Lighter-than-Air

U. S. S. Akron. For the fifth time Lieut.-Commander Charles Emery Rosendahl crossed the U. S. by airship.* In a 53-hr. flight he took the Navy's proud U. S. S. Akron with her crew of 82 from Sunnyvale, Calif, to Parris Island, S. C. (U. S. Marine Corps air station) for refuelling, thence to her home base at Lakehurst, N. J. An able writer, Commander Rosendahl found time to flash radio messages of more than routine value. Excerpts :

"This morning the Akron and her personnel said 'so long' to camp life and our efficient Marine Corps ground crew and soared into a spotted sky of blue and white, breaking fog for the return flight to Lakehurst. . . . Very soon the first of the Akron's planes was hooked on and stowed in its lair within the ship. . . . Just south of Gilroy, Calif, dense fog rolled inland from Monterey Bay up to about 2,000 ft. The coast line was not sighted but after determining by dead reckoning and bearings on mountain peaks that we had crossed the coast we dove blindly into the fog and at about 1,200 ft. found its bottom layer. . . . Proceeding overland via Beaumont and Banning battling every inch against blistering, boisterous blasts from the desert and surrounding mountains. Even at 4,000 ft. the temperature was 94DEG. . . ."

Over Phoenix. Ariz, at midnight the Akron circled for a time, adjusting her trim for the push over the mountains. She disgorged her two airplanes to fly on by themselves, lightening the airship's load by 6,000 Ib. and adding 2,000 ft. to her ceiling. Crossing Texas, Commander Rosendahl spurned Fort Worth and Dallas to fly over his mother's home at Cleburne. On the last leg from Parris Island the Akron averaged 75 knots, a record.

This week Commander Rosendahl was to deliver command of the Akron to Commander Alger Herman Dresel, passenger on the transcontinental flight, then return by train to California to board the battle cruiser West Virginia for sea duty.

U. S. S. Los Angeles, training ship of the Navy's entire lighter-than-air division, was this week to be decommissioned after eight years service.

Transatlantic mail & passenger airship service was brought another step nearer when the House passed the Grosser bill providing long-term mail contracts (TIME, March 21). If the bill passes the Senate, which has received a favorable committee report. Goodyear-Zeppelin Corp. will begin immediately a building program to provide scheduled service in three years.

As usual without fanfare, Liftschiffbau Zeppelin last week announced its autumn schedule of five round trip flights of the Graf Zeppelin between Friedrichshafen and Pernambuco, Brazil.

Research. Of its $2,500,000 endowment, the Daniel Guggenheim Foundation for the Promotion of Aeronautics allotted one-tenth for lighter-than-air study. Housed in a new building at the Akron Municipal Airport, hard by the gigantic Goodyear-Zeppelin dock, the Guggenheim Airship Institute was to be dedicated this week. Features: largest vertical wind tunnel in existence, 60 ft. high; a small wind tunnel for testing instruments; meteorological tower; structural testing room. Chief problems to be attacked: nature of the so-called "boundary layer" of air, adjacent to the outer skin of an airship, and its resistant effect upon outriggers, radiators, ventilator hoods and other protrusions; study of surface wind currents which make ground-handling of an airship difficult and hazardous.

For five years the Institute will be supervised . by California Institute of Technology which has placed in direct charge Dr. Theodor von Karman, famed aerodynamic engineer of Aachen, Ger many.

"Death Cheat"

Because her ranks of racing seaplanes and pilots had been decimated by crashes, Italy had to let England take permanent possession of the Schneider Trophy last year without a struggle. But the Italian Air Force has ever since had its eye on the record of 408.8 m.p.h. held by Lieut. George H. Stainforth. To attack that record, the air force developed a Macchi seaplane powered by two Fiat 1,500 h.p. engines in tandem. To fly it. Air Minister Italo Balbo delegated a new pilot named Neri, a minuscule man whose exploits since he joined the force a short time ago earned him the nickname "Death Cheat."

At finger-shaped Lake Garda on the Lombardy border one day last week Lieut. Neri climbed into his seaplane, flashed around & around the measured course. Electric timing cameras caught him at 430 m.p.h. as he entered his last lap. Then, with an official world record within a few miles of his grasp, Lieut. Nerfs plane shot askew of its course. One of the flippers had been wrenched from its tail. "Death Cheat" Neri kept his ship in control, landed safely.

* His previous crossings: the U. S. S. Shenandoah (twice), the Graj Zeppelin, the Akron.

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