Dirigible Anchorages

From California's sunny foggy strand to Manhattan's rocky banks went news last week of great import for future air lanes. In California, the West Coast Airship Board, headed by Rear Admiral William Adger Moffett, chose a 1700-acre tract at Sunnyvale, 50 air miles from Mare Island Navy Yard (at San Francisco). This tract was the Board's first choice of an anchorage. Second was some 2,000 acres, near San Diego, a; Camp Kearney recommended for a mooring mast.*

In Manhattan, onetime Governor Alfred Emanuel Smith, now enterprising citizen of big projects (part owner of New York "Giants," trustee of New York State College of Forestry, director of the National Surety Company, board chairman of the County Trust Co., and president of Empire State Building Corp.), announced that the plans of the Empire State building, world's largest, tallest, on the old Waldorf-Astoria site on Fifth Avenue, would include a mooring mast as dirigible way-station, 1,300 feet above the street.

Commander Jerome Clark Hunsaker. vice-president of the Goodyear-Zeppelin Corp., said that the plan would be feasible, except for certain changes in the building construction, other officials thought that it might necessitate the dumping of tons of airship ballast water, provisions for which would have to be made. Helium Co. of Louisville, Ky., has developed for the Goodyear-Zeppelin Corp. a mobile plant for the purification of the precious gas.

*U. S. dirigible bases are at Lakehurst, N. J., Akron, Ohio, Scott Field.; mooring masts at Detroit, Scott Field, Seattle, Honolulu, Fort Worth, Texas; small hangars at Langley Field, Va., Wright Field, Ohio, Aberdeen, Md.

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