Blimp Fleet

The six middle-sized blimps, off Lakehurst, N.J., looked as deceptively innocent as exploding cigars. They made up the first lighter-than-air squadron the Navy has sent aloft in World War II. Each of them was manned by a crew of eight and carried machine guns, light cannon, bombs, depth charges. Their job: to hunt enemy submarines and mines in U.S. coastal waters.

Before the end of 1942, seven other blimp squadrons will take to the air. On the East Coast they will be based at Lakehurst, South Weymouth, Mass., Elizabeth City, N.C., and at a spot still undesignated in Florida; on the West Coast, at California's Moffett Field, near Sunnyvale.

The blimps of the new squadron are about three times as large as the familiar advertising type. They are 250 ft. long, inflated with 416,000 cubic feet of helium, can cruise 1,500 miles at a speed of 55 m.p.h. As a submarine pursuer the blimp has many an advantage over the plane. It can hover motionless over its prey, move along with it constantly whatever its speed, fly below ceiling in all but the foulest weather.

In World War I, the blimp was widely used to combat the sub. It protected the coasts of England and France, was the first thing that greeted the A.E.F. transports as they headed into European ports. Although the British had 190 blimps in service, they lost only a scattered few, even though they were filled with highly inflammable hydrogen.

Thrice-burnt by its disastrous experiences with the Shenandoah, .the Macon, the Akron, the U.S. Navy has dreaded lighter-than-air craft. Nevertheless, a little group of enthusiasts, led by Captain Charles Emery Rosendahl, plugged persistently for a whopping airship program. The new blimp squadrons are the first reward of their efforts.

But Captain Rosendahl and his followers will not be content with blimps. They are after giant 10,000,000-cubic-feet dirigibles (half again as large as the Hindenburg], airships that will cruise at 85 knots, serve as the battleships and plane carriers of the air.

The notion of employing airships as plane carriers is not regarded in Washington as moonshine. The rumor is rife that the Nazis intend to load up the Graf Zeppelin and the LZ-70 with planes, ship them west for token bombing raids on the U.S. It would be a dangerous trip for them in more ways than one. The Nazis have no helium, would have to inflate their dirigibles with inflammable hydrogen. The U.S. still has the only helium available--thanks largely to tough little Harold Ickes, who killed a proposed sale to the Germans back in 1938.

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