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 being mentioned before Congress in connection with wartime appropriations. The armistice intervened. Thus, the war ended before the United States Navy, starting from nothing, could build or procure a rigid airship. However, in July 1919, Congress authorized the Navy to establish a station to erect and operate large airships and to procure two aircraft. One ship was to be purchased abroad, a second built in the United States. This led to the purchase of the British R-38 (American ZR-2), the design and construction of “Fleet Airship No. 1,” known as USS Shenandoah (ZR-1), and the establishment of the Lakehurst naval air station.
Bodensee (LZ-120) at Friedrichshafen, home of Luftschiffbau Zeppelin. Preeminent in the airship arts, Germany’s first postwar Zeppelin, Bodensee, operated commercially August–November 1919 before being hangared by the Inter-Allied Control Commission. Though not a regularly scheduled service, excursions via rigid airship were popular with Germans. U.S. Naval Institute photo archive
What underlay the Navy’s strong interest in airships? In the military environment of the interwar years, the large naval airship represented an ideal long-range reconnaissance platform over vast ocean areas. Cruisers were the conventional scouts for the fleet. In 1919, it must be recalled, the aircraft carrier had yet to appear. Seaplanes and land-based aircraft, moreover, enjoyed a relatively poor (tactical) performance when compared to the large airship’s extraordinary lift, range, and endurance: platforms for strategic search. America is essentially an island nation bounded by two great oceans into which an enemy force might vanish. Hence it was logical that the Navy remained interested in large airships into the 1930s.
Development of the rigid airship would overshadow the smaller nonrigid type until the eve of the Second World War.6 Yet the U.S. Navy’s LTA program had begun with blimps. A contract for the first non-rigid airship had been awarded in June 1915. The result was the DN-1 (Dirigible, Nonrigid, No. 1). The ship was not ready for trials at the new Pensacola training station until the spring of 1917. It was not an auspicious beginning.
[DN-1] was so overweight that it could barely lift itself. Its envelope leaked and the power plant functioned badly. It did, however, actually fly—and since the firm had built the ship in good faith and at a cost greatly in excess of the contract price [$45,636], it was formally accepted. . . . After a few short flights it was hangared, deflated, and dismantled.7
The Navy Department was determined not to repeat this failure. Based in part on information from attachés regarding antisubmarine operations over the English Channel by British airships (facetiously called “blimps” by HTA aviators), a new design was prepared. The Navy’s B-type airship had an 84,000-cubic-foot envelope volume and a twelve-hour endurance. The aircraft was little more than an airplane fuselage suspended beneath an envelope or “bag.” The Secretary of the Navy (SecNav) approved the design in January 1917. Only a prototype had been planned, but relations with Germany were disintegrating, so sixteen were ordered immediately. The contracts were placed in March 1917. The first ship (B-1) flew in May, and the initial delivery was made to Pensacola that July. Contractor expertise was pooled to meet the order, placed only sixty days prior to the declaration of war.
This order was a thunderbolt, as delivery in any reasonable time was out of the question from existing facilities. No firms had knowledge or experience, and no time could be allowed for experiment and research. There was also no time to build one airship and prove the design; all 16 were wanted at once.8
Nine were built by the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. Its aeronautical credentials dated from 1911 and emphasized lighter-than-air craft. The firm also assumed all airship training for the Navy. A few miles outside Akron, Ohio, at Wingfoot Lake, a landing field, hangar, shops, hydrogen plant, barracks, and mess halls were constructed. The first class of twelve student aviators began their training in June 1917. Senior officer present: Lt. Lewis H. Maxfield, USN.
An entire organization had to be created. The number of men in naval aviation barely exceeded two hundred, plus forty-eight officers. HTA training centers multiplied almost overnight to meet the wartime demand for flight personnel. LTA training centered in Ohio. The new curriculum would remain essentially unchanged through the 1930s: ground school instruction, then flight training commencing with observation balloons before progressing to free balloons and finally to blimps. The first naval aviators (dirigible) were designated in October 1917. These graduates were assigned to new patrol stations along the American East Coast or sent abroad to operate French airships from French bases. The focus for this patrol activity: German U-boat operations against Britain and France and the little-known campaign mounted against American shipping late in the war.
Floating hangar at Naval Air Station (NAS) Pensacola. Both the British and French had developed nonrigid airships (blimps) for antisubmarine patrol. In March 1915, Congress appropriated $1 million for U.S. Naval Aeronautics, after which the Navy Department completed specifications for its first airship. In 1917 a design competition resulted in DN-1, a humiliating disappointment. It flew, but logged only a few inconsequential flights before being stricken. C. E. Rosendahl Collection, HOAC/University of Texas
B-type nonrigid. Sixteen were ordered in March 1917 for training and for patrol against prowling German submarines. The ship was little more than an airplane fuselage suspended beneath an 84,000-cubic-foot envelope, or bag. Endurance: sixteen hours in a cramped, open car alive with engine noise and propeller blast. Lifting gas: hydrogen. U.S. Naval Institute photo archive
Antisubmarine patrols, convoy escort, and photographic missions were conducted from now-forgotten bases on both sides of the North Atlantic foreshadowing another naval war two decades later. The B-class ships flew more than thirteen thousand hours along the East Coast, but they had little direct combat experience and sunk no submarines. The Navy had chosen the flying boat as its priority air weapon against the submerged enemy. Nonetheless, as far as the LTA community was concerned, its wartime
