CHAPTER VII

Adventures of the Goodyear Fleet

One of the lesser romances at least of aeronautics is the story of the Goodyear airship fleet.

There is thrill and adventure in the narrative, daring and resourcefulness, hazards faced by men who believed in their craft—chances which were usually won. So this chapter might well be dedicated to Airship Captain Charles Brannigan and Balloon Pilot Walter Morton.

Morton was an old timer, who had flown balloons with Tom Baldwin, in the far corners of the country. Between times he worked in the Goodyear balloon room, a practical mechanic who could always make things work, the salt-of-the-earth workman whom every foreman swore by, the aide every pilot wanted alongside. Steady, self-effacing, courageous, with an instinct for the right thing to do in emergency, Morton feared but one thing. That was lightning.

He had flown many times through lightning storms prior to the helium era, beneath a bag filled with inflammable gas, but he didn’t like it. He knew its swift striking power.

“I could almost see the Old Fellow standing there throwing those darts at us,” said Morton one afternoon in 1928, as he scanned the skies before taking off in a balloon race out of Pittsburgh. “One would flash past and miss, and he would say ‘I’ll get you next time,’ and there would come another. And you can’t dodge in a balloon.”

The Old Fellow scored a direct hit that afternoon. Morton was flying with Van Orman, Gordon Bennett Cup winner. The uncertain weather of the afternoon had resolved itself less than an hour after the take-off, and eight balloons were being tossed as a juggler tosses weights, a thousand feet high, 10,000 feet, caught and tossed aloft again just before they touched the ground. Morton’s balloon was hit at 12,000 feet, caught fire, alternatively fell like a plumb bob or parachuted in the net, landed without too much of a shock. Van Orman, unconscious, sustained a broken ankle. Morton had been instantly killed.

But aerologists learned things that afternoon about the force of vertical movements of the air. The balloons gave a perfect track of what went on. One balloon was falling so fast that sacks of ballast thrown overboard lagged behind it, while a hundred yards away another balloon was shooting upward at similar speed.

We still know less than we should about the movements of the air, this new world into which the Aeronautic Age is moving. The Pittsburgh tragedy may save many lives, avoid other tragedies.

The Brannigan story is shorter, no less dramatic. High-spirited, keen, a captain whose ship and crew must always be shipshape, Brannigan had come to Goodyear from the Army—where he had already distinguished himself by making repairs in mid air to the semi-rigid Roma, ripped by a splintered propeller—saving a comrade as an incident to the job—had quickly won his captaincy at Goodyear, was one of its best flyers.

At Kansas City one afternoon in 1931 a Kansas twister headed for the airport. Seeing the weather uncertain Brannigan had stopped passenger flying, put his ship on the mast. Now he ordered his mechanic to get off and cut the ship loose. Once aloft, with helium gas, he was not afraid of any storm that blew. But before the ship could clear the mast, the storm had struck, with full fury. The anchors holding the mast pulled out of the ground and the ship, with the mast attached, was hurled into the nearest hangar, ripping one motor off. That was Brannigan’s cue to jump. The door had been propped open for a photographer’s camera. But he had one motor left, the bag was undamaged, the mast had fallen clear. He wouldn’t give up his ship as long as there was a chance to save it.

However the storm was not to be denied, and before he could get altitude, the wind threw the ship into a nest of high-tension wires, set it afire. Brannigan climbed out, walked to a nearby automobile, transferred to a second car enroute to the hospital after a collision—and died the next day from third-degree burns.

He called Furculow, his co-pilot, just before the end, told him to see that the men in the crew were taken care of, that they were not penalized for the loss of the ship. Furculow, now flying airships for the Navy, is not the only man in Goodyear who will not forget Charley Brannigan. It is on such men that the traditions of the service are built. Any cause for which men give their lives cannot be held lightly.

The Goodyear Company had built a few airships of its own prior to the 1925 Pilgrim, when helium became available. Best known of these was the “Pony Blimp” which operated out of Los Angeles from 1919 to 1923, flew passengers to Catalina, worked for the movies in Arizona and Wyoming.

But the real beginning came with the Pilgrim, the larger Puritan and still larger Defender, as the Goodyear fleet came into existence in 1928-29.

Early pilots had no specific instructions except to take the ships out and fly them—fly them hard, find out all they could about them, see what weaknesses and shortcomings there were and how to improve them. It was another test fleet, repeating the history of the automobile.

The pilots were supposed not to get hurt, but they were to fly in all kinds of weather they felt it safe to fly in. They might lose a few ships, but were expected to be able to walk away from them, not to get in any trouble they couldn’t get out of. They had an advantage over Army and Navy fliers in having a free hand as to where they might go. They were expected to make mistakes but should learn from them.

Such instructions, largely unwritten, acted as a challenge to the pilots, a high-spirited and courageous group. Starting with a few men who had flown airships in the World War, or helped build them in the balloon room and the machine shop, they added some technical school graduates in 1929, and others as needed.

Their adventures started after they left Akron. Operating from bases built or leased over the country, they would cover every state east of the Mississippi in a few years. They looked for hard things to do—or unusual things which would interest the public in airships. They landed on the roofs of buildings in Akron and in Washington—though a prudent Department of Commerce would later rule against that; they picked up mail from lines dropped on decks of incoming ships, and from small boats alongside; they fished for sharks and barracuda, hunted for whales; they picked up a bundle of newspapers from the Hearst building downtown, and lowered them to Al Smith on the top deck of the Empire State building; picked up another batch from The Toronto Star offices, delivered them at the Canadian Exposition grounds; they covered boat races, football and baseball games, the International Yacht Races, carrying press photographers, newsreel men and radio announcers; they went to the Mardi Gras, to the Carnival of States, the Cotton Carnival, Expositions at Chicago, Dallas, Cleveland, San Francisco and New York, to county fairs, plowing and corn-husking contests. They covered fires in New York, chased outlaws and reported forest fires in the high Sierras; they made traffic studies in New York and Washington, studies in bird life in Florida; they picked up stranded fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico, took Mr. Litchfield off the after deck of the SS Bremen in New York harbor; they surveyed canal projects; patrolled the Mississippi during flood time to rescue families from raging waters, to report to the engineers where the levees were weakening; they carried food and supplies to a boat ice-bound in Chesapeake Bay; they circled a thousand country school houses, dropped greetings by parachute to hundreds of cities.

One of their spectacular feats was the rescue of an airplane crew in Florida in 1933. Two pilots flying to Miami from Tampa for the Air Races had made a forced landing in the Everglades. Searching airplanes located the ship, but it was far from any highway, inaccessible by boat or on foot, the men without food and tormented by mosquitos, and with apparently no way of ever getting out unless a road could be built in to them. But a blimp found it easy, because it alone of all craft could stand virtually still in the air.

SUMMARY TOTALS UP TO JANUARY 1, 1942 FLIGHTS 151,810 HOURS 92,966 PASSENGERS 405,526 MILES 4,183,470

FLIGHTS BETWEEN: AKRON - FLORIDA 49 ” - DALLAS 6 ” - CHICAGO 12 ” - TORONTO 14 ” - LAKEHURST 18 ” - WASHINGTON 57 ” - NEW YORK 42

Pilot Wilson flew to the spot, cut his motors, drifted down to 50 feet, directed the refugees to catch the trail ropes, then as the airship settled took them aboard, dropped sand bags to lighten ship, flew home—came back later with salvage parties to recover motors and other parts.

All these exploits were incidental to the job of learning about airships and airship weather—the tricks of winds and rain and storms. And they did learn. A hangar had been built in the woods at Grosse Ile, Detroit, with a lane of trees left standing so as to extend the line of the building—this under the assumption that the trees would protect the airships while entering or leaving. The British, under stress of war conditions had done this, used woods as windbreaks for landings, even for the assembly of airships at times.

But the wind has a trick of spilling over, like a waterfall, when it strikes an obstruction. Early pilots were expert balloonists, and might have remembered their experience in riding over mountainous country—observed how the wind would carry them almost into a cliff, but just before reaching it would pick the great bag gently up, carry it over the top, drop it on the far side, almost to the bottom of the next valley—but not quite, pick it up and carry on—a graphic chart of the air flow in broken terrain.

But in the first weeks of operation at Detroit, a cross-hangar wind, spilling over the windbreak, twice pushed an airship gently but firmly into the trees on the far side. The trees were cut down, and the study of eddies and gusts hastened the development of a mobile mooring mast which would hold the ship steady in turbulent areas.

The Goodyear pilots learned to fly unworried through fog. As early as 1920, Hockensmith, flying the “Pony Blimp” from Los Angeles to Catalina Island, got lost when his compass failed in a fog so dense he could hardly see the nose of the ship. Flying low and slowly, barely off the water, he presently spied a dark shape ahead, came on a U. S. submarine, with decks awash, and an officer on lookout in the conning tower. He landed on his pontoons, taxied alongside, borrowed a compass, went on to his destination.

The conviction that except within its hangar the ship was safest in the air, grew out of many battles with wind and storm. Brannigan, flying the Vigilant at Washington, was caught in a storm which broke up an aeronautic show, wrecked several planes on the ground, sent the rest scattering for shelter. Piling extra cans of gasoline aboard, Brannigan cut his ship loose, headed into the wind, a wind so high that at times he found himself pushed backward at full throttle, hovered for an hour and a half over the capital, waiting the storm out, then flew 150 miles down the bay to Langley field and put up for the night.

On another occasion at Winston Salem, with his ship on the mast, Brannigan was caught in a sleet storm, found his ship bowed down and being crushed by the weight of ice on its back. Getting extra men from the city fire department, he braced his control surfaces with poles, beat off the ice on the bag as high as he could reach with branches, built oil smudge fires alongside to melt the ice, took off all possible equipment, to lighten ship, kept his craft headed into the wind, fought the storm successfully—and in the morning as the sun came out and the ice melted, flew on to Florida.

Boettner, starting south in 1930 in the larger Defender attempting a non-stop flight to Miami, ran into ice and snow in the Tennessee mountains. An oil line froze. His mechanic climbed out on the outriggers and made emergency repairs in flight, but not before the ship had lost most of its oil. Reaching Knoxville airport by morning, he dropped a note, lowered a line, hauled up additional oil, refilled the tanks, went on to the Gadsden hangar to complete repairs.

No Goodyear blimp has ever been damaged by storms while in the air, though a bit of resourcefulness was needed from time to time. For that matter, inquiry does not disclose any cases of a non-rigid airship being damaged by storm while in flight.

Two Goodyear blimps were in the path of the 1938 hurricane, which, heading for Florida from the Caribbean, changed its course erratically and moved up the coast, shot across New England. Lange, with the Enterprise, was at New Brunswick, N.J., 50 miles off the direct course of the hurricane. He put his ship on the mast, held it there during winds which rose as high as 73 miles per hour. He put extra men on the handling lines, doubled the number of screw stakes which held the mast, used the bus, with its motor wide open, as further re-enforcement. The storm raged furiously at the ship for hours but couldn’t budge it and when the hurricane passed on, everything was intact.

Boettner, with the Puritan at Springfield, Mass., was almost directly at the axis of the storm. He made the same gallant fight as Lange, but against winds which roared to 100 miles per hour in gusts, uprooted 100-year-old trees, tugged at a sheet-iron hangar roof, flapping it up and down, finally ripped it loose, sailed it like a child’s kite across the airport and out of sight.

At the peak of the storm the steel chains attaching the mast cables to the screw stakes failed on the windward side, thrusting the mast into the side of the ship, cutting a hole in the fabric. Boettner pulled out the rip panel, deflating the ship to prevent further damage and when the storm passed rolled up the bag, loaded it and the control car aboard a truck, shipped it into Akron where a new bag was attached. The Puritan was back at work within a week.

No wonder Goodyear pilots came to have great faith in the staunchness of their craft, and their ability to get out of trouble.

Fuel exhaustion didn’t bother the blimp. Fickes found that out early, at Wingfoot Lake, when a leak developed in his tank and emptied it. Free ballooning his ship he floated over a farm house, asked them to call the office, waited aloft till a truck came out with additional fuel.

Boettner had a similar difficulty while returning from Canada in the Defender. Persistent headwinds cut down his fuel and when he reached the American shore around midnight it was a question whether he could go on as far as Akron. Picking up U. S. Highway Five as being heavily traveled, he swung low over an adjoining field, slowed down so that his mechanic could drop off, flag a passing car and go into town for gas. By the time the aide returned a number of cars had parked alongside. Driving into the field, with headlights full on they formed a half circle, and the drivers caught the lines, held the ship till the fuel could be delivered, and Boettner proceeded on to Wingfoot Lake.

Mishaps there were of course, in all these years, but few were serious. Lange snagged a lone dead tree in the fog over the Alabama mountains and Smith side-swiped another while flying over a pass in Tennessee. The ship settled easily to the ground in each instance, and farmers came in with stone boats, carried the car and bag to town for repairs.

Brannigan, returning at night from Syracuse, ran short of gasoline, directed his ground crew to land him in an open field ahead. The ship nosed down, his aide directing the men with his flashlight. But just at this juncture the top of the flashlight fell off into the propeller, was whipped into the bag like a bullet, started a leak which was not discovered till next day.

Most ships in the Goodyear fleet have been fired on by thoughtless hunters. Once a bullet went through a ship a few inches back of the pilot. One marksman was arrested and sent to jail in Florida. Pilot Trotter had a curious experience in Oklahoma in 1935, while on his way to the Dallas fair. The ship had been on the mast for three days waiting for weather. On the fourth morning, finding the ship rather sluggish, Trotter looked around. A glass window from the cabin gives a view of the interior of the bag and as Trotter looked he saw light blinking from 14 bullet holes—through which gas had been pouring for three days!

The nearest hangar where repairs could be made and helium secured was at Scott Field, near St. Louis, 400 miles away. By this time the ship had barely enough lift for the pilot and 100 gallons of gas, not enough for the co-pilot. So Trotter flew alone to St. Louis, landing so heavy that the ship had almost to be carried into the hangar, made his repairs and was back in Oklahoma the next day.

Sewell had the experience of seeing a propeller fly off while heading down the bay from San Francisco, saw it careen wildly down, flew on to the next airport on one motor, mounted his spare.

Always the pilots were calling for more speed, removing or streamlining whatever sources of resistance they could, picking the time for cross-country flights when conditions were favorable. They flew from Akron to Washington and New York frequently at 60 miles per hour. The Reliance did even better in a trip north in 1939.

Starting home after its winter in Florida, the ship was held up in Jacksonville—by tire trouble of all things. The distance an airship can make in a day is limited by the distance the bus can travel, since the ground crew must be on hand at night to land the ship. And by now the bus, with its radio equipment, masts and the like had reached the point where only the special Goodyear YKL tires would sustain the 14,000 pounds of weight comfortably. There was a shortage of YKL’s when they started and three standard tires had failed on the run up from Miami. Neither Jacksonville nor Atlanta branch had YKL’s in that size and to get them from Akron would entail a day’s delay.

Meanwhile the ship was tugging on the mast, with a strong south wind, anxious to get under way. The pilots held a conference. Maybe, utilizing the tail wind, they could make it non-stop all the way to Washington, 700 miles north and have Lange’s crew land them. If they ran short of gas they could stop at Ft. Bragg, N. C., a convenient half-way point. The Army had a motorized observation balloon there, and was always willing to lend a hand to fellow airshippers. It was Sheppard’s turn to take the controls. He sent a wire to Ft. Bragg.

“If I run short of fuel, I’ll circle the field as a signal. Could you land my ship, lend me enough gas to get on to Washington?” The answer came back promptly, in the affirmative, and the ship left at midnight.

Roaring across the Carolinas at mile a minute speed the Reliance sighted Ft. Bragg before daylight, with plenty of gas left. An entire company was lined up ready to land the ship. Sheppard flew low, cut his motors, thanked them, flew on for Hoover Airport, arriving before noon. He averaged 66 miles per hour over the 700 mile trip, and landed with enough gasoline to have gone on to New York.

By utilizing helping winds, throttling his motors to cruising speed, Sheppard had effected most economical use of his fuel supply.

Fickes used the same technique more strikingly in the delivery flight of the larger Navy K-5 in 1941, when he flew in to Lakehurst from Wingfoot Lake at 100 miles per hour speed, again demonstrating that greater cruising radius than that for which a ship was designed may be effected, whenever it is possible to pick departure times that are most favorable.

Other improvements in construction or operating technique grew out of the fleet’s experiences in flying in all weathers. A trip made by the Defender in 1930 from Miami across to Havana brought home the usefulness of the radio. The insurance underwriters insisted on a two-way radio being installed, along with pontoons on the ship, as safety precautions. Neither radio nor pontoons were needed during the crossing, but the pilots sensed the desirability of being able to communicate with their home station and their airport objective. Shortly after a short wave frequency was granted to the ships, one of the early ones in aircraft, and two-way sets were later installed on every ship, on the ground-crew buses and at Akron.

This permitted the making of daily weather maps, extended the airships’ radius of action. Pilots would set out with more assurance, knowing that they would be quickly advised of foul weather ahead, could change their course, give appropriate instructions to the men on the ground, land whenever it seemed desirable.

In the end the airships were all doing instrument flying, riding the radio beams like the passenger airplanes, got their landing and take-off instructions from the radio control towers at the airports.

The fleet proved an ideal testing vehicle for the expeditionary mast. But progress moved carefully, a step at a time. As late as 1930 an air dock was built alongside the company’s plant at Gadsden, Ala., for use as an operating base in the middle south. It was thought necessary as a half way point for ships headed for Florida. After the high mast came in however, the Gadsden dock came to be used only for warehousing, and no airship has been inside it in four years.

In 1932 the Volunteer started in from Los Angeles for Akron, making the first successful trip of any non-rigid airship over the Continental Divide. The Volunteer was due for helium purification and a new bag. No helium facilities were available closer than Akron. Rather than deflate the ship and send it by train, Pilot Smith decided to fly in. He laid out a route via El Paso, San Antonio, and Scott Field, so that he could get shelter, if necessary, at army hangars at those points. He berthed at El Paso just after a 100-mile-an-hour storm had passed over, stayed three days at Kelly Field, found it unnecessary to stop over night at Scott. Even so, because of persistent head winds he had had to spend ten nights in the open, setting up his low mast with screw stakes on the open prairie.

Mooring out procedure had improved by the time that Sewell made the same trip five years later, so he made only courtesy stops at the three army camps, was on his own.

A mishap at Louisville gave impetus to the development of the high mast. The retractible low mast mounted on top of the bus was attached to the bag about half way between the car and nose of the ship, convenient to get at, the system being referred to as “belly-mooring.” The low mast was light, could be set up quickly and easily, would hold securely against a straight pull of considerable force. However, it was not as effective in the case of a wind shift, or gusts which rolled the ship on its side. A higher mast, with the ship anchored at the nose, was free to swing in all directions. Every one realized this, but it was only after Crum’s ship was caught and twisted by a gust at Louisville, punching a hole in the bag, that the change was made.

The high mast, built in sections, anchored by guy wires to stakes screwed in the ground, was more bulky, took longer to set up, but would hold the ship indefinitely once it was in place.

Thereafter both masts were carried in cross-country trips, the convenient low mast being used for overnight stops in good weather, the high mast for more extended operations, or when the weather looked threatening.

The ground-crew bus was in evolution during this period. Built originally to carry merely crew, spare parts and supplies it added a radio room, navigation quarters, and carried the two masts. A scout car cruises ahead to make overnight arrangements, a trailer follows, with its own electric plant and expeditionary equipment, including a spot light to play on the ship at night. Duties of airship personnel grew more specialized and complex.

Members of the ground crew acted as radio technicians, meteorologists, mechanics, riggers. They comprised a colorful group, recruited from all parts of the country. Sailors from New Bedford, fruit growers from Florida, farm boys from Ohio, ranchers from the San Joaquin valley, a mechanic from a Chicago airport, a policeman from the Cleveland fair, all dropped their work and followed the airships. The personnel list was a history of every place an airship had operated.

The work wasn’t easy, involved long hours in the cold and rain when storms threatened, picking up mail from their families on the fly in cross-country operations, moving their households from north to south and north again. But the ground-crew men stuck, most of them having ten years’ service and more. On cross-country trips a crew of 14, including pilots, is adequate.

The pilot personnel too formed an interesting group. Jack Boettner, chief pilot, veteran of the group, with probably more airship hours than any man in the world, certainly in non-rigid airships, had played all-American football at Washington and Jefferson, been instructor at Wingfoot Lake through the first war, was working in Goodyear’s aeronautical sales when the fleet got under way.

As expansion started in 1927 Smith came in from the aero workshop, would remain second in flight hours only to Boettner. Fickes from Akron University, left the Efficiency Dept. to sign up, set up one of the first outside bases, at New Bedford, flew the Mayflower when it picked up Mr. Litchfield from an ocean liner, later became manager of all airship operations. O’Neil from the workshop came on too, in that year, became chief mechanic.

When a base was set up at Los Angeles, Lange, a New Englander who had left Boston University to fly airships in the first war, later flying out of Panama, joined up, was sent to California, later took charge of the Washington base. Sewell, a Kansan with a similar record, having left the state university to fly blimps in coastal patrol in 1918 came in, captained a ship at New York, followed Lange at Los Angeles.

Further expansion came in 1929, when the Puritan, Mayflower, Vigilant and Volunteer and Defender were added to the fleet. Now came Wilson, Purdue footballer, Furculow from West Point and Mt. Union, Hobensack from West Virginia U, Rieker and Crum from Ohio State, the last named becoming engineer officer of the group.

Other practical men came in, from the balloon room and aero shops—Sheppard a Virginian, who later flew all over New England, the Middle West and Texas; Massick, Crosier and Munro; Blair, Army sergeant from Scott Field, came to Goodyear after the semi-rigid RS-1 was finished.

Stacy, another New Englander, left the class room at Massachusetts Tech to sign up. Dixon, born in a lighthouse on Nantucket Island, left a billet as junior officer on a South American liner to fly land ships instead. Trotter, from the Naval Academy, was in engineering work in Florida when a blimp flew over. Lueders came in via the ground crew at Los Angeles.

Many of the Goodyear pilots were commissioned as Reserve officers in the Navy, and Fickes, Boettner, Lange, Sewell, Wilson, Trotter and Furculow each took a year’s active duty with the Navy at Lakehurst with rigid ships. More than a score of trips were made by Goodyear pilots across the ocean as student officers aboard the Graf Zeppelin and the Hindenburg, getting post-graduate training.

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.