one.
The airship’s greatest value to the Allies during the past war was in convoy work. Indeed, it was common knowledge that a submarine would not attack a convoy escorted by airships. The value depended not so much on their ability to detect a submarine previous to its attack, but on the certainty of their locating the submarine after a torpedo attack, with the resultant destruction of the submarine by depth charges from either the airship or the surface escort.9
The Navy by 1918 had accumulated design and operational experience. The C-type was designed by the Bureau of Construction and Repair (Aircraft Division). Increased power and endurance granted loiter capability with convoys—and twin-engine reliability. The last of ten procurements was delivered in March 1919. In 1921, C-7 would log the first flight of an airship inflated with helium. U.S. Naval Institute photo archive
The Navy by 1918 had accumulated a measure of design confidence and operational experience. A wholly new aircraft, the C-type, was designed and thirty ships ordered. This was subsequently reduced to ten after the armistice. Twin engines were the principal design improvement, providing greater reliability, speed, and endurance for loitering with convoys. Envelope volume: 181,000 cubic feet. Further modifications to the C-class and entirely new designs were built and explored following the Great War. By fall 1922, and following flight trials of the new J-type, the blimp had evolved into a significant instrument of naval warfare.
But the rigid airship was destined to absorb the energies and resources of the new program. The blimp was relegated to training officers and crewmen for the big ships, which would dominate naval and also commercial lighter-than-air aeronautics to 1937.
However, by 1925 the military value of the large naval airship was itself being questioned. No one could foresee that the weapon system would not survive the politics and technological advances of the interwar period. This stumbling progress, moreover, would compromise the evolution of the nonrigid type and contribute significantly to the demise of the U.S. Navy’s entire lighter-than-air experiment. But these developments were in the future.
An aerology (meteorology) class, NAS Pensacola, 1922. Airship operations demanded knowledge of weather, particularly surface and lower-level winds. The U.S. Navy’s LTA program would help realize quantum improvements in weather analysis and forecasting. NARA
The village of Lakehurst, New Jersey, was founded in 1841. Tucked away in the lonely Pine Barrens, it remained a small and isolated community. The Central Railroad of New Jersey defined the character of the place for half a century. It seemed that everyone in town either worked on the line or was dependent on someone who did. By 1900, however, Lakehurst had achieved some celebrity as a health resort. The Pine Tree Inn, a rambling hotel opened in 1898, attracted tourists for a few decades until it was razed in 1937.
The association of Lakehurst with the military began during the First World War. Early in 1915, representatives from the British government opened negotiations with American manufacturers for the production of shells for the imperial Russian government. The Baldwin Locomotive Works of Philadelphia agreed to make artillery ammunition. On 10 June 1915, a new company was organized—The Eddystone Ammunition Corporation—to execute the contract. Since their ammunition and that from other firms would require field testing, a proving ground was established fifty miles away near Lakehurst. A site was selected north of the village on high ground between Manapaqua Brook and the Ridgeway Branch. The test site consisted of little more than a long firing range cleared through the scrub oak and pine, with an unpaved road and observation structures spaced along its length.
Ultimately, Eddystone tested lots representing some 7,600,000 shrapnel and high-explosive shells for the Russian regime. A subsidiary was also organized in September 1917, the Eddystone Munitions Company, to manufacture a variety of munitions for the U.S. government.
The United States entered the European war in April 1917. The U.S. Army acquired the proving ground area later that year and began to develop the site as an experimental ground for gas warfare. This decision was reached in September, but work on the site was not started until late March 1918. Firing trials by the Chemical Warfare Service (Proving Division) began that April. The camp was a large one. As well as having firing ranges, the facility was equipped with permanent gun positions, batteries of several caliber, magazines, rail sidings for delivery of ordnance, laboratories, barracks, and related structures. Security was exceedingly tight and both officers and enlisted personnel were selected with great care. The purpose of the camp: “to test, in actual large-scale field trials, new gases, which from laboratory tests look promising.”1 Two lines of trenches equipped for gas sampling were constructed near the impact areas to simulate those on the European battlefield. Cloud-gas attacks and other experiments with mustard gas were conducted. The camp’s artillery detachment fired shells into the trenches and nearby terrain to note the concentration of gas and its effects on animals in the test areas. This activity increased in intensity up to the armistice, when all such work was abruptly terminated.
The war demonstrated a need for officers trained in gas warfare, so, in 1918, a training camp for the Chemical Warfare Service was established southeast of the proving ground. Construction began in August. Intended to accommodate 1,300 officers and men, the 733-acre camp was located on part of the proving ground reservation one mile north of Lakehurst. The Army designated the facility Camp Kendrick, in honor of a former West Point professor. Barracks and officers quarters, mess halls, administration buildings, an infirmary, power house, and other structures were quickly erected. The first complement of 10 officers and 283 men arrived at the incomplete camp in September. But training for gas warfare and the work of the nearby proving ground had yet to reach their fullest potential before the armistice was signed in November 1918. As America demobilized, the new camp was used briefly to muster out troops returning from France. But in 1919 the site was closed pending sale. It is at this point that the U.S. Navy entered the Lakehurst story.
One week before the notice of sale, two U.S. Navy representatives arrived at Camp Kendrick to evaluate the site as a possible airship base. Cdr. Lewis H. Maxfield, USN, an early advocate of naval airships, and Starr Truscott, chief engineer for the Navy’s design staff, visited the Lakehurst site on 7 April. The two men were impressed with the availability of rail lines and water, the camp’s location with respect to New York and the coast, and its accessibility to Philadelphia and the Naval Aircraft Factory. The factory was now relatively idle and already being considered for the fabrication of America’s first fleet airship; a hangar on the Lakehurst site would be used for assembly of the aircraft and general outfitting. The flat, sandy expanse available at Lakehurst seemed ideal for construction and for flight operations.
Camp Kendrick. In 1917 the Chemical Warfare Service, Proving Division, United States Army, developed a site near Lakehurst, NJ, to test—in large-scale field trials—new gases for war. Here a high-explosive burst rises over an impact area. With cessation of hostilities, Proving Division work was terminated. By January 1919, three-fourths of the commissioned and enlisted personnel had been demobilized. Note the observation tower. R. F. Burd Jr.
Returning doughboys being celebrated in
