable as well to rigid airships. The ability to
44
pick up ballast in flight may well eliminate the necessity for ballast-recovery
devices, with a substantial saving in cost, and an impressive
saving in weight.

By eliminating the heavy condensers, and translating that
weight-saving into fuel, it is estimated that the range of a ship of
the Los Angeles size could be increased by 20 percent and ships of
the Akron-Macon size by 15 percent, in the last case amounting
to 1,250 miles of additional cruising radius.

A trans-oceanic passenger airship could start out with virtually
no water ballast at all except a minimum amount for maneuvering,
use its fuel supply as ballast and pick up sea water as needed.
This could be done at 500 feet elevation, at the rate of 80 gallons a
minute, using a 30 horsepower motor, could be done in half an hour
a day. The ship need not slow down materially while doing this.

Application of this principle to military airships of the rigid type
might be still more significant. The chief use for the rigid airship
in war would seem to be as a high speed airplane carrier, whose
planes would increase many fold its own reconnaissance range,
and would be expected also to do the major part of what fighting
became necessary in case of enemy contact. The airship itself in
that situation would put more dependence on its speed of retreat
and its ability to seek cover in clouds as the submarine does
beneath the surface, than on its own machine guns and cannons.

One thing brought urgently home to us in the first weeks of the
present war is that oceans are wide, and that the movements of
even a huge enemy fleet are difficult to discover in those endless
expanses of water.

Large military airships of five or ten million cubic feet helium
capacity might prove exceedingly useful, if they were able to
operate away from their base for weeks or even months at a time,
and they might be able to do this by utilizing devices similar to
those developed for smaller non-rigids, resting on the sea in calm
waters, mooring to anchored masts they could lower into the
water, picking up fuel from tankers, getting supplies from neighboring
ships—in addition to what was carried to them from the
fleet by their own planes.

CHAPTER VII

Adventures of the Goodyear Fleet

One of the lesser romances at least of aeronautics is the story
of the Goodyear airship fleet.

There is thrill and adventure in the narrative, daring
and resourcefulness, hazards faced by men who believed in their
craft—chances which were usually won. So this chapter might well
be dedicated to Airship Captain Charles Brannigan and Balloon
Pilot Walter Morton.

Morton was an old timer, who had flown balloons with Tom
Baldwin, in the far corners of the country. Between times he worked
in the Goodyear balloon room, a practical mechanic who could
always make things work, the salt-of-the-earth workman whom
every foreman swore by, the aide every pilot wanted alongside.
Steady, self-effacing, courageous, with an instinct for the right
thing to do in emergency, Morton feared but one thing. That was
lightning.

He had flown many times through lightning storms prior to the
helium era, beneath a bag filled with inflammable gas, but he
didn’t like it. He knew its swift striking power.

“I could almost see the Old Fellow standing there throwing
those darts at us,” said Morton one afternoon in 1928, as he
scanned the skies before taking off in a balloon race out of
Pittsburgh. “One would flash past and miss, and he would say
‘I’ll get you next time,’ and there would come another. And you
can’t dodge in a balloon.”

The Old Fellow scored a direct hit that afternoon. Morton was
46
flying with Van Orman, Gordon Bennett Cup winner. The uncertain
weather of the afternoon had resolved itself less than an hour
after the take-off, and eight balloons were being tossed as a juggler
tosses weights, a thousand feet high, 10,000 feet, caught and tossed
aloft again just before they touched the ground. Morton’s balloon
was hit at 12,000 feet, caught fire, alternatively fell like a plumb
bob or parachuted in the net, landed without too much of a shock.
Van Orman, unconscious, sustained a broken ankle. Morton had
been instantly killed.

But aerologists learned things that afternoon about the force of
vertical movements of the air. The balloons gave a perfect track of
what went on. One balloon was falling so fast that sacks of ballast
thrown overboard lagged behind it, while a hundred yards away
another balloon was shooting upward at similar speed.

We still know less than we should about the movements of the
air, this new world into which the Aeronautic Age is moving. The
Pittsburgh tragedy may save many lives, avoid other tragedies.

The Brannigan story is shorter, no less dramatic. High-spirited,
keen, a captain whose ship and crew must always be shipshape,
Brannigan had come to Goodyear from the Army—where he had
already distinguished himself by making repairs in mid air to the
semi-rigid Roma, ripped by a splintered propeller—saving a comrade
as an incident to the job—had quickly won his captaincy at
Goodyear, was one of its best flyers.

At Kansas City one afternoon in 1931 a Kansas twister headed
for the airport. Seeing the weather uncertain Brannigan had
stopped passenger flying, put his ship on the mast. Now he ordered
his mechanic to get off and cut the ship loose. Once aloft, with
helium gas, he was not afraid of any storm that blew. But before the
ship could clear the mast, the storm had struck, with full fury. The
anchors holding the mast pulled out of the ground and the ship,
with the mast attached, was hurled into the nearest hangar, ripping
one motor off. That was Brannigan’s cue to jump. The door had
been propped open for a photographer’s camera. But he had one
motor left, the bag was undamaged, the mast had fallen clear. He
wouldn’t give up his ship as long as there was a chance to save it.

Reunion in Akron—The ships comprising the Goodyear fleet, could
tell stirring stories of battles with the elements waged in many states.

Some of these pilots flew airships in the first war, others came in later
from the technical schools—many now are flying airships for the Navy.

From this pocket handkerchief size airport, off the Century of Progress Exposition
in Chicago, Goodyear ships carried thousands of passengers, from all over America.

The Mayflower landed on the deck of the SS
Bremen, took off passenger P. W. Litchfield.

The Enterprise lands to rescue the crew of an
ice-locked steamer in Chesapeake Bay.

However the storm was not to be denied, and before he could
get altitude, the wind threw the ship into a nest of high-tension
wires, set it afire. Brannigan climbed out, walked to a nearby automobile,
transferred to a second car enroute to the hospital after a
collision—and died the next day from third-degree burns.

He called Furculow, his co-pilot, just before the end, told him to
see that the men in the crew were taken care of, that they were not
penalized for the loss of the ship. Furculow, now flying airships for
the Navy, is not the only man in Goodyear who will not forget
Charley Brannigan. It is on such men that the traditions of the
service are built. Any cause for which men give their lives cannot
be held lightly.

The Goodyear Company had built a few airships of its own prior
to the 1925 Pilgrim, when helium became available. Best known of
these was the “Pony Blimp” which operated out of Los Angeles
from 1919 to 1923, flew passengers to Catalina, worked for the
movies in Arizona and Wyoming.

But the real beginning came with the Pilgrim, the larger Puritan
and still larger Defender, as the Goodyear fleet came into existence
in 1928-29.

Early pilots had no specific instructions except to take the ships
out and fly them—fly them hard, find out all they could about
them, see what weaknesses and shortcomings there were and how
to improve them. It was another test fleet, repeating the history of
the automobile.

The pilots were supposed not to get hurt, but they were to fly in
all kinds of weather they felt it safe to fly in. They might lose a few
ships, but were expected to be able to walk away from them, not to
get in any trouble they couldn’t get out of. They had an advantage
over Army and Navy fliers in having a free hand as to where they
might go. They were expected to make mistakes but should learn
from them.

Such instructions, largely unwritten, acted as a challenge to the
pilots, a high-spirited and courageous group. Starting with a few
men who had flown airships in the World War, or helped build
them in the balloon room and the machine shop, they added some
technical school graduates in 1929, and others as needed.

Their adventures started after they left Akron. Operating from
48
bases built or leased over the country, they would cover every state
east of the Mississippi in a few years. They looked for hard things to
do—or unusual things which would interest the public in airships.
They landed on the roofs of buildings in Akron and in Washington—though
a prudent Department of Commerce would later rule
against that; they picked up mail from lines dropped on decks of
incoming ships, and from small boats alongside; they fished for
sharks and barracuda, hunted for whales; they picked up a bundle
of newspapers from the Hearst building downtown, and lowered
them to Al Smith on the top deck of the Empire State building;
picked up another batch from The Toronto Star offices, delivered
them at the Canadian Exposition grounds; they covered boat
races, football and baseball games, the International Yacht Races,
carrying press photographers, newsreel men and radio announcers;
they went to the Mardi Gras, to the Carnival of States, the Cotton
Carnival, Expositions at Chicago, Dallas, Cleveland, San Francisco
and New York, to county fairs, plowing and corn-husking contests.
They covered fires in New York, chased outlaws and reported forest
fires in the high Sierras; they made traffic studies in New York
and Washington, studies in bird life in Florida; they picked up
stranded fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico, took Mr. Litchfield off
the after deck of the SS Bremen in New York harbor; they surveyed
canal projects; patrolled the Mississippi during flood time to
rescue families from raging waters, to report to the engineers
where the levees were weakening; they carried food and supplies to
a boat ice-bound in Chesapeake Bay; they circled a thousand
country school houses, dropped greetings by parachute to hundreds
of cities.

One of their spectacular feats was the rescue of an airplane crew
in Florida in 1933. Two pilots flying to Miami from Tampa for the
Air Races had made a forced landing in the Everglades. Searching
airplanes located the ship, but it was far from any highway, inaccessible
by boat or on foot, the men without food and tormented by
mosquitos, and with apparently no way of ever getting out unless a
road could be built in to them. But a blimp found it easy, because
it alone of all craft could stand virtually still in the air.

Few important cities east of the Mississippi have missed seeing a Goodyear blimp
by now, not to speak of those in the Southwest, the Pacific coast. Trips have been
made also to Cuba, Canada and Mexico. More than 400,000 passengers have
been carried, without even the scratch of a finger.

Pilot Wilson flew to the spot, cut his motors, drifted down to 50
feet, directed the refugees to catch the trail ropes, then as the airship
settled took them aboard, dropped sand bags to lighten ship,
flew home—came back later with salvage parties to recover motors
and other parts.

All these exploits were incidental to the job of learning about
airships and airship weather—the tricks of winds and rain and
storms. And they did learn. A hangar had been built in the woods
at Grosse Ile, Detroit, with a lane of trees left standing so as to extend
the line of the building—this under the assumption that the
trees would protect the airships while entering or leaving. The
British, under stress of war conditions had done this, used woods as
windbreaks for landings, even for the assembly of airships at times.

But the wind has a trick of spilling over, like a waterfall, when it
strikes an obstruction. Early pilots were expert balloonists, and
might have remembered their experience in riding over mountainous
country—observed how the wind would carry them almost
into a cliff, but just before reaching it would pick the great bag
gently up, carry it over the top, drop it on the far side, almost to
the bottom of the next valley—but not quite, pick it up and carry
on—a graphic chart of the air flow in broken terrain.

But in the first weeks of operation at Detroit, a cross-hangar
wind, spilling over the windbreak, twice pushed an airship gently
but firmly into the trees on the far side. The trees were cut down,
and the study of eddies and gusts hastened the development of a
mobile mooring mast which would hold the ship steady in turbulent
areas.

The Goodyear pilots learned to fly unworried through fog. As
early as 1920, Hockensmith, flying the “Pony Blimp” from Los
Angeles to Catalina Island, got lost when his compass failed in a
fog so dense he could hardly see the nose of the ship. Flying low and
slowly, barely off the water, he presently spied a dark shape ahead,
came on a U. S. submarine, with decks awash, and an officer on
lookout in the conning tower. He landed on his pontoons, taxied
alongside, borrowed a compass, went on to his destination.

The conviction that except within its hangar the ship was safest
in the air, grew out of many battles with wind and storm. Brannigan,
flying the Vigilant at Washington, was caught in a storm
51
which broke up an aeronautic show, wrecked several planes on the
ground, sent the rest scattering for shelter. Piling extra cans of
gasoline aboard, Brannigan cut his ship loose, headed into the
wind, a wind so high that at times he found himself pushed backward
at full throttle, hovered for an hour and a half over the capital,
waiting the storm out, then flew 150 miles down the bay to
Langley field and put up for the night.

On another occasion at Winston Salem, with his ship on the
mast, Brannigan was caught in a sleet storm, found his ship bowed
down and being crushed by the weight of ice on its back. Getting
extra men from the city fire department, he braced his control surfaces
with poles, beat off the ice on the bag as high as he could
reach with branches, built oil smudge fires alongside to melt the
ice, took off all possible equipment, to lighten ship, kept his craft
headed into the wind, fought the storm successfully—and in the
morning as the sun came out and the ice melted, flew on to Florida.

Boettner, starting south in 1930 in the larger Defender attempting
a non-stop flight to Miami, ran into ice and snow in the Tennessee
mountains. An oil line froze. His mechanic climbed out on
the outriggers and made emergency repairs in flight, but not before
the ship had lost most of its oil. Reaching Knoxville airport by
morning, he dropped a note, lowered a line, hauled up additional
oil, refilled the tanks, went on to the Gadsden hangar to complete
repairs.

No Goodyear blimp has ever been damaged by storms while in
the air, though a bit of resourcefulness was needed from time to
time. For that matter, inquiry does not disclose any cases of a non-rigid
airship being damaged by storm while in flight.

Two Goodyear blimps were in the path of the 1938 hurricane,
which, heading for Florida from the Caribbean, changed its course
erratically and moved up the coast, shot across New England.
Lange, with the Enterprise, was at New Brunswick, N.J., 50 miles
off the direct course of the hurricane. He put his ship on the mast,
held it there during winds which rose as high as 73 miles per hour.
He put extra men on the handling lines, doubled the number of
screw stakes which held the mast, used the bus, with its motor wide
open, as further re-enforcement. The storm raged furiously at the
52
ship for hours but couldn’t budge it and when the hurricane passed
on, everything was intact.

Boettner, with the Puritan at Springfield, Mass., was almost directly
at the axis of the storm. He made the same gallant fight as
Lange, but against winds which roared to 100 miles per hour in
gusts, uprooted 100-year-old trees, tugged at a sheet-iron hangar
roof, flapping it up and down, finally ripped it loose, sailed it like a
child’s kite across the airport and out of sight.

At the peak of the storm the steel chains attaching the mast
cables to the screw stakes failed on the windward side, thrusting
the mast into the side of the ship, cutting a hole in the fabric.
Boettner pulled out the rip panel, deflating the ship to prevent
further damage and when the storm passed rolled up the bag,
loaded it and the control car aboard a truck, shipped it into Akron
where a new bag was attached. The Puritan was back at work
within a week.

No wonder Goodyear pilots came to have great faith in the
staunchness of their craft, and their ability to get out of trouble.

Fuel exhaustion didn’t bother the blimp. Fickes found that out
early, at Wingfoot Lake, when a leak developed in his tank and
emptied it. Free ballooning his ship he floated over a farm house,
asked them to call the office, waited aloft till a truck came out with
additional fuel.

Boettner had a similar difficulty while returning from Canada in
the Defender. Persistent headwinds cut down his fuel and when he
reached the American shore around midnight it was a question
whether he could go on as far as Akron. Picking up U. S. Highway
Five as being heavily traveled, he swung low over an adjoining
field, slowed down so that his mechanic could drop off, flag a passing
car and go into town for gas. By the time the aide returned a
number of cars had parked alongside. Driving into the field, with
headlights full on they formed a half circle, and the drivers caught
the lines, held the ship till the fuel could be delivered, and Boettner
proceeded on to Wingfoot Lake.

Mishaps there were of course, in all these years, but few were
serious. Lange snagged a lone dead tree in the fog over the Alabama
mountains and Smith side-swiped another while flying over
53
a pass in Tennessee. The ship settled easily to the ground in each
instance, and farmers came in with stone boats, carried the car and
bag to town for repairs.

Brannigan, returning at night from Syracuse, ran short of gasoline,
directed his ground crew to land him in an open field ahead.
The ship nosed down, his aide directing the men with his flashlight.
But just at this juncture the top of the flashlight fell off into
the propeller, was whipped into the bag like a bullet, started a leak
which was not discovered till next day.

Most ships in the Goodyear fleet have been fired on by thoughtless
hunters. Once a bullet went through a ship a few inches back
of the pilot. One marksman was arrested and sent to jail in Florida.
Pilot Trotter had a curious experience in Oklahoma in 1935, while
on his way to the Dallas fair. The ship had been on the mast for
three days waiting for weather. On the fourth morning, finding the
ship rather sluggish, Trotter looked around. A glass window from
the cabin gives a view of the interior of the bag and as Trotter
looked he saw light blinking from 14 bullet holes—through which
gas had been pouring for three days!

The nearest hangar where repairs could be made and helium
secured was at Scott Field, near St. Louis, 400 miles away. By this
time the ship had barely enough lift for the pilot and 100 gallons of
gas, not enough for the co-pilot. So Trotter flew alone to St. Louis,
landing so heavy that the ship had almost to be carried into the
hangar, made his repairs and was back in Oklahoma the next day.

Sewell had the experience of seeing a propeller fly off while
heading down the bay from San Francisco, saw it careen wildly
down, flew on to the next airport on one motor, mounted his spare.

Always the pilots were calling for more speed, removing or
streamlining whatever sources of resistance they could, picking the
time for cross-country flights when conditions were favorable. They
flew from Akron to Washington and New York frequently at 60
miles per hour. The Reliance did even better in a trip north in 1939.

Starting home after its winter in Florida, the ship was held up in
Jacksonville—by tire trouble of all things. The distance an airship
can make in a day is limited by the distance the bus can travel,
since the ground crew must be on hand at night to land the ship.
54
And by now the bus, with its radio equipment, masts and the like
had reached the point where only the special Goodyear YKL tires
would sustain the 14,000 pounds of weight comfortably. There was
a shortage of YKL’s when they started and three standard tires had
failed on the run up from Miami. Neither Jacksonville nor Atlanta
branch had YKL’s in that size and to get them from Akron would
entail a day’s delay.

Meanwhile the ship was tugging on the mast, with a strong
south wind, anxious to get under way. The pilots held a conference.
Maybe, utilizing the tail wind, they could make it non-stop all the
way to Washington, 700 miles north and have Lange’s crew land
them. If they ran short of gas they could stop at Ft. Bragg, N. C.,
a convenient half-way point. The Army had a motorized observation
balloon there, and was always willing to lend a hand to fellow
airshippers. It was Sheppard’s turn to take the controls. He sent a
wire to Ft. Bragg.

“If I run short of fuel, I’ll circle the field as a signal. Could you
land my ship, lend me enough gas to get on to Washington?” The
answer came back promptly, in the affirmative, and the ship left at
midnight.

Roaring across the Carolinas at mile a minute speed the Reliance
sighted Ft. Bragg before daylight, with plenty of gas left. An
entire company was lined up ready to land the ship. Sheppard
flew low, cut his motors, thanked them, flew on for Hoover Airport,
arriving before noon. He averaged 66 miles per hour over the 700 mile
trip, and landed with enough gasoline to have gone on to New
York.

By utilizing helping winds, throttling his motors to cruising
speed, Sheppard had effected most economical use of his fuel supply.

Fickes used the same technique more strikingly in the delivery
flight of the larger Navy K-5 in 1941, when he flew in to Lakehurst
from Wingfoot Lake at 100 miles per hour speed, again demonstrating
that greater cruising radius than that for which a ship was
designed may be effected, whenever it is possible to pick departure
times that are most favorable.

Ships like these, off New York City’s great harbor, might afford warning of the
approach of enemy submarines, or the laying of mines to endanger its shipping.

Operating from a base across in Jersey, the blimps became a
familiar sight around New York City during the World’s Fair.

While throughout the middle west, the long afternoon shadows marked
the arrival in one city after another of strange visitors from the sky.

Other improvements in construction or operating technique
grew out of the fleet’s experiences in flying in all weathers. A trip
made by the Defender in 1930 from Miami across to Havana
brought home the usefulness of the radio. The insurance underwriters
insisted on a two-way radio being installed, along with
pontoons on the ship, as safety precautions. Neither radio nor pontoons
were needed during the crossing, but the pilots sensed the
desirability of being able to communicate with their home station
and their airport objective. Shortly after a short wave frequency
was granted to the ships, one of the early ones in aircraft, and two-way
sets were later installed on every ship, on the ground-crew
buses and at Akron.

This permitted the making of daily weather maps, extended the
airships’ radius of action. Pilots would set out with more assurance,
knowing that they would be quickly advised of foul weather ahead,
could change their course, give appropriate instructions to the men
on the ground, land whenever it seemed desirable.

In the end the airships were all doing instrument flying, riding
the radio beams like the passenger airplanes, got their landing and
take-off instructions from the radio control towers at the airports.

The fleet proved an ideal testing vehicle for the expeditionary
mast. But progress moved carefully, a step at a time. As late as 1930
an air dock was built alongside the company’s plant at Gadsden,
Ala., for use as an operating base in the middle south. It was
thought necessary as a half way point for ships headed for Florida.
After the high mast came in however, the Gadsden dock came to
be used only for warehousing, and no airship has been inside it in
four years.

In 1932 the Volunteer started in from Los Angeles for Akron,
making the first successful trip of any non-rigid airship over the
Continental Divide. The Volunteer was due for helium purification
and a new bag. No helium facilities were available closer than
Akron. Rather than deflate the ship and send it by train, Pilot
Smith decided to fly in. He laid out a route via El Paso, San Antonio,
and Scott Field, so that he could get shelter, if necessary, at
army hangars at those points. He berthed at El Paso just after a
100-mile-an-hour storm had passed over, stayed three days at
Kelly Field, found it unnecessary to stop over night at Scott. Even
so, because of persistent head winds he had had to spend ten nights
56
in the open, setting up his low mast with screw stakes on the open
prairie.

Mooring out procedure had improved by the time that Sewell
made the same trip five years later, so he made only courtesy stops
at the three army camps, was on his own.

A mishap at Louisville gave impetus to the development of the
high mast. The retractible low mast mounted on top of the bus
was attached to the bag about half way between the car and nose
of the ship, convenient to get at, the system being referred to as
“belly-mooring.” The low mast was light, could be set up quickly
and easily, would hold securely against a straight pull of considerable
force. However, it was not as effective in the case of a wind
shift, or gusts which rolled the ship on its side. A higher mast, with
the ship anchored at the nose, was free to swing in all directions.
Every one realized this, but it was only after Crum’s ship was
caught and twisted by a gust at Louisville, punching a hole in the
bag, that the change was made.

The high mast, built in sections, anchored by guy wires to stakes
screwed in the ground, was more bulky, took longer to set up, but
would hold the ship indefinitely once it was in place.

Thereafter both masts were carried in cross-country trips, the
convenient low mast being used for overnight stops in good weather,
the high mast for more extended operations, or when the
weather looked threatening.

The ground-crew bus was in evolution during this period. Built
originally to carry merely crew, spare parts and supplies it added
a radio room, navigation quarters, and carried the two masts. A
scout car cruises ahead to make overnight arrangements, a trailer
follows, with its own electric plant and expeditionary equipment,
including a spot light to play on the ship at night. Duties of airship
personnel grew more specialized and complex.

Members of the ground crew acted as radio technicians, meteorologists,
mechanics, riggers. They comprised a colorful group, recruited
from all parts of the country. Sailors from New Bedford,
fruit growers from Florida, farm boys from Ohio, ranchers from the
San Joaquin valley, a mechanic from a Chicago airport, a policeman
from the Cleveland fair, all dropped their work and followed
57
the airships. The personnel list was a history of every place an airship
had operated.

The work wasn’t easy, involved long hours in the cold and rain
when storms threatened, picking up mail from their families on the
fly in cross-country operations, moving their households from north
to south and north again. But the ground-crew men stuck, most of
them having ten years’ service and more. On cross-country trips a
crew of 14, including pilots, is adequate.

The pilot personnel too formed an interesting group. Jack
Boettner, chief pilot, veteran of the group, with probably more airship
hours than any man in the world, certainly in non-rigid airships,
had played all-American football at Washington and Jefferson,
been instructor at Wingfoot Lake through the first war, was
working in Goodyear’s aeronautical sales when the fleet got under
way.

As expansion started in 1927 Smith came in from the aero workshop,
would remain second in flight hours only to Boettner. Fickes
from Akron University, left the Efficiency Dept. to sign up, set up
one of the first outside bases, at New Bedford, flew the Mayflower
when it picked up Mr. Litchfield from an ocean liner, later became
manager of all airship operations. O’Neil from the workshop came
on too, in that year, became chief mechanic.

When a base was set up at Los Angeles, Lange, a New Englander
who had left Boston University to fly airships in the first war, later
flying out of Panama, joined up, was sent to California, later took
charge of the Washington base. Sewell, a Kansan with a similar
record, having left the state university to fly blimps in coastal patrol
in 1918 came in, captained a ship at New York, followed Lange
at Los Angeles.

Further expansion came in 1929, when the Puritan, Mayflower,
Vigilant and Volunteer and Defender were added to the fleet. Now
came Wilson, Purdue footballer, Furculow from West Point and
Mt. Union, Hobensack from West Virginia U, Rieker and Crum
from Ohio State, the last named becoming engineer officer of the
group.

Other practical men came in, from the balloon room and aero
shops—Sheppard a Virginian, who later flew all over New England,
58
the Middle West and Texas; Massick, Crosier and Munro;
Blair, Army sergeant from Scott Field, came to Goodyear after the
semi-rigid RS-1 was finished.

Stacy, another New Englander, left the class room at Massachusetts
Tech to sign up. Dixon, born in a lighthouse on Nantucket
Island, left a billet as junior officer on a South American liner to
fly land ships instead. Trotter, from the Naval Academy, was in
engineering work in Florida when a blimp flew over. Lueders came
in via the ground crew at Los Angeles.

Many of the Goodyear pilots were commissioned as Reserve
officers in the Navy, and Fickes, Boettner, Lange, Sewell, Wilson,
Trotter and Furculow each took a year’s active duty with the Navy
at Lakehurst with rigid ships. More than a score of trips were made
by Goodyear pilots across the ocean as student officers aboard the
Graf Zeppelin and the Hindenburg, getting post-graduate training.

The breaking up of the pilot organization began as early as
1940, when with war clouds appearing in the East, Trotter, Rieker
and Furculow volunteered for active duty with the Navy. By the
middle of 1941, Stacy, Smith, Lueders and Dixon had followed
them into uniform, were flying Navy airships at Lakehurst.

To fill their places and also furnish material for the already expanding
airship Navy, a training class of 19 men was started in
late 1940 at Akron and Los Angeles. A six-months’ ground school
preceded flight training—which started with seven balloon flights.

The training course evolved there was one which grew naturally
out of such a situation. Airship piloting had changed from the
“seat of the pants” flying of the first war, when veteran Jack Boettner
would turn out pilots in six weeks. The ships had become more
complex as improvements were made. Helium gas was being used.
Navigation by radio and compass was quite different from the
“concrete compass flying” of 1916, when pilots followed highways
or railroad tracks to keep on course. Instrument flying had come
in, and blind flying was part of every student’s training, in a closed
control car, operating by instrument only. The modern airship
pilot had to know his radio beams and the rules of Civil Aeronautics
Authority, be able to ride the beam into the airport. In these
various details the Goodyear pilots, long-seasoned, had perfected
59
themselves through years of operation, were competent to pass on
their secrets to the youngsters coming in.

The student pilot spent his first half dozen hours trying only to
keep the ship at constant altitude, not caring where he was going.
Then he would fly a given course, follow a zigzag rail fence, or a
winding road, not worrying about his altitude. Lesson three was
to combine the two, fly at constant altitude over a set course. And
after enough hours at this, he’d try to circle a pylon, keeping a
specified distance away, while the wind pushed the ship in one direction,
then another—now flying up wind, now down, now cross-wind,
now quartering, making such changes in course to allow for
wind and drift as to maintain a perfect circle—and trying finally
to achieve the supreme art of the airshipper, which is to get the feel
of the controls and the weather so that he can anticipate drift and
sharp drops and rises, move his controls a split second ahead of
time, stay on course and altitude.

Airship students got no exemption from Civil Aeronautics Authority
by reason of the fact that blimps land more slowly than
bombers, took the same physical examination, including eyesight.
The training course worked out with the government followed
closely that for heavier-than-air pilots, with such changes only as
were made necessary by the fact that in one case a static lift
was utilized chiefly, and in the other case dynamic lift. There
was plenty of need for the students by the time they finished their
training.

Over the 16 years during which the fleet operations were carried
on ship sizes settled down to 123,000 cu. ft. as a compromise
between the 51,000 cu. ft. Pilgrim and the 164,000 cu. ft. Defender.
This size ship could carry six passengers with pilot and
aide, was easy to handle with a small crew, had adequate cruising
radius for the job at hand.

Later ships, the Enterprise, Ranger, Resolute, Reliance and
Rainbow, carried on the tradition of honoring the defenders of
America’s cup in international racing.

While an airplane can land anywhere on an open field, the airship
needed at least a minimum of terminal facilities. Many groups
co-operated at the outset. St. Petersburg, Florida built a hangar;
60
Miami towed a war-time Navy shed up from Key West; Col. E. H.
R. Green built one on his New Bedford estate for use in connection
with radio studies being made by Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The company built its own at Gadsden, Los Angeles,
Washington, Chicago and New York, calling them air docks rather
than hangars.

Unused Army and Navy hangars were borrowed in the early
years at Aberdeen, Md., and briefly at Cape May, N. J., Pensacola,
Arcadia, Cal. and Chatham, Mass., with Lakehurst, Langley
Field, Scott Field and Sunnyvale, Cal., handy as ports of call.

More and more, however, the fleet grew independent of ground
aid, became increasingly self-reliant through the use of its masting
equipment.

The Goodyear fleet wrote a remarkable safety record in the 16
years. Accidents to airship personnel could be counted on the
fingers of one hand, and in the case of the public, 400,000 passengers
had been carried up to 1942, for a total of 4,000,000 miles
without a scratch of anyone’s finger.

CHAPTER VIII

Results of Fleet Operations

Goodyear airships made some contribution during the
16 years of fleet operations, to flight and ground handling
technique. They also contributed to men’s knowledge
about weather. For wherever it is flying, an airship, by the very
nature of the craft, is continually registering the effects at that
point of certain components of weather. And the ships covered a
considerable part of the country fairly thoroughly.

The nature and movements of air currents can be studied only
incompletely from the ground, for conditions there are merely the
result of forces aloft. Only two vehicles leave the ground and use
the air as highways. Of these the airship is vastly more responsive
to changes in temperatures and barometric pressure than the airplane,
because of the lifting gas in its envelope, and somewhat
more responsive to changes in wind directions and velocities, because
of its greater displacement of air.

Goodyear airships have traveled widely, have seen at first-hand
the effects of rain and snow, fog and sleet, wind and whirlwind,
thunderhead and lightning storm. More important they have been
spectators at the unseen battle waged endlessly between cold fronts
and warm ones across the great central plains, continued with renewed
vindictiveness through mountain ranges and valleys.

The information brought by these voyagers has not been without
value to the men in the airport control towers, who are studying
weather phenomena in the effort to make flying safe.

A whole new science of weather interpretation has come in with
62
air transport, and the U. S. Weather Bureau has other duties than
advising farmers about planting and harvesting crops. It may be
merely coincidence that when a new chief had to be selected for the
Weather Bureau a few years ago an airship pilot was selected—Commander
F. W. Reichelderfer of the Navy, who had long
studied the movement of air masses and their effect on flight.

Army and Navy ships put in more actual flying days per month
than Goodyear ships, when on coastal patrol, because once out at
sea the service ships were out for all day—and an airship, by picking
its time, and using its mast, can always get out and get back.

Goodyear pilots had a different sort of job. They were operating
over land, flying 100 passengers a day, at 10 to 15 minute intervals,
in one town after another. They might suspend operations
when ceilings were low, or winds high, or gusty, not because they
couldn’t fly under those circumstances, but because flights would
be less agreeable, and might be hazardous for their passengers.
However, the ships themselves, having no shelter at hand, had to
stay out and take it. Their job was to interest the people of America
in lighter-than-air, and they had to go wherever people were, regardless
of what flying weather might intervene.

So between Navy, Army and Goodyear airships operating over
a period of years, it was fairly well demonstrated that there is very
little unflyable weather for lighter-than-air craft. That is a conclusion
of no small importance.

Winds of gale force may make it prudent for the airship to stay
in the hangar or on the mast, and conditions of zero ceiling, zero
visibility, which ground other aircraft, would make operations
hazardous, especially over mountainous country, but even the
most adverse weather conditions would hardly keep the airship at
home if an enemy was at large. Any time submarines are operating
the airship can be available to seek them out.

Another result emerging from the fact of fleet operations was
that flying men and construction men, working together, became a
closely knit group. Engineers learned to fly ships, and flyers took
their turn in the shops. In building airships for the Navy, at the
speed demanded by war conditions, the control cars were built in
the shop and the envelopes cut out and fitted and cemented together
in the balloon room. But operating men, flyers and ground
crew men, mechanics and riggers and maintenance men took
over from there, put the ships together—assembled them, tested
them out, delivered them to the Navy.

Lessons in streamlining gained from building and flying blimps became useful
when barrage balloons came into the picture as a new defense weapon.

The mooring mast made the blimps expeditionary craft, eliminated the need for
large ground crews, permitted more flying days per month, increased safety.

Floating Navy blimps and barrage balloons, with their curious star-fish tails,
give the service dock something of the appearance of a giant aquarium.

Principal use for the rigid airship in wartime is as an airplane carrier, with half a
dozen planes to extend its reconnaissance range and determine the enemy’s position.

It was this co-ordination between men in green eye shades,
working over the drafting board and wind-tanned pilots, studying
gray skies and phosphorescent control boards, which enabled the
organization to meet the war emergency of large scale production
of non-rigid airships.

There was another by-product result arising from the fact that
the company, even in the doldrum days, when there were few
orders for ships, had kept its engineers at work on research and its
ships flying on experimental missions. It all happened suddenly, a
colorful circumstance not often found in the sober humdrum of the
business world.

A great plane manufacturer, having more defense work than its
crowded shops could handle, looked around for some company
with experience in the fabrication of light metal, to whom it could
farm out some of the details.

Goodyear Aircraft Corporation, the aeronautic subsidiary, was
asked to build tail surfaces for Martin bombers. A curious thing
happened. Men whose work had been primarily with airships,
rather than airplanes (omitting the quite different field of airplane
tires, wheels, and brakes) found themselves on familiar ground
when they swung over to heavier-than-air construction.

Here was the same problem of getting maximum strength with
minimum weight, of selection and treatment of light alloys, of intricate
stress calculations, and a hundred ingenious devices to measure
those stresses, enabling designers to turn out a scientifically designed
structure. The background was there—not to mention their
experience and studies in streamlined design—to reduce resistance,
get maximum performance from power plants.

The difference was that in the case of the airship savings in
weight mount fast, because of size. The importance of light weight
and high strength had come home to airship designers years before.

Their experience was directly applicable to the new field. Other
orders came in, from Curtiss, Consolidated, Grumman, and soon
64
the huge plant was humming with the production of parts for
fighters and bombers.

Then a four-company arrangement was set up by the government
to expand airplane production still further, and after that an
order for complete planes. The original plant was now jam-packed
with lathes and drills, jigs and presses, and three huge
new plants were built alongside and across the road, and Goodyear
Aircraft Corporation found itself with thousands of men, building
not only airships, but airplanes and airplane parts as well.

Every large company took on new tasks in defense, but in this
case Goodyear was able to move quickly, and give unexpected support
to the airplane program by reason of its long research in a
different field. This result, it is true, grew chiefly out of research in
rigid airships, rather than non-rigids, but both played a part in
another instance—barrage balloons.

England was using them, might ask this country to supply some.
The American government too might have use for them. So, long
before there was even any hint of orders, Mr. Litchfield threw a
new problem to the engineers at Goodyear Aircraft and the operating
men at Wingfoot Lake—the job of designing an efficient barrage
balloon. They were not to make Chinese copies of foreign
balloons, but draw on their experience in lighter-than-air and see
if principles and technique established there could not be applied
to design balloons which would ride with maximum stability in
gusty and unstable air. Men went to work, designing, building,
flying, observing, rejecting, altering, improving, week after week,
month after month, until several satisfactory types were evolved.
One of these was capable of flying at 15,000 feet, twice the usual
height. Orders began to come in, and the little group of men and
girls in the balloon room quickly grew into a large organization.
The department outgrew its quarters, took over room after room,
expanded to subsidiary plants outside Akron.

One instrument developed illustrates how the airship men were
able to utilize past experience in a new project.

Mounted alongside the winch on the ground, it gave exact information,
as often as was wanted, as to what the barrage balloon
was doing, a mile or three miles up.

This assembly included a moving picture camera, which continuously,
or at fixed intervals, or at any instant desired, by means of
radio control, would photograph recording dials and show these
things: wind velocity at the balloon, tension on cable, gas pressure
inside the balloon, temperature of confined gas, temperature and
humidity of the air surrounding the balloon, angle of attack at
which the balloon faced the wind, both fore and aft and from
side to side, also a clock, which showed the time the readings were
recorded.

These pictures, when developed gave the engineers the data
from which they could modify designs and arrive at a type of balloon
which would ride most easily aloft, avoid undue tugging and
surging on the cable—incidentally permitting smaller gauge and
weight cable to be used for a given height with ample safety margin.

Perhaps the largest single result, however, growing out of the
fleet operations was that it had created manufacturing facilities,
ships and personnel on which the Navy could draw, as fully as it
wanted, in emergency, and with little more delay than the time it
took for a man to change his uniform.

Boettner, Sewell, Blair, Hobensack and Hill followed the others
into the service. Hobensack’s ground crew in California signed up
with him in a body, and men from other ground crews, expert in
rigging, in motors, radio, in mooring out and maintenance joined
up. In the end only Fickes and Crum were left at Akron to build
the new ships, and Sheppard, Crosier and Massic to test-fly them,
then ferry them to their destinations.

The student pilots at Wingfoot Lake had finished their training
just in time. About half of them went immediately into the Navy,
were commissioned and sent to the various bases, the others remained
at Akron as replacements to the other pilots, in testing and
delivery flights, or on key posts in airship construction.

The experience accumulated by the blimp pilots under varying
weather conditions over the country proved useful to the Navy,
particularly in the expeditionary operations which coastal patrol
would demand. It was useful as well in helping train navy aviation
cadets for the growing airship fleet. Five of the pilots, Sewell,
Boettner, Rieker, Stacy and Smith had reached the rank of
66
lieutenant commander by the end of 1942, and Lange, full commander,
had become commanding officer of a new Navy station
on the west coast. Two of the public relations men, Lieutenants
Petrie and Schetter, old airship troupers, followed the fliers into
uniform.

The airship service suffered its first casualty in 1942 when Lt.
Trotter, gallant and resourceful pilot of balloons and ships, was
killed in a collision, in which Lt. Comdr. Rounds also lost his life.

The Goodyear fleet passed out of existence with the war. The
ships being the same size as the Navy training ships, it was a simple
matter to change them over, paint the new name on their broad
sides.

Facilities for ship construction became useful also in the new
war. An airship hangar is unlike any other structure in the world.
It must be broad and high and free of supporting girders. There
were two large airship docks at Akron, half a dozen smaller ones
over the country. At hand, too, was equipment for helium purification
and storage, along with radio and weather gear, mobile
mooring masts and other specialized equipment which only
lighter-than-air uses. There was the balloon room, too, with a
wealth of experience dating back to the first World War, and
which with new jobs like building barrage balloons, rubber rafts
and assault boats grew to large dimension.

Wingfoot Lake was more than doubled in size, and the large airship
dock, occupied at first by heavier-than-air production, had to
be changed back later for airship assembly, to meet the Navy’s
mounting demands for ships. The bases at Washington and Los
Angeles were converted to other aeronautic uses; the two-ship
dock at Chicago and the one at New York were torn down and
moved to Akron to provide additional space for ship assembly.

And so the fact that the company had maintained an airship
fleet for a number of years had the result that in emergency when
the Navy needed ships and men to fly them, Goodyear was ready.
All of which was not foreseen when Mrs. Litchfield pulled a cord
to release a flock of pigeons and christen the pioneer ship Pilgrim,
at a pasture-airport outside Akron in 1925.

CHAPTER IX

Vulnerability of Airships

Mention airships and most people will immediately raise
the question of vulnerability.

Large, slow moving, a tempting target, airships could
be shot out of the sky by ship or shore guns, or by hostile airplane
fire, it is argued, almost as easily as a dinner guest touching his
cigaret to a toy balloon.

And this is probably true, with reservations, if enemy ships or
anti-aircraft batteries or planes were around. But the airship, non-rigid,
has no more business in such areas than a British airplane
carrier would have to drop anchor in Hamburg harbor.

It was because of the imminence of attack from sea or shore or
air that neither England nor Germany used airships in the present
war, particularly since they would have to use the inflammable
hydrogen gas. It was because such attack on American airships
from any of these three sources was much less likely—and that we
have helium gas, which does not burn—that this country is using
them.

Their chief field of operations is not off the enemy’s coasts but
our own, along that broad ribbon of waters used by our coastwise
shipping, an area roughly marked in the Atlantic by the 100
fathom curve, the favorite fishing grounds of enemy submarines.
Thousands of miles of blue water, not the narrow lanes of the
North Sea or British Channel are between them and the shore
guns of an enemy.

An enemy fleet, though likelihood of this seems remote, might
68
penetrate those coast waters in attempted invasion, attack the
blimps with anti-aircraft fire. But such an enemy, arriving in
force, would have either to knock out our Atlantic fleet, or slip
past it in surprise attempt. In the remote later contingency, the
information relayed back by airship radio that the enemy was
moving in would be worth losing airships or any other craft, to get.

The third hypothesis, attack by airplane, is also conceivable.
But if long-ranging enemy planes were able to get that close to
our shores they’d have more important business in hand than
wasting time and powder on a helium bubble bobbing in the air,
10,000 feet below—which in any event would already have radioed
the news ashore.

In the fairly remote contingency that the airplane did choose to
attack the blimp, it would find the position of that moving target,
flying at an indeterminate distance below, much more difficult
to calculate than a fixed target ashore, no easy thing to drop
bombs on.

If it swung down close, it might riddle the bag with machine gun
bullets but without necessarily sinking it—as witness the case of
Trotter’s ship in Oklahoma leaking gas for 72 hours from 14 gaping
holes and still able to fly 400 miles for repairs. The plane would
have almost to cut the blimp in two with a spray of bullets to destroy
it—if it chose to use its precious far-borne ammunition in such
fashion—and would find it better to attack from below, on the
chance of a lucky hit into the airship structure or controls, or one
which disabled its crew. But in that event the airship, also armed,
shooting it out from its more stable gun platform above would
have as good a chance as the plane.

The airship is vulnerable—as are all other military craft—but
used as the Navy proposes to use airships, it may be said to have
an acceptable degree of vulnerability, in view of its potential
usefulness in its special field—defense against submarine attack on
convoys or coastwise shipping.

The airship’s advantages have been pointed out, but may be repeated.
These grow out of its speed range, from zero to a maximum
of 65 knots or so. Its slow speed, as compared to the airplane has
the compensation that it does not have to circle around to maintain
altitude, can keep any suspect object under continuous observation.
Its high speed enables it to reach a given point much
sooner than the fastest surface scout.

Barrage balloons—spiders who spin out webs of steel as they ascend—but these
spiders are out to catch fliers, not flies, enemy fliers who threaten our democracy.

Modern armies towing a few of these pocket sized barrage balloons along,
might not be too much concerned over attacks by strafing airplanes.

This Strata Sentinel will fly at 15,000 feet, twice the height of other barrage balloons. By
that time the lobes will be completely filled out by expanding pressure of the lifting gas.

This airship, silhouetted against the afternoon sun might be pacing a peaceful
cruiser race through the surf off Long Beach, on the Southern California coast.
Or it might be leading units of the mosquito fleet to sea off Cape Cod, to
hold an enemy U-boat in check till ships of heavier armament could arrive.

Helium-inflated, fast, long ranged, the modern K-type Navy patrol ship is a far cry from
the primitive airships of World War I. They are armed with bombs and machine guns.

In brilliant sunshine, or overcast, in fog or rain or snow, the blimps take off from their bases
day after day, on guard against any enemy who may invade the coastal waters. A faint
smoke screen, miles distant over the endless waters, may turn out to be a peaceful merchantman—or
a vessel with grimmer purpose, seeking the advantage of surprise attack.

The detection of a submarine even on the surface is largely a
matter of looking in the right direction at the right time. The open
windows on all sides of the airship, without obstruction by wings
give it special value in this field.

A submarine submerged is still harder to find as its tell-tale
feather is not easy to spot from a speeding plane or from the crow’s
nest of a surface craft.

A non-rigid airship throttling down to the speed of its prey, and
having the altitude of the airplane, has a much better chance of
sighting the submarine, before it can launch its torpedoes.

Taking off in fog, flying in low visibility, compelled to fly close
to the water, these factors do not worry the airship or handicap its
usefulness overmuch, and might under given conditions prove extremely
useful.

The airship appears to have some advantage too in the length of
time it may remain on station, ranging from 30 hours at high
speed to undetermined days at low. Indeed its endurance is not so
much a matter of fuel capacity as of the ability of crews to stand
long watches without relief.

There might be emergencies where airship scouts were wanted on
continuous duty over a considerable period. Commander Roands’
experiments point out interesting possibilities in this respect,
through the transfer of fuel and supplies from a surface ship, and
the taking on of fresh crews.

This generally was the case men saw for the airship up to 1941,
as having potential usefulness, in the event of war, against attack
by sea.

Then came Pearl Harbor, and America’s entrance into a new
war. German U-boats, larger, faster, more deadly, moved swiftly
in to attack, as if waiting for the signal. The Japs made reconnaissance
raids along the West Coast.

“Wolf packs” of submarines in new under-water tactics stalked
convoys, picked off stragglers. More than 600 coast-wise ships,
merchantmen from the Caribbean and South America, and tankers
70
from the Gulf, were sunk in the first year of war. The loss of
tankers brought serious complications ashore, the rationing of gas
along the eastern seaboard to conserve supply for military purposes.
Despite a quickly expanding program of ship construction
merchantmen were being sunk faster than they could be built.

The Navy’s sea-frontier defense moved to meet the attack. Non-rigid
airships were assigned a place in that program, wherever
they could be utilized and with what ships were on hand, and new
airship construction was rushed.

Under authorization from Congress, a program of airship and
base construction, together with helium procurement, was accelerated,
and by the end of the year, stations were in commission or
being built at key points along both coasts and the Gulf of Mexico.

Akron expanded its facilities many fold for the building of new
airships, which were flown to the various bases with increasing
frequency during the year. Large classes of officers, aviation
cadets and enlisted men went into intensified training at Lakehurst
and Moffett Field, preparing themselves to man the ships
as fast as they were delivered.

The blimps which have been available to the sea-frontier forces
have rendered valuable service in patrol and escort missions.
Their exact record of performance, including number of submarine
sinkings, obviously cannot now be published.

On sighting a submarine, or finding indication of its presence,
the tactical doctrine might call either for attack, or to stand by,
summoning airplanes and surface craft in for the kill, keeping the
enemy under unsuspected surveillance the while, and saving the
blimp’s own depth bombs for another action.

The airship is capable of carrying on patrol and escort missions
day after day under a wide range of weather conditions, going for
months at some stations, even in the winter, without missing a day.

Though no detailed summary of airship activities is possible
now, it is no secret that, just as in the last war, the submarines
avoided attack upon convoys where airships were on guard. The
German high command tacitly admitted that this was one type
that the U-boats did not want to meet, an enemy immune to its
torpedoes, whose presence the sub’s under-water detectors did not
71
reveal, and which might appear overhead without warning. Admiral
Doenitz, commanding the German submarine force, testified
in a press interview to their respect for our blimps.

The battle against the submarines will be long and difficult,
and ships will still go down and men will be lost, but the chase will
be relentless as long as the menace exists. Airships, non-rigid, have
taken their place in that phase of America’s war effort.

References

Little is available in the way of bibliography on lighter-than-aircraft,
their history and characteristics. Among the
best works dealing with this subject are Captain C. E.
Rosendahl’s, “What About the Airship?” (Scribner’s), and “Up
Ship” (Dodd Mead); Captain Ernst Lehmann’s “Zeppelin” (Longman’s)
and Captain J. A. Sinclair’s “Airships in Peace and War”
(Rich & Cowan, London).

Copies of “The Story of the Airship (Non-Rigid),” may be
procured through The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. at Akron,
Ohio; or at Los Angeles, or branch offices.

Index

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

A

Alcock (and Brown) Atlantic Crossing, 16.

B

Ballast recovery, 40 et seq.

Bases, airship, world war, 14;

peacetime, 58, 59, 64, 65.

Baldwin, Major Tom, 25, 45.

Bennett, James Gordon, races won by Goodyear pilots, 13;

by Westover, 30;

Van Orman, 46.

Barrage Balloons, 63, illust. opp. 62, 63, 68.

Blimp, origin of name, 25.

Blanchard, Jean Pierre, channel crossing, 22.

Boettner, Jack, pilot, 51, 52, 58, 65.

Boyd, Lt., 19-20.

Brannigan, Charles, photograph opp. vi;

pilot, 45, 46, 50, 51.

C

C-5, illust. opp. 14, 22;

Atlantic crossing, 15, 16.

Charles, J. A. C., first hydrogen balloon, 22;

drag rope, 23.

Chatham, U-boat attack, 14.

Consolidated, planes, 63.

Curtiss planes, early flights, 27;

Goodyear part in construction, 62.

Crum, H. W., pilot, 56, 57.

D

Defender, 47;

at Havana, 55.

De Rozier, 22.

Drag rope, developed by Charles, 23;

use at sea, 42;

with mast, at sea, 70.

E

Eckener, Hugo, 31, 37.

F

Fickes, Karl, pilot, 52;

record flight of K-5, 54, 57, 58, 65.

Finger patch, illust. opp. 14, 35.

Franklin, Benj., observations on aeronautics, 22.

Fulton, Captain Garland, 37.

Furculow, Pilot, 57, 58.

G

Goodyear Aircraft Corporation, 62, 63.

Greene, Col. E. H. R., dock at New Bedford, 60.

Grosse Ile, hangar, 50.

Grumman, planes, 63.

H

Hawker (and Greene) Atlantic Crossing, 16.

Helium, characteristics, 24, 33;

discovery of, 34.

Hockensmith, pilot, 50.

Hydrogen, first use in balloon, 22;

characteristics, 24, 33.

I

Iron Horse, 37, 40.

J

Jutland, battle, 10.

K

Kenworthy, Commander J. L., 17.

L

Lange, Karl, pilot, 51, 52, 57, 58, 66.

Lawrence, Lt. John, pilot, 15.

Lindbergh, flight, effect of, 31.

Litchfield, P. W., first air meet, 27;

starts blimp fleet, 30;

mast experiments, 38.

Little, Lt., pilot, 15.

Los Angeles, airship, illust. opp. 23;

why built, 29;

mast studies, 36, 44.

M

Macon, USS, size, 25.

Martin, planes, 63.

Mast, mooring, 36 et seq.;

illust. opp. 38.

Mills, Commander, G. H., 8, 17.

Minnesota, damaged by mine, 2.

Moffett, Admiral, W. A., photograph opp. iii;

report on value of airships, 12, 37.

Montgolfiers, first balloon flight, 21.

Morton, Walter, pilot, 45.

N

NC-4, Atlantic flight, 16;

illust. opp. 22.

Norge, airship, 25.

P

Parsevals, airships, 25.

Peck, Commander S. E., C-5 flight, 15.

Pilgrim, airship, 26, 31, 33, 66;

launching, 66.

Pony Blimp, airship, 47, 50.

Preston, R. A. D., pilot, 13, 15.

R

R-34, Atlantic Crossing, 15, 16;

size, 25.

Radio, first use of, 55.

Reichelderfer, Commander F. W., chief U. S. Weather Bureau, 62.

Rieker, John, pilot, 58, 65.

Roma, Italian-built airship, 35.

Rosendahl, Captain, C. E., photograph opp. vi, 17, 37.

Rounds, Lt. C. S., ballast pick-up, 40, 66.

RS-1, army airship, 25, 30.

Rubber, use of synthetics, 35.

S

San Diego, USS, sunk by mine, 2.

Santos Dumont, illust. opp. 22;

first flights, 27.

74

Settle, Commander T. G. W., photograph opp. vi, 38.

Sewell, A. T., pilot, 56, 57, 58, 65.

Shenandoah, USS, 29.

Sheppard, S. H., pilot, 54, 57.

Smith, Alfred E., 36, 48.

Smith, Verne, pilot, 57, 58.

T

TC-14, airship, 17, 19.

Trotter, F. A., pilot, bullet holes in ship, 53, 58, 66.

U

Upson, R. H., pilot, 13.

V

Van Orman, W. T., balloon pilot, 46.

Volunteer, airship, 39;

cross country trip, 55;

masting out, 39.

W

Westover, General, 30.

Wilson, R. D., pilot, Everglades rescue, 48, 57.

Wright brothers, first flight, 21.

Footnotes

Transcriber’s Notes

• Copyright notice provided as in the original—this e-text is public domain in the country of publication.
• Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard spellings and dialect unchanged.
• In the text versions, delimited italics text in _underscores_ (the HTML version reproduces the font form of the printed book.)