the story of the airship 13

the story of the airship 13

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 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; 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

 

 

[Illustration: Moored airship and flying airship]

 

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 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.

 

[Illustration: Lessons in streamlining gained from building and

flying blimps became useful when barrage balloons came into the

picture as a new defense weapon.]

 

[Illustration: The mooring mast made the blimps expeditionary craft,

eliminated the need for large ground crews, permitted more flying

days per month, increased safety.]

 

[Illustration: Floating Navy blimps and barrage balloons, with their

curious star-fish tails, give the service dock something of the

appearance of a giant aquarium.]

 

[Illustration: 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.