When Giants Ruled the Sky E-Book

John J. Geoghegan

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 758

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Almost everything you know about airships is wrong. Between 1917 and 1935, the US Navy poured tens of millions of dollars into their airship programme, building a series of dirigibles each one more enormous than the last. These flying behemoths were to be the future of long-distance transport, competing with trains and ocean liners to carry people, post and cargo from country to country, and even across the sea. But by 1936 all these ambitious plans had been scrapped. What happened? When Giants Ruled the Sky is the story of how the American rigid airship came within a hair's breadth of dominating long-distance transportation. It is also the story of four men whose courage and determination kept the programme going despite the obstacles thrown in their way – until the Navy deliberately ignored a fatal design flaw, bringing the programme crashing back to earth. The subsequent cover-up prevented the truth from being told for more than eighty years. Now, for the first time, what really happened can be revealed.

Leseprobe

This book is dedicated to my parents, who gave me every advantage;would that they were alive to see the result.

Jacket illustrations:

Author Photo: Emil Petrinic

Front Cover: US Naval History and Heritage Command, Catalog #NH43901

Back Cover: Official US Navy Photograph

First published 2021

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© John J. Geoghegan, 2021

The right of John J. Geoghegan to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 9907 6

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

CONTENTS

Principal Players

Preface

PART I: A Giant in Flight. USS Akron (ZRS-4), 1933

1 Admiral William A. Moffett: A Giant in Winter

2 Departures

3 A Night to Remember

4 Fight for Survival

5 Spotlight

6 Wiley on Trial

PART II: A Giant is Born

7 Paul W. Litchfield: A Giant in Spring

8 Blimps Lead the Way

9 Dawn of the Commercial Airship

10 Competition

11 Cutting a Deal

12 Pitching Commercial Airships

13 The Design Competition

14 Success within Reach

15 For Want of a Nail

16 Airship Fever

17 Consequences

PART III: A Giant in Trouble. USS Macon (ZRS-5), 1933–34

18 Building the Macon

19 Christening

20 Trial Flights

21 Lakehurst

22 Dr Karl Arnstein: A Giant Displaced

23 Doubts

24 Fulton

25 Sunnyvale

26 Up to the Task?

27 Flying Aircraft Carriers

28 Peril in the Sky

29 Fleet Problem XV

30 A Giant in Waiting

PART IV: A Giant Redeemed. USS Macon (ZRS-5), 1934–35

31 The Houston Incident

32 Lt Cdr Wiley: A Giant Revealed

33 A Giant Excels

34 A Giant in Danger

35 A Giant is Lost

36 A Giant is Rescued

37 A Giant on Trial

38 Assigning Blame

39 Aftermath

40 A Giant is Found

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Sources

Notes

About the Author

PRINCIPAL PLAYERS

SECRETARY OF THE NAVY

Curtis D. Wilbur (1924–29)

Charles F. Adams, III (1929–33)

Claude A. Swanson (1933–39)

US Navy

Chief of Naval Operations (CNO)

Admiral William V. Pratt (1930–33)

Admiral William H. Standley (1933–37)

Admiral William D. Leahy (1937–39)

Commander in Chief, US Fleet (CINC, FLEET)

Admiral David F. Sellers (1933–34)

Vice Admiral Joseph M. Reeves (1934–36)

Commander Aircraft, Battle Forces (COMBATFOR)

Admiral Joseph M. Reeves (June 1933)

Rear Admiral John Halligan (1933–34)

Vice Admiral Henry V. Butler (1934–36)

US Navy Bureau of Aeronautics (BUAER)

Admiral William A. Moffett, Chief (1921–33)

Rear Admiral Ernest J. King, Chief (1933–36)

Rear Admiral Arthur B. Cook, Chief (1936–39)

Commander Garland Fulton, Head of LTA Design Section

Lt Thomas G.W. ‘Tex’ Settle, Inspector of Naval Aircraft (embedded at Goodyear-Zeppelin)

US Navy Rigid Airships

USS Shenandoah (ZR-1) (1923–25)

R38 (ZR-2) (1921)*

USS Los Angeles (ZR-3) (1924–32)

Commander Charles E. Rosendahl, Commanding Officer (1926–29)

Lt Cdr Herbert V. Wiley, Executive Officer (1926–29)

Lt Cdr Herbert V. Wiley, Commanding Officer (October 1928, May 1929–April 1930)

USS Akron (ZRS-4) (1931–33)

Commander Charles E. Rosendahl, Commanding Officer (1931–32)

Commander Alger H. Dresel, Commanding Officer (1932–33)

Commander Frank C. McCord, Commanding Officer (1933)

Lt Cdr Herbert V. Wiley, Executive Officer (XO) (1931–33)

Boatswain’s Mate, Second Class, Richard E. Deal

Metalsmith, Second Class, Moody E. Erwin

Curtiss F9C-2 Sparrowhawk pilots:

Lt D. Ward Harrigan, Squadron Leader

Lt Howard L. Young

Lt Frederick M. Trapnell

Lt (jg) Harold B. Miller

Lt (jg) Robert W. Larson

Lt (jg) Frederick N. Kivette

USS Macon (ZRS-5) (1933–35)

Rear Admiral George C. Day, Board of Inspection & Survey responsible for ensuring USS Macon was fit to be commissioned a US Navy vessel

Commander Alger H. Dresel, Commanding Officer (1933–34)

Lt Cdr Herbert V. Wiley, Commanding Officer (1934–35)

Lt Cdr Jesse L. Kenworthy, Jr, Executive Officer

Lt Cdr Edwin F. Cochrane

Lt Cdr Scott E. Peck, Navigator

Lt Cdr Donald M. Mackey, Flight Control Officer

Lt Calvin M. Bolster, Ship’s Repair Officer

Lt Anthony L. Danis, Aerologist

Lt (jg) George W. Campbell

Lt (jg) John D. Reppy

Robert J. Davis, Chief Boatswain’s Mate

Ernest E. Dailey, Radioman, First Class

Helmsman, William H. Clarke, Coxswain

Elevatorman, Wilmer M. Conover, Aviation Machinist’s Mate, First Class

Maximo Cariaso, Mess Attendant, First Class

Florentino Edquiba, Mess Attendant, First Class

Curtiss F9C-2 Sparrowhawk pilots:

Lt Harold B. Miller, Squadron Leader

Lt Howard L. Young

Lt (jg) Frederick N. Kivette

Lt (jg) Gerald L. Huff

Lt (jg) Leroy C. Simpler

Lt (jg) Harry W. Richardson

GOODYEAR TIRE & RUBBER COMPANY (1900–58)

Paul W. Litchfield:

Plant Superintendent (1900–11)

Factory Manager (1911–16)

Vice President (1915–26)

President (1926–30)*

CEO, Chairman (1930–58)

Chairman Emeritus (1958)

GOODYEAR-ZEPPELIN CORPORATION (1924–40)

Paul W. Litchfield, President

Jerome C. Hunsaker, Vice President*

Dr Karl Arnstein, Chief Designer

Kurt Bauch, Engineer

Hugh Allen, Public Relations Director

LUFTSCHIFFBAU ZEPPELIN (1908–45)

Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, Founder (1908–17)

Dr Hugo Eckener, Manager (1917–45)**

Dr Karl Arnstein, Structural Analyst (1915–24)

_____________

* The US Navy agreed to purchase the R38 from the UK with the intention of designating it the ZR-2. However, the R38 crashed before it could be commissioned by the Navy.

* Litchfield also served as President of the International Zeppelin Company commencing in 1929.

* Hunsaker also served as President of the Pacific Zeppelin Company commencing in 1929.

** Dr Eckener also commanded the Graf Zeppelin (LZ-127) as well as numerous other Zeppelins.

In this plodding commercial age, this day of humdrum money grubbing and of the routine though admirable round of quiet duty doing, it is a good thing, I think, for the few of us who can to leave the beaten track, fare forth into strange fields, and strive mightily to do things which are exceedingly difficult and dangerous and the more fascinating because they are difficult and dangerous.

Walter Wellman, airship pilot,

The Aerial Age, 1911

PREFACE

It is easy to dismiss the rigid airship as … predestined to failure. But this explains nothing.

Richard K. Smith, Airship Historian1

Why read a book about airships?

The answer is simple: because most of what we know about them is wrong.

In retrospect, airships might seem like fragile dodo birds destined for extinction, but for the first thirty years of the twentieth century they were viewed as a more robust means of transportation than the aeroplane consistently surpassing them in range, flight duration, and load-carrying capacity. By comparison, early aeroplanes were noisy, oil-splattering affairs that could only carry a handful of passengers, flew mostly in daylight, were often grounded by poor weather, and crashed with alarming frequency. And yet, the history of aviation remains focused on Heavier-Than-Air (HTA) flight. It’s not difficult to understand why, but it’s a bias that overshadows some truly amazing airship accomplishments. Consider the following:

• In 1901, Alberto Santos-Dumont, a Brazilian millionaire with soulful eyes and a penchant for depression, needed only thirty minutes to complete an eight-mile, circular course around the Eiffel Tower in his No. 6 dirigible. What’s more, the diminutive Brazilian did it two years before the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk – an impressive display of powered, navigable flight.*

• In 1910, German airships began carrying paying passengers on a regularly scheduled route four years before the first scheduled commercial airline service began in the United States.

• In 1919, a British airship, the R34, was the first aircraft of any type to make a round-trip voyage across the Atlantic – something no aeroplane of the day could accomplish.* If that’s not impressive, the R34 completed her record-making flight eight years before Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic on his solo, one-way flight to Paris and did so carrying passengers.

• In 1926, an Italian airship, the Norge, flew over the North Pole, marking the first time any land, air, or sea expedition incontrovertibly reached that destination.**

• In 1929, another German airship, the Graf Zeppelin (LZ-127), circled the globe six times faster than the first aeroplane to do so. Two years later, the Graf commenced a regularly scheduled passenger service between Germany and South America with occasional stops in New Jersey – a performance no other aircraft of the day could match.

Lighter-Than-Air (LTA) flight may be a withered branch on aviation’s tree, but its history is important because it’s where human flight first began. When Giants Ruled the Sky will not only correct many of the popular misconceptions associated with airships but explain why so many people expected they would surpass ocean liners and transcontinental trains as the preferred means of long-distance transportation especially for the wealthy.

One popular misconception is that the Hindenburg (LZ-129) crash brought an end to the airship era. Giants will show this isn’t the case. Additionally, the Hindenburg’s fiery demise killed far fewer people than many of us assume. Of the ninety-seven passengers and crew aboard that fateful day, two thirds – sixty-two people – survived the disaster. This casualty rate of 35 per cent was far lower than the major aeroplane, train and ocean liner disasters of the day. Given 1,503 souls were lost on the Titanic, the Hindenburg’s death toll of 35* is small by comparison. In fact, Germany remained so confident in the future of airship travel that she began flying a replacement, the Graf Zeppelin II (LZ-130), only four months after the Hindenburg crash and continued to operate her for another two years. The Germans even had a sister airship under construction, the LZ-131, when the Second World War intervened.

What most people don’t realise is that before the Hindenburg disaster, German airships transported tens of thousands of paying passengers millions of miles without a single passenger fatality – a safety record unmatched by any other form of transportation.2 Although it’s true that the number of deaths attributable to airship crashes was astounding when compared to the small number of craft that were built, airships were promoted by their adherents as the safest form of long-distance transportation.

One reason so many people expected airships to become the dominant form of long-distance transport was that the US Navy, in partnership with the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company and German airship manufacturer Luftschiffbau Zeppelin** were determined to sell the public on the speed, comfort and safety of airship travel. Twice as fast as the speediest ocean liner (to which they were frequently compared), airships seemed ubiquitous during the 1920s and early ’30s, appearing over Tokyo, Washington, D.C., Rio de Janiero, the Egyptian pyramids and New York’s Empire State Building. The Empire State Building (the tallest skyscraper in the world when completed) was even built with an airship mooring station at its top. As a result, airships didn’t just capture the public’s imagination in the way the American space programme would many years later: they held it firmly in their grasp for three decades until aeroplane technology matured enough to eventually overtake them.

What may surprise the reader is just how close America came to having her own fleet of gigantic, globe-spanning airships. Designed to carry passengers, mail, and cargo, these behemoths were not only intended to fly from New York to California, but across the Pacific, the Atlantic and down the length of South America. And yet, passenger ships ply the ocean today while commercial airlines flourish. Meanwhile, the big rigid airship is extinct. An explanation why is long overdue.

One reason airships seemed destined to succeed was that between 1917 and 1935 the United States Navy poured tens of millions of dollars into an experimental programme that built a series of increasingly sophisticated dirigibles, larger and more expensive than anything that had ever flown. The biggest of the lot, the USS Akron (ZRS-4)* and her sister ship, the USS Macon (ZRS-5), were so large they equalled the RMS Lusitania in length. Fourteen storeys tall, and two-and-a-half football fields long, these self-contained cities in the sky could venture aloft with an eighty-man crew for days at a time when an aeroplane’s range was limited, ocean liners slow and no railroad truly transcontinental. There was only one problem. The Navy’s airships kept crashing. Even when the Navy was warned that its airships had a potentially fatal design flaw, it refused to listen. When it became clear the design flaw had caused at least one of its airships to crash, the Navy covered up the truth rather than risk further embarrassment.

The purpose of this book is to delve into the two most critical years in the Navy’s big rigid programme, April 1933 to February 1935, and ask the question: what the heck happened? Why, after spending millions of dollars and years of effort, did the fate of the American airship come down to a brief twenty-three-month window? Central to the answer are the heroic contributions of four men instrumental in building the Navy’s Zeppelins, each a giant who ruled the sky:

• Rear Admiral William A. Moffett, the first Chief of the US Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics, who envisioned a fleet of gargantuan military airships patrolling the Pacific to prevent a surprise attack by Japan.

• Paul W. Litchfield, CEO of the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, who not only wanted to build Zeppelins for the Navy, but also a fleet of passenger-carrying airships that spanned the globe.

• Goodyear-Zeppelin’s chief airship designer, Dr Karl Arnstein, who, having built Zeppelins for Germany to bomb London, was determined to design the world’s safest airships for his former enemy no matter the obstacles put in his path.

• And the Macon’s enterprising captain, Lt Cdr Herbert V. Wiley, upon whose shoulders the fate of the American rigid airship would ultimately fall.

Each one of these four men shared the same hope for the future – a fleet of US-flagged dirigibles that would extend American military and commercial hegemony from sea to sky. This dream not only ended up killing one of them, but would irrevocably change the lives of the other three while leaving a lasting mark on aviation. Sadly, the contribution of these four giants is little remembered today despite their having once been famous. That these four men fought to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds to achieve their goal suggests just how extraordinary, if little known, the story of the American rigid airship really is.

But first a word about definitions.

There are three types of airship: non-rigid, semi-rigid and big rigid. Most people are familiar with non-rigid types. The Goodyear blimp, which flies over sporting events, was a good example for many years.* Blimps are designated non-rigid because their envelope contains no skeletal framework. Instead, their shape is determined by the pressure of the lifting gas inside. Non-rigids also have a gondola slung underneath, which houses the pilot and passengers along with one or two engines mounted on their outsides.

Next come semi-rigids. Semi-rigids incorporate a keel in their envelope giving them added structural strength. As a result, semi-rigids can be built larger in size than non-rigids, allowing them to lift more, and fly farther, than blimps. But even then, semi-rigids don’t approach the truly gargantuan size of the rigid airship.

Whereas the envelope of a non-rigid or semi-rigid is shaped by the lifting gas it contains, the envelope of big rigids, like the Akron, Macon and Hindenburg, are given shape by an enormous, skeletal airframe. This enables the crew to live and work inside a big rigid’s hull; unlike a blimp or semi-rigid where passengers and crew are confined to the gondola underneath. A big rigid’s airframe is critical to its design because it supports a series of gas cells inflated with helium or hydrogen to float the airship. The reason why big rigids had to be so huge was to contain the enormous amount of LTA gas necessary to lift their sizeable weight. Although a big rigid’s heaviness may seem counterintuitive, it’s required if the airship is to be sturdy enough to transport a large amount of people and cargo considerable distances for days at a time without landing.

To give an idea of a big rigid’s mind-boggling size, the Hindenburg was approximately 140 times larger than the Goodyear blimps of her day. She had to be, not only to transport 100 passengers and crew thousands of miles while serving gourmet meals in luxurious accommodations, but to transport a substantial amount of cargo which not only included cars, but a piano for shipboard entertainment. In contrast, blimps can only carry a few people two or three hundred miles. Only big rigids, like Germany’s Hindenburg or America’s Akron and Macon, were robust enough to cross an entire ocean or continent.

As for the difference between a ‘dirigible’ and an ‘airship’, there are none. The terms are interchangeable. The word dirigible is derived from the French verb dirigeable, meaning to steer or direct, so any LTA craft that has an engine which propels it forward, and a steering mechanism like a rudder, can be termed a dirigible. As for the word ‘Zeppelin’, it’s a brand name used to describe airships built by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin’s company, Luftschiffbau Zeppelin. Considered the father of the big rigid, Count Zeppelin and his firm built nearly 200 airships for commercial or military use during the first forty years of the twentieth century. Since then, the word has evolved to represent an entire category just like Kleenex, Xerox or Hoover. For our purposes, though, Zeppelin refers only to airships conceived and built by the German count and his eponymous company.

Despite being largely overlooked, the early days of LTA flight produced a diverse number of craft, many of them awe inspiring both in size and design. Even today, airships permeate modern life in unexpected ways. Take for instance the rigid airship in Pixar’s animated movie Up. It’s based upon the USS Akron and her sister ship, the Macon – two Navy dirigibles that could launch and retrieve their own aircraft in mid-flight.

Finally, as much as When Giants Ruled the Sky is a factual history, there is a fair amount of personal observation sprinkled throughout. For example, as a child I never understood why the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company had blimps. Those giant gas bags with their winged-foot logos didn’t seem to have anything to do with tyre manufacturing. Hopefully, Giants will not only explain why a blimp fleet makes perfect sense for the company, but why it continues to operate them today.

If it’s hard not to be moved by the sheer size, grace and beauty of big rigids, it’s equally difficult not to be impressed by the courage and determination of the men who designed, built and operated them. Nevertheless, airship history rarely receives the respect it deserves. The USS Akron and Macon may be sterling examples of white elephant technology, but that only makes the story of the men who struggled to build and fly them all the more inspiring.

In summary, Giants intends to place rigid airships in their rightful heroic context. It’s not only a reappraisal of the reason for their demise, but a celebration of the passion and daring of four larger-than-life figures whose efforts made the American big rigid possible.

In other words, explaining why the airship went the way of the dinosaurs is at the heart of this story. And the interesting thing is it had nothing to do with the Hindenburg.

_____________

* To give the Wright brothers their due, their engineering acumen made them first to crack the code of HTA flight. Nevertheless, they were far from being the first men to fly, which may come as a surprise to many. Additionally, they weren’t quite the heroes they’re painted to be as we’ll soon see.

* Although Alcock and Brown succeeded in being the first to fly across the Atlantic, a few weeks before the R34, they took a considerably shorter route, flew only one way, and made a very hard landing in Ireland. By comparison, the R34’s flight was smooth sailing.

** Despite Frederick Cook and Robert Peary each claiming to have reached the North Pole first, in 1908 and 1909, respectively, neither claim was ever verified and both remain controversial. In the case of Richard Byrd’s 1926 overflight of the North Pole, he later admitted his navigation was faulty.

* One of the 35 killed was not a passenger or crewman but a line handler on the ground.

** Translated from the German, Luftschiffbau means ‘airship construction’.

* The Z in the US Navy’s ZRS-4 designation stands for Airship (not Zeppelin as some people think), the R for Rigid and the S for Scout. The number meant she was the Navy’s fourth big rigid.

* Goodyear retired its non-rigid blimp fleet in 2014, replacing it with semi-rigid airships.

PART I

A GIANT IN FLIGHT.USS AKRON(ZRS-4), 1933

1

ADMIRAL WILLIAM A. MOFFETT:A GIANT IN WINTER

Rear Admiral William Adger Moffett may have been a giant who ruled the skies, but the 63-year-old Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics (BUAER) felt more like a lion in winter this dismal Monday morning. It was 2 April 1933 and the sky outside his window in Washington, DC’s Navy Department was claustrophobically low: its clouds a leaden shade of grey. Like it or not, the weather fitted the admiral’s mood.

Responsible for overseeing every aspect of naval aviation, Moffett was not only BUAER’s first chief; he’d headed it for a dozen years. A champion of flight at a time when the field was still young, Moffett was considered the father of naval aviation. His crowning achievement was to persuade Congress to fund a thousand aeroplanes and two big rigids for the Navy – the largest purchase of aircraft ever made at the time. The congressional appropriation not only put naval aviation on the map but saved a number of American aircraft manufacturers from bankruptcy, transforming Moffett into a national figure.

Even in his waning years, Moffett made a striking impression. Although he rarely smiled for the camera, favouring a stern, granite-faced expression, he was a handsome man. His high forehead, well-proportioned nose and cleft chin lent him a patrician air that was reinforced by the pipe never far from his mouth. Not especially tall, Moffett’s military bearing added inches to his height while his snow-white hair encircled his head like a laurel wreath, adding to his imperious effect.

As intimidating as Moffett appeared, there was little doubt his rigid airship programme was in trouble. Some people wondered why the admiral placed so much importance on the Navy’s big rigids when aeroplanes were the coming thing. Nevertheless, Moffett was proud of his newest airship, the USS Akron. Nearly three football fields long and fourteen storeys tall, the Akron was meant to patrol the ocean to forestall a surprise attack by Japan. In the meantime, her younger sister, the USS Macon, was set to make her first test flight in just a few weeks.

Moffett had heard the complaints about his big rigids: they were too expensive, accident prone and vulnerable to being shot down; they only flew when the sun shined; and more recently, aircraft carriers had made them obsolete. The last was ironic given Moffett was instrumental in developing carriers for the Navy. Moffett argued that airships were complementary to, not competitive with, aeroplanes, but fewer people were buying his story.

It didn’t help that the Navy’s first big rigid, the USS Shenandoah (ZR-1), was ripped in half by a violent thunderstorm over Ohio, killing fourteen of her forty-three-man crew. The Navy’s second big rigid, ZR-2, also suffered a horrible demise when she collapsed in mid-air during a trial flight over Hull, UK.* Forty-four of her forty-nine-man crew were killed, including sixteen of the seventeen Americans on board. In contrast, the USS Los Angeles (ZR-3) flew for nearly eight years, making her the most successful big rigid the Navy had ever operated.

The Los Angeles had gone a long way towards putting concerns about Moffett’s rigid airships to rest. But the Akron, the Navy’s newest big rigid, had suffered a series of embarrassing mishaps calling Moffett’s programme into question. An astute politician, Moffett had hoped to dispel the concerns by inviting members of the House Naval Affairs Committee, which funded his airships, to take a ride on the Akron. But as the congressmen waited to board, the dirigible’s tail broke loose. With her bow still attached to the mooring mast, the Akron spun like a weather vane, her tail dragging across the ground with a sickening crunch. The damage was so severe the flight had to be cancelled. Worse, the Akron was laid up two months for repairs. As one congressman witnessing the accident remarked, ‘When I see girders snap off like pretzels, I know something is wrong.’1

Then there was the Camp Kearny incident.

When the Akron should have been celebrating her first transcontinental voyage across the United States, three sailors holding her mooring line were inadvertently pulled into the sky over San Diego. A newsreel cameraman caught the exact moment two of the men fell to their death, making for memorable if damning footage.* It was yet another black mark on the Akron’s record that, along with rumours of substandard construction, continued to dog her.

Powerful members of Congress felt the Akron was a white elephant, but Moffett was confident she’d live up to expectations if given a fair chance. His reasoning was sound enough. The Akron had been designed to scout thousands of square miles of ocean faster, more thoroughly, and at far less expense than the sea-going cruisers the Navy relied upon. Importantly, Moffett saw rigid airships as the best means to prevent a surprise attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States.

America had been preparing for war with Japan ever since the island nation had stunned the world by defeating the Russian Navy at the Battle of Tsushima in 1905. That Japan could thrash a major Western power threatened the big four’s hegemony** fuelling racist beliefs about the coming ‘yellow peril’.

Not one to think small, Moffett envisioned at least ten ocean-going airships, the largest ever built, to serve as the ‘eyes of the fleet’. He already had two big rigids, the Akron, commissioned in 1931, and the USS Macon (ZRS-5), christened just that March. Whether he got the rest depended on two things: his ability to demonstrate the Akron and Macon were effective ocean-going scouts and establishing a US-based commercial airship industry to help build his aerial fleet. Until then Moffett worried America was vulnerable to a Japanese attack.

Moffett hadn’t always believed in airships. ‘I confess to being a skeptic originally as to whether these … “gas bags” could be of any value,’ he’d written. ‘But after I investigated the matter, I became convinced as to the ultimate … desirability of … their development.’ As far as their price tag went, he said his critics were ‘apt to think too much about the money involved and too little about the benefits to mankind’.2

Moffett had his work cut out for him. During the darkening days of the Depression, the Navy’s ‘battleship admirals’ considered naval aviation a threat since it competed with their precious surface fleet for scarce funding. This meant Moffett’s airship programme attracted a lot of sniping inside the Navy, which is why he felt ‘Putting over Lighter-Than-Air has been the toughest job I ever undertook.’3

Moffett may have faced increasing criticism, but he was well positioned to succeed. Two gold stripes, one thick, one thin, plus a star on his sleeve gave him the clout he needed to get the job done. Spartan in taste and reserved in manner, he kept his emotions in check unless someone required a bawling out. But Moffett’s southern charm helped contribute to his success. He was genuinely well-liked in the corridors of power, where he didn’t just know who to put the arm on, but how hard to squeeze. A consummate insider, Moffett had an intuitive grasp of Washington politics. But his polite manner hid a steely determination; he’d even bypass his chain of command if it got him what he wanted.4

Moffett may have made it look easy, but it wasn’t. Competing naval factions, inter-service rivalries and the sclerotic nature of decision making in Washington meant he endured many years of bureaucratic infighting. And yet he nearly always won.

If Moffett had done more than anyone else to shape the future of naval aviation, he’d paid a steep price for it. Yes, he wielded tremendous power, but Chief of BUAER was not a popular position in a Navy that was trying to figure out how to incorporate aeroplanes with its fighting ships. Yet Moffett had served three terms as head of the department, foregoing any chance of promotion. He’d also sacrificed his personal life. The father of six children, he’d been missing in action for most of his marriage. Remote and often gruff, he travelled so frequently he was rarely at home. His wife, Jeannette, fifteen years younger, was used to his being away. Prominent in Washington society, she enjoyed the power and prestige her husband’s position gave her if not always his presence. If Moffett’s reputation as a ladies man, earned at the Naval Academy,5 had carried over into adulthood, he’d been discreet. As it was, his marriage was more respectful than affectionate.6 His children suffered as well. As Moffett’s eldest daughter recalled about the admiral, he made for ‘a great navy officer but not a very good father’.7

Serving his country had certainly taken its toll. As proof, Moffett had finally begun looking his age. In fact, he’d recently lost so much weight his features had thinned to the point of sharpness. One explanation is that he suffered from congestive heart failure. If so, few if any people were aware of his condition. Still, photographs show him looking drawn and frail. That’s not to say he’d lost his command presence, on the contrary, he remained tough as nails. But after forty-two years in the Navy he’d earned the right to be tired.

Moffett was proud of his accomplishments, but he’d ruffled some feathers along the way. Roosevelt wanted to reappoint him as Chief of BUAER for an unprecedented fourth term, but Secretary of the Navy, Claude A. Swanson, had been cool to the idea.8 And so, after more than four decades serving his country, Moffett was slated to retire on his 64th birthday. In the meantime, he had almost finished building Happy Landings, his 40-acre retreat overlooking the Potomac River in Virginia. One thing was certain, he’d probably have difficulty adjusting to the quiet life after wielding power for so long.

Moffett’s impending retirement meant he only had six months to get his rigid airship programme on a sound footing. This wasn’t a lot of time, especially since the sharks were circling. The last thing he needed that grey Monday morning was bad weather to interfere with his plans.

The reason the weather so concerned Moffat was that he was scheduled to fly on the Akron later that evening. The largest, most sophisticated, most expensive aircraft built in her day, the Akron was Moffett’s pride and joy. He’d even invited a VIP to join him on the flight. But the increasing gloom outside Moffett’s window had him worried the flight might be cancelled. Picking up the phone, the admiral placed a call to Lakehurst, New Jersey, where the Akron was based, to make sure the flight wasn’t scrubbed.

Normally, the Chief of BUAER wouldn’t bother calling a base commander about a routine training flight, but Moffett wanted to make a point. It was no secret he felt his airship captains were fair-weather flyers. ‘[I have a] feeling,’ he’d written, ‘and have had it for a long time, that the ships have not been operated as much as they should.’ Moffett had gone so far as to say, ‘It may be advisable to take one … out … looking for bad weather … so we can … find out what these ships can really do.’9

Never shy about making his opinion known, Moffett had recently overseen the replacement of the Akron’s commanding officer with a more aggressive airship skipper, Commander Frank C. McCord. McCord agreed that airships should fly in every kind of weather.10 After all, nobody wanted a big rigid that flew only when it was sunny, least of all Moffett.

When the phone rang in Commander Fred T. Berry’s office, Berry wasn’t surprised to learn it was Moffett. The commanding officer of NAS Lakehurst was used to hearing from the admiral. But when Moffett learned that the Akron’s skipper was in Berry’s office, he asked to speak with him. Handing the phone to McCord, Berry let him know it was the admiral calling.11

McCord had been the Akron’s CO for only three months. Recruited from the fleet to command Moffett’s next generation of dirigibles,12 he knew how much the surface Navy looked down on airships. This is why McCord had embarked on an ambitious training schedule hoping to show sceptics what the Akron was capable of. So far they remained unconvinced.

While Moffett enquired about the upcoming flight, McCord motioned to his executive officer, Lt Cdr Herbert V. Wiley, to get the latest forecast. After calling the base’s aerological office, Wiley told McCord there was a possibility of scattered thundershowers later that night. The weather over their intended destination, Newport, Rhode Island, also looked poor, which might prevent them from accomplishing the tasks they’d scheduled for the next morning.13

Though Moffett’s exact words are lost to history, his intent was clear. He wanted the Akron’s fifty-ninth flight, scheduled for sunset, to proceed as planned. When McCord assured him it would, Moffett said to expect him before 1900 hours and hung up.14

With one seemingly innocuous phone call, Rear Admiral William A. Moffett not only changed the future of his rigid airship programme, but the fate of the American airship as well.

_____________

* ZR-2, which the US purchased in the UK, crashed before she had a chance to be commissioned in the US Navy. As a result, she’s usually referred to by her British designation, R38. To add to the confusion, ZR-2 crashed in 1921 while ZR-1 wasn’t commissioned until 1923.

* After dangling from the airship for more than an hour, the third man was pulled aboard.

** In 1933, the big four were defined as the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Italy.

2

DEPARTURES

Moffett departed Washington accompanied by his naval aide at 1300 hours.1 Normally, he preferred flying to Lakehurst Naval Air Station. After all, he was head of naval aviation. But the weather was sketchy. Not wanting to risk being grounded, he made the long drive in his staff car instead.2

When the admiral arrived at NAS Lakehurst nearly six hours later the huge slab-like doors of Hangar No. 1 were already open. Inside, a gigantic dirigible, her airframe poking through her canvas-covered hull like the ribs of a steer, hovered off the concrete floor. That something larger than a battleship could float in the air seemed counterintuitive – as if the Akron thumbed her nose at gravity. And yet there she was illuminated by overhead lights with a shadow beneath her proving she was no magic trick.

Moffett’s car pulled into the Akron’s hangar followed by a shrill whistle alerting the crew to fall in place. While the men came to attention, their breath visible in the chilly night air, McCord greeted Moffett with a smart salute.

NAS Lakehurst was the heart of Moffett’s rigid airship programme, but Moffett wasn’t satisfied with having a dirigible base on the east coast. He was building a second one on the west coast as well. In the meantime, the culmination of everything America knew about big rigids operated just a few miles south of New York City.

There was nothing small about Moffett’s rigid airship programme. From the size of its budget to the number of sky sailors it employed to the thousands of miles the Akron could fly without landing, no string of superlatives quite did it justice.

There’s no denying the Akron was a window into the future. A miracle of modern engineering, she was state of the art for the US Navy when commissioned in 1931. Some 785ft long and 140ft tall, she dwarfed everything around her including her crew, which looked Lilliputian by comparison. Even King Kong, the giant ape in a new movie released the previous month, was a chimp by comparison.

Size didn’t mean she was slow, however. The Akron was the fastest dirigible the Navy had ever flown, with her eight Maybach engines generating a top speed of more than 80mph. That wasn’t as fast as aeroplanes of the day, but she didn’t need to be. The Akron’s job was to scout thousands of square miles for days at a time, which required range not speed. Able to travel more than 10,000 miles without refuelling,3 the Akron was a marathoner not a sprinter.

Incredibly, she was a self-contained city in the sky with everything she needed to keep her eighty-man crew aloft for days on end. This included mess halls and a galley; three separate sleeping quarters for her officers, chief petty officers, and enlisted men; toilets and sinks (if not showers); a ward and navigation room; radio room, sick bay, smoking room, captain’s cabin and darkroom for developing photographs all residing inside her enormous hull connected by a labyrinth of catwalks, stairs and ladders. The Akron not only had running water, but her own power plant to generate electricity. Eighteen telephones spread throughout the ship assisted communication, while eight machine-gun emplacements helped repel attack.* There was even a sub-cloud observation car that could be lowered on a cable to spy on the enemy below.

If that wasn’t impressive enough, the Akron was also a flying aircraft carrier. She not only carried two aeroplanes inside her belly, which could be deployed and retrieved in mid-flight to defend against attack, but a third hung from a trapeze outside the airship. The world had seen nothing like it.

Unfortunately, the Akron also suffered from the same high hopes with which so many first born are saddled. Although she’d been flying for eighteen months, she had a long way to go before proving herself an effective ocean-going scout. One flight wasn’t going to change that, but Moffett wanted to be on board that night if for no other reason than to show his VIP guest that rigid airships were a viable means of commercial transport.

As if being a wunderkind weren’t enough, the future of America’s airship industry depended on how the Akron performed. If she demonstrated she could fly on a regular basis despite inclement weather, then the financial community would feel comfortable investing in passenger-carrying airships. But if the Akron failed to live up to expectations, then the financial markets would steer clear of what they saw as a risky investment. Moffett had little choice. He had to show the Akron could fly in poor weather if he wanted an airship manufacturing industry to take root in America. Without it there was no one to build his fleet of airships. That’s why he didn’t want the Akron grounded because of a few clouds.

Nothing in Moffett’s early career suggested he’d one day become a giant of aviation. In fact, he’d once told a colleague, ‘Any man who sticks to [flying] is either crazy or … a … damned fool.’4

Never a gifted student, Moffett had graduated from Annapolis in 1890 at the bottom of his class. During the next thirty years he’d served on nearly every type of surface ship from a wooden sailing sloop to a steam-powered dreadnought.5 In every respect he seemed a traditional line officer wedded to the surface fleet. He’d even been awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions during the Navy’s Battle of Veracruz in 1914.

It wasn’t until Moffett commanded the Great Lakes Naval Station that he realised the importance of aviation to the Navy. After observing pilot training up close, he became an evangelist with all the fervour of a recent convert. When he was named Director of Naval Aviation in 1921 he immediately began lobbying for a separate department within the Navy dedicated to flight.

The key to Moffett’s success as Chief of BUAER was recognising that aircraft carriers were key to integrating aeroplanes with the fleet. Able to transport planes places they couldn’t reach on their own, carriers were becoming central to a Navy that had long favoured battleships.

Moffett knew aeroplanes made excellent fighters and bombers, but he also believed rigid airships could play a role. They not only had an advantage over planes in terms of endurance and load-carrying capacity; they cost far less than a heavy cruiser, the Navy’s traditional ocean-going scout.* Furthermore, airships could be repaired in flight; aeroplanes couldn’t. Additionally, an airship remained floating in the sky even if all of its engines failed. In contrast, engine failure for an aeroplane often led to a crash.

The steps leading to the Akron’s commissioning had been anything but smooth, however. Things got off to a rocky start when the design competition the Navy held for its next generation dirigible had to be repeated. Goodyear-Zeppelin, a division of the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, had won the first competition,6 but the company couldn’t build its winning design at the Navy’s stipulated price, so the competition was held again.

Moffett preferred granting the contract to Goodyear outright, but Congress mandated competitive bids. Goodyear’s President, Paul W. Litchfield, was not accustomed to losing, so it was no surprise when his company won the second competition as well. But if the process had been messy, the Navy contract was straightforward. It called for the Goodyear-Zeppelin Corporation, a joint-venture between the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company of Akron, Ohio, and Luftschiffbau Zeppelin, GmbH of Friedrichshafen, Germany, to build two rigid airships for the fixed price of $8 million.

Luftschiffbau Zeppelin had built more than 120 Zeppelins by 1928, making them an expert in big rigid design. It was natural for Goodyear to partner with the leading company in the field to build rigid airships for the Navy, but Litchfield never intended to build only two big rigids. He envisioned the Akron and her sister ship, the Macon, as loss leaders – the first step in Goodyear becoming the world’s leading manufacturer of passenger-carrying airships. But the Akron had to prove herself before the commercial market materialised, meaning Litchfield was rolling the dice.

When the Akron was finally christened on 9 August 1931, newspapers hailed her as ‘Queen of the Fleet’, ‘Battleship of the Air’, and ‘Leviathan of the Skies’. The ceremony, held on a Saturday inside the Goodyear-Zeppelin Air Dock in Akron, Ohio, was deemed so important, President Hoover’s wife was named the airship’s sponsor. The city of Akron even declared it a legal holiday so residents could attend.

Some reports claim that between 250,0007 and 500,0008 people witnessed the event, although the New York Times pegged the number between 80,000 and 100,000.9 Either way, traffic was backed up for miles.

The heat inside the hangar was so stifling, straw-hatted men and overdressed ladies fanned themselves in search of relief. Meanwhile, Goodyear sold blimp rides outside for a dollar10 while a 500-piece brass band played ‘Anchors Aweigh’. As attendees gaped at the silver whale floating overhead they noticed part of her canvas covering had been peeled back to reveal her inner workings, as if labelling her refuse tank and ventilation system could explain the miracle of flight.

Litchfield enjoyed the honour of escorting the First Lady to the dais. Mrs Hoover, looking every bit her fifty-seven years, sat in the front row partially shielded by microphones. Heavy set and frumpy, she wore a cloche hat and matronly dress as limp from the heat as the oversized bouquet she clutched to her chest.

The viewing stand, adorned in red, white and blue bunting, was tucked under the Akron’s bow, which jutted 75ft over the crowd like the prow of a ship. Packed with local politicians, Goodyear executives and senior Navy officials, attendees included Amelia Earhart, who’d flown in for the occasion.

Dr Karl Arnstein, the Akron’s chief designer, was also present for the ceremony. Arnstein was a modest man. Not one to make exaggerated claims, he shied away from the superlatives newspapers used to describe his creation, claiming it was, ‘boasting before the baby actually walks’.11

Litchfield sat in the front row next to the President’s wife. Considered one of America’s most powerful industrialists, he’d taken Goodyear, which had once been a small, family-owned shop, from the brink of bankruptcy to an industrial colossus. Practically everyone in the country either bought Goodyear tyres, recognised its winged-foot logo or had seen its blimps.

If it seems odd that a tyre manufacturer sponsored a blimp fleet, it was because Goodyear was in the blimp-building business. In addition to manufacturing all six of its company blimps, Goodyear had sold another nine to the Navy. Now, Litchfield was celebrating the completion of Goodyear’s first big rigid for Moffett’s LTA programme. This made the day as much Litchfield’s triumph as Moffett’s. After all, it was Litchfield’s face on the cover of Time magazine that week.* As the accompanying article made clear, ‘Proud as he was about this week’s milestone … Litchfield was frank in saying that … the new Navy ship was but a means to an end: the building of commercial air liners … to ply regular routes across the Atlantic and Pacific.’12 The airship business never looked more promising.

The Akron’s christening was such a big deal that NBC Radio and the Columbia Broadcast System carried the ceremony live to tens of thousands of listeners. Litchfield was first to speak. Wearing a summer-weight jacket, and crisp, white trousers, he looked big-boned and gawky in front of the microphones. After briefly outlining the history of lighter-than-air flight, he introduced the Assistant Secretary for Naval Aviation, who was smart enough to keep his remarks short. Then it was Moffett’s turn.

Resplendent in his dress whites, Moffett’s job was to sell the Navy’s airship programme to a country hard hit by the Depression. Emphasising the many new jobs the airship industry would bring, he ended his remarks by quoting Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s ‘O Ship of State’ – a wise choice given the shaky times:

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!

Sail on, O Union, strong and great!

Humanity with all its fears,

With all the hopes of future years,

Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

We know what Master laid thy keel,

What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,

Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,

What anvils rang, what hammers beat,

In what a forge and what a heat

Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!

Fear not each sudden sound and shock,

’Tis of the wave and not the rock;

’Tis but the flapping of the sail,

And not a rent made by the gale!

In spite of rock and tempest’s roar,

In spite of false lights on the shore,

Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!

Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee.

Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,

Our faith triumphant o’er our fears,

Are all with thee, – are all with thee!

The Air Dock’s acoustics were so poor few people grasped what Moffett was saying. As one wag noted, the only person who understood Moffett’s speech was the admiral and the man who wrote it.13

After Moffett finished, the band struck up ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ and everyone stood to face the flag. When the final notes echoed through the Air Dock, Mrs Hoover stepped to the cluster of microphones and, with Moffett and Litchfield looking solemn behind her, proclaimed, ‘I christen thee, Akron.’

Though tradition dictates christening new ships with champagne, the country was in the midst of prohibition – and anyway, smashing a bottle against the bow of an airship seemed too violent an act for such a fragile-looking creature. And so Mrs Hoover, reaching with her white-gloved hand, grasped a long, beribboned cord hanging in front of her. Then, yanking it down, two hatches dropped open in the Akron’s bow, releasing forty-eight white pigeons, one for each state.

As the pigeons emerged, some more reluctantly than others, the crowd cheered, the band played, and newsreels’ cameras recorded the moment for posterity. To acknowledge the christening, the Akron was allowed to rise 6ft into the air before being cranked back into place. It was the lighter-than-air version of a new ship sliding down the building ways into the sea, but the Akron was so massive hardly anyone noticed she budged.

Everything went downhill after that. It wasn’t unusual for a prototype to fail to meet all its specifications, but newspapers made much of the Akron being over budget and 20,000lb overweight – a liability when getting airborne. Worse, it coloured the perception that she might not be everything that was promised.

Moffett was nothing if not accomplished at public relations. The day after the Akron was commissioned he took 207 VIPs up for a flight – the most people that had ever flown aboard a dirigible at one time. It was a tangible demonstration of a rigid airship’s passenger-carrying capacity, which must have pleased Litchfield.

Soon, the Akron was generating bold-faced headlines, coast-to-coast radio broadcasts and breathless newsreel coverage every time she flew. Moffett made it a point to have the Akron appear over large cities hosting a parade so tens of thousands of Americans could crane their necks skyward to watch the future of aviation pass overhead. So popular was the Navy’s newest dirigible there was even a line of Akron souvenirs including pennants, ashtrays, bookmarks and a children’s cap to go along with the constant stream of newspaper, newsreel, and magazine coverage.

We take air travel for granted today, but twentieth-century America was hungry for any form of transport that could span its vast continent and two great oceans. Germany already had one airship, the Graf Zeppelin, which was flying a regular scheduled service from Friedrichshafen near the Swiss border to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – an astounding round trip of 12,000 miles. Why then wasn’t the United States building its own airships to compete? The stakes could not have been higher for Moffett, Litchfield, Goodyear and the Navy.

Moffett’s primary goal was to ensure the Akron was an effective naval scout, but he was not above promoting civilian airships as well. For this reason, he’d invited 50-year-old Alfred F. Masury, Vice President and Chief Engineer of Mack Trucks, Inc., to accompany him aboard the Akron that evening. A lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves, Masury had carved Mack Truck’s distinctive bulldog logo out of a bar of soap before patenting the design. Looking like a bulldog himself, Masury was an officer of the International Zeppelin Transport Company,14 a Goodyear-sponsored firm mapping dirigible routes across the Atlantic. An avid believer in passenger-carrying airships, Masury didn’t need convincing of their worth. Yet Moffett was determined to demonstrate the Akron could fly in all sorts of weather, knowing it would strengthen Masury’s case to investors.

Moffett and Masury boarded the Akron an hour before take-off.15 As the sun dipped below the horizon, a heavy brown fog descended on the airfield. Lakehurst Naval Air Station may have been the Navy’s premier airship base, but it had a reputation for poor weather. Carved out of coastal New Jersey’s sand and scrub pines, the sparsely populated area was flat enough to make it ideal for flight operations. But Lakehurst was also smack dab in the middle of every storm blowing up the Eastern Seaboard. Moffett could not have chosen a better location for poor-weather flying. As proof, the Akron’s captain had visited the base’s aerology office twice that day seeking the latest forecast.16 What Commander McCord found wasn’t unusual. A cold front was pushing in from the west creating a low pressure system near Ohio. Since it was outside the Akron’s area of operations, he wasn’t particularly worried. Still, one of the Akron’s pilots who’d flown up from Washington that afternoon said the ceiling was so low he’d had to keep his plane close to the tree tops the entire way.17

None of this would have been alarming if weather forecasting hadn’t been more art than science. In fact, conditions were poor enough that McCord decided at the last minute not to fly the Akron’s Curtiss F9C-2 fighters aboard. Instead, the N2Y-1 trainer – a two-seater bi-plane nicknamed the ‘running boat’ – would take their place. That way, if Moffett or his guest wanted to leave early they could be flown back to Lakehurst.

Serving on a big rigid was far more prestigious for the Navy’s sky sailors than a lowly blimp. Importantly, a 50 per cent increase in salary called flight pay was earned for flying four or more hours per month. This meant a lot during the Depression, when a Navy salary didn’t go very far. With Moffett on board, the crew were confident they’d fly that night. In other words, they were sure to get their bonus.

This would be Moffett’s twelfth flight aboard the Akron.18 He’d flown her more times than her commanding officer, McCord. As the mobile mooring mast began towing the airship out of her hangar, the admiral found an unobtrusive spot in the control car and settled down to watch preparations for take off.

As the Akron’s crew scrambled to get things ready, the temperature outside was a chilly 41°F, the cloud ceiling an oppressive 300ft.19 There were plenty of buildings taller than 300ft in New York City just across the Hudson. Skyscrapers were easily spotted during the day, but flying in the clouds at night could lead to a collision in the days before radar. No wonder McCord had grounded his aeroplanes; only Moffett’s airships would be out in this soup.

The Akron was finally ready for take-off at 1928 hours.20 That’s when McCord leaned out the control car window and, lifting a cardboard megaphone to his mouth, issued the most counter-intuitive command in the US Navy: ‘Up ship!’

As the ground handlers released the land lines tethering the Akron to earth, the mighty airship with Admiral Moffett and seventy-five souls aboard rose slowly into the sky.* Within a minute, she’d vanished in the clouds as if erased by nature. It was the first of many indications that that night’s training flight would be anything but routine.

_____________

* Although the emplacements were ready, her .30-calibre machines gun had yet to be installed.

* It’s important to note that some Navy cruisers also carried aeroplanes, but the cruisers’ range was limited compared to the Navy’s big rigids, putting them at a disadvantage when it came to scouting.

* The illustration was so flattering as to be almost unrecognisable.

* Of the seventy-six men on board the Akron that night, twelve were officers, fifty-seven enlisted men and seven were guests, including Rear Admiral Moffett; Moffett’s naval aide, Commander Henry B. Cecil; Moffett’s VIP guest, Arthur F. Masury; and Lakehurst’s commanding officer, Commander Fred T. Berry.

3

A NIGHT TO REMEMBER

If the Akron appeared fragile, she was at least twice as strong as the Los Angeles, the Navy’s previous big rigid.1 As Moffett boasted, the Akron was not only, ‘the best airship that has ever been built; she is the safest’.2

The Akron punched through the fog at 1,500ft, the lights of Lakehurst making the clouds glow beneath her.3 Her mission was simple: arrive at Newport, Rhode Island by 0700 hours to begin calibrating the radio direction finder stations along the New England coast. The task was mundane but important. Aircraft needed radio beacons to navigate in the days before radar and without them they got lost. But the route to Newport was fogged in, so McCord ordered the Akron to head inland where visibility was better. Once the skies cleared, they could make the three-hour dash across Long Island Sound. Until then, it was imprudent to bring the running boat aboard, so McCord radioed the pilot, Lt Trapnell, to wait until morning when the weather cleared.

As McCord set course for Philadelphia, Moffett observed how the officers interacted in the control car – a telling sign of how well a ship was run. The admiral had a rule when flying: don’t interfere with operations, but he’d already violated it that morning when he phoned Lakehurst to make sure the weather didn’t prevent their departure.4

A big rigid’s control car is surprisingly small compared to the vast size of her hull. Attached to the airship’s underbelly like a barnacle on a whale, it was positioned 200ft from her bow and 600ft from her stern. Offering a commanding view of the world below, it was not a comfortable place for those afraid of heights. Additionally, the airship’s hull was so huge that its curvature prevented those on the bridge from seeing any part of her stern other than her bottom tail fin. Cut off from the rest of the crew overhead save for the telephone and a single ladder leading into the airship above them, those in the control car were in a world of their own.

As long as a city bus,5 the oval-shaped structure was divided into three compartments: the forward-most compartment, or bridge; the navigator’s compartment in the middle; and the gun room aft, which was more often used for smoking. The bridge was the Akron’s nerve centre. This is where her engine telegraphs were located. They not only signalled speed to her eight engine compartments spread through the ship, but forward, reverse and the angle of her propellers. The airship’s flight controls (her helm and elevator wheels) were also located here. The Akron needed both if she was to operate in three dimensions.

The elevator wheel, located on the port side of the bridge, was responsible for altitude control. The actual elevators were on the Akron’s horizontal tail fins. Operating like the flaps on an aeroplane, they enabled the airship to rise or descend depending on how much and in which direction (clockwise or anticlockwise) the wheel was turned. An altimeter, inclinometer, vertimeter and superheat meter were located near the station.6 There was also a series of small chalkboards above the windows on the port and starboard side. These boards were used to record the weight of the airship’s fuel and ballast water as well as its remaining helium – important information if the ship was to maintain her equilibrium. Piloting an airship was as much about maths as anything else. As one officer put it, they ‘flew it with a slide rule’.7

Beneath the chalkboards hung a row of toggles, which were used to drop ballast. There was also a set of toggles that could be pulled in an emergency when ballast or fuel needed to be dumped immediately to lighten the ship.8