the story of airship 11

the story of airship 11

Their adventures started after they left Akron. Operating from 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.

 

[Illustration: 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.]

 

SUMMARY

TOTALS UP TO JANUARY 1, 1942

FLIGHTS 151,810

HOURS 92,966

PASSENGERS 405,526

MILES 4,183,470

 

FLIGHTS BETWEEN:

AKRON - FLORIDA 49

” - DALLAS 6

” - CHICAGO 12

” - TORONTO 14

” - LAKEHURST 18

” - WASHINGTON 57

” - NEW YORK 42

 

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 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 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