aerial ships are intended as very long-range strategic scouts for the fleet. The lighter-than-air (LTA) program at this moment is charged with promise and potential.
This morning, the ship was walked from the great hangar at Lakehurst, New Jersey, for a short flight south to the naval air station (NAS) at Anacostia, near Washington, D.C. There the ship will be commissioned into the United States Navy. This is the inaugural flight under American command, but it is not her first flight. The world’s largest, most modern airship has been designed and built in Germany. The military and commercial potential of Zeppelin airships has deeply impressed the aeronautical world. But Germany now is a defeated power, and the Great War victors want Zeppelins for themselves—without German competition. So the few surviving Zeppelins are distributed and their sheds destroyed. The United States receives none of the spoils. And so, in 1922, a contract is signed with Luftschiffbau Zeppelin (Zeppelin Company) at Freidrichshafen, in southern Germany, for a compensation airship. The order for this new ship saves the firm from liquidation.
“America’s Zeppelin” is intended to impress the aeronautical community, which indeed she does. Completed in 1924, USS Los Angeles will survive the vagaries of both weather and naval politics until 1939—the longest useful life of any rigid airship.
On 12 October 1924, LZ-126 (builder’s designation) lifts off from Germany to dare the broad North Atlantic for America. More than eighty hours later, the aircraft lands at NAS Lakehurst. She is the fourth aircraft to cross—and the first from Germany to the United States. The feat electrifies the press and thrills the public. The commander, Dr. Hugo Eckener, and his delivery crew are feted everywhere, including a parade in New York City and a welcome at the White House. Some of the war’s lingering bitterness is thus dispelled. More important for the future, the delivery marks the beginning of a close liaison between German and American airship men, a bond that will flourish through triumph and tragedy until the eve of another world war—and the end of all rigid airship development.
But that is comfortably in the future. Today, Commissioning Day, there are thirty-nine officers and men on board, including eleven of the Germans who delivered her. These aviators share a determined belief in the efficacy of the large airship as a means to navigate the air. The mood throughout the ship is proud, hopeful, expectant.
The airship tries to land. Literally, she cannot reach the ground—the ship is too “light.” The Navy is operating its LTA program on a budgetary shoestring; needless expenditures must be avoided. The aircraft’s lift is provided by nearly 2.6 million cubic feet of helium, which is frightfully expensive. Therefore, if possible, her commanding officer wants to land without valving precious gas. But the ground crew, under the leadership of Lt. Charles E. Rosendahl, USN, cannot pull her down. The wind is gusty. A handling line snaps. Reluctantly, the valve controls are pulled, and seventy thousand cubic feet of helium are released to the atmosphere.
While this awkward ballet of men and machine continues, the assembled guests wait patiently. Among the distinguished visitors is an unobtrusive figure who appears vaguely distressed by the entire affair. But this facial expression is characteristic of the American president, Calvin Coolidge. He appears (as one commentator notes) to be forever looking down his nose to locate some evil smell that seems always to offend him.1 Nearby, a big naval officer appears particularly pleased. Vice Adm. William A. Moffett, USN, is a proponent of the large naval airship. As chief of the new Bureau of Aeronautics (BuAer), moreover, the admiral is responsible for all naval aviation. His advocacy of the rigid airship will cost him his life.
After several failed attempts, ZR-3 lands into the anxious hands of the ground crew. Navy men scramble aboard as ballast to help keep the ship “heavy”; alongside, shipmates hold her down. The ceremony can proceed.
At 1614 hours, as reporters dutifully scribble and cameras record the scene, ZR-3 is christened USS Los Angeles by Mrs. Grace Coolidge, wife of the president, with a bottle of water from the River Jordan. (The absence of champagne is a concession to the burning social issue: Prohibition.) Six minutes later, the ship is placed into commission as a vessel of the Navy and delivered to her captain, who reads his orders to command. Coolidge and his party are then escorted up into the control car for a brief tour. The president’s flag is displayed—the only time this will occur on a U.S. Navy airship.
The flight crew is anxious to be under way. Lt. T. G. W. “Tex” Settle, USN (soon to become the Navy’s top balloon pilot), is at the head of the ladder, keeping the line of VIP traffic moving with a “Please step along, sir” and a slight push on the elbow. A short and sluggish guest is given an extra verbal and physical urging. Settle recalls, “He looked up, a bit surprised, and I saw it was ‘Silent Cal’ himself. He said nothing, and did speed up a bit. Mrs. Coolidge, following, gave me an understanding, amused smile—she probably hadn’t seen her husband shoved that way in a long time. . . . She was a gracious lady.” After fifteen minutes, the president disembarks and the young officer freezes to attention, but Coolidge seems not to notice the lieutenant.2
Admiral Moffett, Lieutenant Rosendahl, and another five climb aboard for the short passage north to home port. No time is wasted. At 1654 hours, the ship is weighed off in preparation for castoff, that is, the aircraft’s load, lift, and trim are precisely adjusted. Ten minutes later, Los Angeles rises vertically off the field, four engines are cut in at two-thirds speed, and the aircraft moves off, to the east. In 2½ hours, she is circling the Lakehurst landing field where, finally, she lands and is berthed in the great hangar next to USS Shenandoah (ZR-1), her American-built sister.
In the evening hours of 25 November 1924, the returning naval aviators stow their flight gear as ground crewmen roll the doors closed.
In less than a dozen years and for a variety of reasons—technological, military, and political—the rigid airship will fail to prove its value in naval warfare. The legacy of that program will compromise development of the nonrigid airship, or blimp. U.S. Navy interest in these smaller ships has been subordinated during the big-ship era, but an aggressive program of development will accelerate, belatedly, in 1940. Given the urgent pressures of the trade war at sea, the largest airship fleet ever deployed will, during the Second World War, contribute to defeat of the U-boat menace. Further, the Navy will persist. The postwar lighter-than-air program will operate modern, highly sophisticated blimps as antisubmarine warfare (ASW) and as airborne early warning (AEW) platforms. Nonetheless, in 1961, the LTA program of the United States Navy will be terminated in favor of competing naval systems, with all flight operations ending on 31 August 1962. Nearly five decades of experimentation, development, and experience will be discarded.
This book is that story.
The research and writing of this book has incurred countless obligations. Indispensable support was provided by Capt. M. H. Eppes, USN (Ret.); Capt. Frederick N. Klein Jr., USN (Ret.); Mr. and Mrs. Eugene P. Moccia; and Lt. Cdr. James M. Punderson, USN (Ret.), all of whom made available personal papers and offered suggestions. Captains Eppes and Klein also submitted to in-depth interviews then, later, reviewed selected draft chapters. Dr. Douglas H. Robinson also reviewed several chapters and provided important information and counsel.
I am grateful to Rear Adm. Calvin M. Bolster, USN (Ret.); Capt. Howard N. Coulter, USN (Ret.); Lt. Herbert R. Rowe, USN (Ret.); and Capt. George F. Watson, USN (Ret.) for their written statements, interview information, and images.
Cdr. Walter D. Ashe, USN (Ret.); Lt. Cdr. William A. Baker, USN (Ret.); Capt. Maurice M. Bradley, USN (Ret.); CPO Moody Erwin, USN (Ret.); Rear Adm. Harold B. Miller, USN (Ret.); Lt. David F. Patzig, USN (Ret.); the late Rear Adm. George E. Pierce, USN (Ret.); Cdr. Robert Shannon, USN (Ret.); Lt. Cdr. Leonard E. Schellberg, USN (Ret.), and Mrs. Schellberg; and the late Capt. Earl K. Van Swearingen, USN (Ret.), provided useful materials and agreed
