On 8 August, shortly after midnight, Shenandoah was undocked and moored out to await the sunrise and its warming effect on the gas cells. With each degree difference between the ship’s helium and the surrounding air (“superheat”), Shenandoah could lift another three hundred pounds. Lansdowne cast off from the mast at 0921. The strategy “to gain superheat” became standard operating procedure. Similarly, landings were logged at night as much as possible, when the lifting gas was relatively cool and the airship correspondingly heavy. Upon arrival off Rhode Island, a mooring to the floating mast was attempted for the first time. (Rosendahl had been sent ahead as mooring officer to train the tender’s line handlers and assist the mooring.) This first trial was successful with only minor problems noted. As at Lakehurst, the airship had to be “flown” while at the masthead. But experience showed that the airship could be more readily trimmed when secured to Patoka than on the field at Lakehurst, due to the absence of thermals generated by sandy, loamy soil of the landing field and mast environ. This first experience with the tender was carefully analyzed to guide decision-making. Adjustments in procedure and equipment were prescribed and then applied operationally with little change until the final moor to Patoka by the USS Akron (ZRS-4) in 1932.
A transcontinental round-trip using masts erected for the polar trip had been in planning as early as the spring of 1923. By July 1924, the bureau had outlined an itinerary for an October flight to the West Coast. This was then expanded by the Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet (CinCUS), to include a 3½-month operation out of Pearl Harbor, using an expeditionary, or “stick,” mast. This would allow Shenandoah to participate in a strategic search problem with the battle fleet during February–March 1925. Regrettably but necessarily, this was more than both Lansdowne and Moffett could endorse. Strategic searches over trackless ocean were ideal deployments for the type; indeed, too few such exercises were conducted before the rigid airship was finally rejected as an adjunct for the fleet. But operating for more than six months six thousand miles from homeport with neither hangar nor support facilities was unrealistic for a prototype aircraft and its inexperienced crew. Shenandoah’s limited radius of operation, the chronic shortage of helium, and the experimental nature of her newly installed water recovery apparatus (among other factors) argued against this ambitious proposal. Lansdowne presented his case to Moffett; the admiral in turn forwarded his commander’s comments up the chain of command. The CNO agreed to defer decisions regarding future deployment until all experimental work with the ship was completed.
Preparations for a transcontinental flight to the West Coast proceeded, including a thorough overhaul for ZR-1. The proposed itinerary and logistics were without precedent in terms of distance and duration—and would prove a strenuous test of both ship and crew. Mooring masts were available only at Fort Worth, near the Navy’s helium-production plant, at San Diego, and at Camp Lewis, in the Pacific Northwest in Washington. On 25 September the CNO issued the appropriate orders. Lansdowne was to proceed with his command on or about 3 October to San Diego via Fort Worth and, at his discretion, on to Seattle.
At 1000, 7 October 1924, Shenandoah cast off the high mast, destination Fort Worth. Eleven officers and twenty-seven crewmen were on board, including two passengers. The payload included 19,488 pounds of fuel for the five engines, 2,500 pounds of water ballast, and 895 pounds of oil. ZR-1 would be away from homeport for twenty days, an experience that only the flight crew could appreciate. Even by 1924 military standards, the ship’s amenities were few. The concern for weight obviated all but the most essential personal articles for both crew and passengers: Admiral Moffett and a newsman. While half the flight crew held the watch, the off-watch ate or slept in sleeping bags. (The tiny twelve-foot-square crew’s quarters were identical for both officers and enlisted men.) Rations consisted of sandwiches, hot coffee, and soup and beans heated on a two-burner gasoline stove in a crude galley between the navigation bridge and radio room. Ship’s Cook J. J. Hahn, the only flying cook in the Navy, served as combination cook and mess boy, conveying countless meals forward to the bridge and up the ladder for those holding station along the keelway.
Life within the hull of a rigid airship was along the narrow keel corridor, or “catwalk.” On Shenandoah, this triangular tunnel extended from nose to tail cone. Spaced along this passageway were aluminum tanks for fuel and lubricating oil, water ballast bags, food lockers, head, bunks, and off-duty quarters. Four lateral gangways led to the wing car ladders; a trapdoor granted access to the ladder of the centerline engine car aft at frame 60.23 Only inches below the walkway, the ship’s outer cover provided a false sense of security as the men shuttled about their various duties. The fuel and water distribution lines ran above the keelway. Here also the bulging gas cells pressed against the wire bracing and cell netting. The bottom fabric was clear-doped near the keel, allowing in light. There were few lights on board. At night, each crewman carried his own flashlight as he moved about the intricate interior spaces inspecting cells, measuring fuel, or changing watch.
The flight to the mast at Fort Worth proved uneventful, but it was the next leg, through the mountains of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, that concerned the ship’s officers. Shenandoah was designed for low-altitude operations at sea; the relatively turbulent conditions over a continental land mass were a wholly novel and dangerous prospect. Clearing the Continental Divide, moreover, would require flying over “pressure height,” the altitude at which the gas cells are 100 percent full. Above this altitude, helium would be lost through the automatic valves at the base of each cell. (The manual valves were located atop each gas cell.) Thus, to conserve gas, the airship would navigate passage through the mountain passes rather than over them.
West of Fort Worth the ship followed the “iron compass” of the Texas and Pacific rail line, which led ever higher into the mountains. The ground continued to rise beneath until Shenandoah reached an altitude of sixty-six hundred feet east of El Paso. There was at least one close call, and more than forty thousand cubic feet of helium was lost through the valves before the coast was reached in the late hours of 10 October. Shenandoah then cruised south to the naval air station at North Island, San Diego, where a portable stick mast had been erected to receive her. Nearly forty hours after leaving Fort Worth, a very tired flight crew reached the mast and secured at 0100 on the eleventh.
USS Shenandoah off San Diego, 16 October 1924. Her transcontinental round-trip—Lansdowne in command—was unprecedented in terms of distance and duration, thus underscoring the commercial potential of large airships. ZR-1 was away from homeport for twelve days, logging 235 flight hours, her crew more than glad to be back. In mid-November ZR-1 was placed out of commission for overhaul, her helium transferred to ZR-3. In 1925 Shenandoah’s operations with fleet units would prove promising if inconclusive. USN
Shenandoah spent the next eleven days on the West Coast, including a flight to Seattle. On the twenty-second, ZR-1 cast off the mast for return to Lakehurst via Fort Worth. The eastbound leg proved more demanding than the outbound leg because the ship was fully fueled, and the western mountains were immediately ahead. Shenandoah was forced as high as seventy-three hundred feet over New Mexico and, despite release of both fuel and ballast, obliged to fly as much as thirteen degrees up by the bow due to static heaviness. Flying the ship heavy had become a standard but questionable practice in order to avoid dropping ballast and thus conserve precious helium. Aerodynamically speaking, severe hull-bending moments resulted, the structural effects of which remained as yet largely unknown Shenandoah reached the mast at Fort Worth on the twenty-fourth and, finally, was over homeport in the darkness of the twenty-fifth. The return from California had required six days, with nearly 121 hours in the air. Total flight time for the continental round-trip: 235 hours. A long and sometimes harrowing journey stood logged, the ship’s crew more than glad to be back.
The transcontinental flight was front-page news for nearly three weeks. The SecNav commended Lansdowne for successfully commanding this protracted aerial expedition, and, not