The Story of the Airship 4

The Story of the Airship 4

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.

 

[Illustration: 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)]

 

[Illustration: 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.]

 

[Illustration: “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.]

 

[Illustration: 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 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, 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.