The Story of the Airship 5

The Story of the Airship 5

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 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 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

 

 

[Illustration: Hot-air balloon]

 

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, 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.

 

[Illustration: 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.]

 

[Illustration: 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.]

 

[Illustration: 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)]

 

[Illustration: 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.