The Story of the Airship 7

The Story of the Airship 7

CHAPTER V

Effect on Aeronautics of Post-War Reaction

 

 

[Illustration: Airship and escort planes]

 

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

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.

 

[Illustration: 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.]

 

[Illustration: 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)]

 

[Illustration: 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.]

 

[Illustration: 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

 

 

[Illustration: Docked airship]

 

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.