  High admirals of the American fleet faced in 1940 the gravest responsibility in the National Defense the Navy had ever known. Wherever they turned, north, east, south, west, perils lurked. If they swung their binoculars toward Iceland, toward the Caribbean, toward Singapore, Alaska, or the Canal, everywhere waited potential threats against our American way of life, which they must meet with ships and men, with guns and stout hearts. This was not merely national defense, perhaps not even hemisphere defense, it was World War. Surveying their gigantic task, and moving swiftly to meet it, they found a place in their program for half forgotten craft, long over-shadowed by other arms of the fleet, the non-rigid airship, sometimes called a dirigible, but more often a “blimp.” Couldn’t the airship be used as a watchdog along the coast, against enemy submarines, in discovering enemy mines—relieve for sterner tasks the destroyers and other craft now wallowing their innards out in those restless shallow waters? Great Britain and France had used airships effectively in this service over the English Channel during the last war. The areas within their patrol range, a hundred or 200 miles out to sea, within the 100 fathom curve, was a vital one. There steamship lanes converge, great harbors lie, coastwise merchantmen cruise, there is the greatest concentration of military and commercial shipping. With depth bombs and machine guns the blimps might strike a stout blow of their own, even if they weren’t rated as combat craft. At least they could sound the alarm, call out reinforcements from swift moving shore-based craft, keep the intruder under surveillance. After all the main thing was to find the submarines in those endless miles of water. And in this field the very slowness of the airship, as compared to the airplane, would be an advantage, permit a more thorough search of the ocean’s surface, while its speed as compared to any man-of-war, would enable it to cover more ground within a given 24 hours. So on the Navy’s recommendation Congress in 1940 approved the building of the airship fleet up to substantial proportions, together with bases from which they might operate along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. That program is now being put into effect and the Goodyear company which had built most of the airships used in the first World War, began again to build ships. The story of the great rigid airships, the Los Angeles, the Akron, Macon and Graf Zeppelin is fairly well known. That of the smaller non-rigids is less familiar. The larger airships still hold vital commercial and military promise for the future. However, this book will confine itself to the non-rigid airship, with only enough reference to the larger ships to round out the picture. Every new vehicle of combat or transport has had to fight its way to acceptance against misunderstanding and lack of understanding. Steamships had to prove themselves against sailing ships. Submarines had an uphill battle to establish themselves. The airplane was long on probation, and now the airship is on trial. This book will tell something about these ships, cite what is claimed for them and what has been reasonably proved they can do, see what progress has been made in performance, and point out what may be expected from them hereafter—not avoiding the moot question of vulnerability. Lighter-than-air is older by a century than the heavier-than-air branch of aeronautics. Its history is marked by long research and experiment and continued progress. Like every pioneering development it has had its setbacks. But the sincerity of the effort and solid accomplishment made, entitles the project to thoughtful consideration. |
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