CHAPTER III

American Airships in Two Wars

Compared to British and French airships, American dirigibles made a less impressive record during the first war.

This for the reasons that there were few enemy activities in our waters until the very end, and that there were few American airships to oppose them. Virtually the entire airship organization had to be created after we got into the war.

Naval attachés abroad had been watching blimp operations over the English channel, and on the basis of rather meager information which they furnished, Navy designers were working on plans, when the Secretary of the Navy, in February 1917, 60 days before the declaration of war, ordered 16 blimps started at once.

Nine of these were to be built by Goodyear which had at least given some study to the principles, had built a few balloons, one of which, flown by its engineers out of Paris, had won the James Gordon Bennett Cup Race.

No one in this country, however, knew much about building airships, and less about flying them after they were built. Operating bases would have to be built and the very construction plants as well. The first Goodyear airship under the Navy order was completed before the airship dock (hangar) at Wingfoot Lake was ready, and the ship had to be erected in Chicago and flown in.

The engineers who built it, Upson and Preston, made their first airship flight in delivering the ship to Akron, using theoretical principles applied in the international balloon race the year before, to make up for their lack of practical experience.

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.

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.

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.