Others who provided useful materials were Mr. Henry J. Applegate; Mr. Don Brandemeuhl; Mrs. William F. Bucher; Mr. William W. Chapman; Mr. Barry J. Countryman; Lt. Gordon M. Cousins, USN (Ret.); Cdr. Richard E. Deal, USN (Ret.); Mr. James D. Dowd; Mr. Michael S. Fedosh; ADC Charles Gidrites, USN (Ret.); ADC John A. Iannaccone, USN (Ret.); ADC John A. Lust, USN (Ret.); Mr. Edgar L. Moore; Mr. Kevin Pace; Rear Adm. Scott E. Peck, USN (Ret.); Capt. Charles W. Roland, USN (Ret.); Mr. Ian Ross; Mr. David Smith; and Mr. Richard G. Van Treuren (Naval Airship Association).
Dr. Richard K. Smith assisted the author with research advice. Mr. I. “Butch” Grossman provided special advice and was more helpful than he could know. Mr. James R. Shock provided a wealth of documents. Dr. A. D. Topping (the Lighter-Than-Air Society) also was very helpful.
The author’s oral history research was supported, in part, by generous grants from the New Jersey Historical Commission in 1975, 1996, and 1999.
This book is the product of decades of research. Inevitably in a project of this scope, dozens of individuals assisted in a host of ways. I am grateful to each, including those whose names I may have omitted. All served to make this book better than it would have been otherwise.
Finally, mention is due several individuals. Thanks to Rick Russell, director, Naval Institute Press, and to Susan Todd Brook, senior acquisitions editor, this work (revised and updated) is again in print. With respect to the book’s superb production, the talents of Emily Bakely, senior production editor, and that of Maryam Rostamian, designer and compositor, must be acknowledged. Janis Jorgensen, lead archivist at the institute, provided valuable assistance. The hospitality of Capt. Robert D. McWethy, USN (Ret.), meant more than he can know. At the eleventh hour, Quentin Fleming, Rick Peuser (NARA), and Richard Van Treuren (Naval Airship Assoc.) lent yeoman’s service. And, as always, Penny was supportive, patient, and understanding.
Lighter-than-air (LTA) craft are mankind’s oldest aircraft. In 1783, the first air passenger was carried aloft in a French balloon—more than a century before the Wright brothers’ heavier-than-air (HTA) machine. The new science of ballooning evolved slowly during the next hundred years. But the invention of reliable, lightweight engines transformed aeronautics. By the early 1900s, experimental power-driven balloons, or dirigibles, were being flown successfully by a host of pioneers in a number of countries.
The stimulus for the United States Navy’s lighter-than-air program dates to the early 1900s and to Germany. The first Zeppelin airship (LZ-1) made its maiden flight in 1900. In 1909, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, inventor of the rigid airship, founded the first commercial aerial transport company; one year later, passenger service was inaugurated. Between 1910 and 1914, the fledgling—and very lucky—airline established an all-but-forgotten record: nearly sixteen hundred flights, almost thirty-two hundred hours in the air, and more than ten thousand paying passengers without an injury.1
The German military authorities were also attracted to this new vehicle. Commercial Zeppelin airships were chartered to train personnel. Both the army and navy ordered Zeppelins built and equipped for military service before the First World War. By its outbreak, German preeminence in lighter-than-air aeronautics was firmly established. The Zeppelin organization was promptly integrated into the national war effort. Years of design and experiment were compressed into each year of the conflict. The Allies scrambled to learn as much as possible regarding German airship “trade secrets,” but their technology lagged well behind that of their opponent.
The use of this novel weapon for offensive bombing of enemy cities provided an irresistible temptation. Zeppelin raids, it was assumed, would bring the war home to civilian populations, undermine national morale, and possibly force termination of hostilities. The first air raid using Zeppelins was conducted against Antwerp in August 1914. By 1916, these attacks were receiving enormous attention from the world’s press.
Zeppelin is a new word of terror which supplements the vocabularies of both England and France. These monster airships have destroyed the boasted security of the English people, based on isolation of the island. England has spent her millions to maintain master[y]of the seas, only to find the airships of Germany have free passage, against which no safeguards can be raised.2
Despite these exaggerations, the military results of the raids were a disappointment. The more effective use of Zeppelins as naval scouts over the Baltic and North Seas was far less known—but of intense interest to both Britain and the United States. Rigid airships flew scouting and defensive reconnaissance missions for the German navy, contributing materially to intelligence gathering. In terms of reconnaissance and mine-spotting, German airships also proved effective in the grim at-sea game of mine warfare between Britain and Germany.
The Allied powers were obliged to take note. As one U.S. Navy observer wrote, “It seemed evident that a new weapon had appeared and that the United States should consider its possibilities carefully.”3 Naval attachés abroad were instructed to furnish information relative to the construction and use of rigid airships. Consequently, samples from Zeppelins brought down by the Allies, as well as photographs and considerable hearsay, were passed on to Washington. Much of this intelligence was useless, but samples of their girders helped unlock the secret of the German aluminum alloy duralumin. The experience and resources of the Aluminum Company of America were enlisted to duplicate the alloy. Similarly, samples of gasbag fabric, which comprised the interior cells of rigid airships, were examined. Although the German process was never duplicated, a substitute method of manufacture was finally developed. These two efforts were to be essential to the American experiment with large airships.
The United States was still not at war, but U.S. observers in Europe were enthusiastic regarding Zeppelin airships as a weapon system. The U.S. Navy was interested. The rigid airship’s primary use appeared to be naval, but coastal defense also involved the Army. Thus, a Joint Army and Navy Airship Board was formed to address questions of policy. Efforts were initiated in 1917 to procure an airship from abroad while, concurrently, design work was begun by the Navy’s General Board.
Control car from L-49 on display in Paris—one of eleven Zeppelins that attacked England in October 1917. Eager for German technology, the Allies investigated Zeppelins under the cloak of armistice, their bases disarmed. Forced down intact, L-49 became the design basis of the United States Navy’s first rigid airship (ZRs in naval parlance). Note the similarity between this car and that on page 32. D. H. Robinson
Engineers were recruited, and the myriad of technical problems attendant to airship design were examined. Important ancillary matters, such as hangars (“sheds” in Europe), production of lifting gas, and airship stations also were evaluated. America entered the war in April 1917. Impressed by the vulnerability of Zeppelins from their inflammable hydrogen, Britain pressed its ally to expand its helium-extraction facilities. The presence of commercial quantities of inert helium in natural gas in the Great Plains and the impetus of wartime demand would prove to be crucial—if an impediment—to America’s nascent LTA program.4
In July 1917 the recommendations of the Joint Board were presented. If American rigid airships were wanted for use in the European theater, they should be obtained in England. If operated in the continental United States, they should be constructed instead by Americans to establish the art. And in view “of the very evident use the navy might have for large airships,”5 the Navy Department was the logical organization to undertake all such development.
By early 1918 large airships were