{"id":1491,"date":"2016-10-17T09:09:08","date_gmt":"2016-10-17T13:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zrsthemovie.com\/?page_id=1491"},"modified":"2020-07-22T10:58:15","modified_gmt":"2020-07-22T14:58:15","slug":"the-rigids-final-days-and-wwii","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/zrsthemovie.com\/?page_id=1491","title":{"rendered":"The Rigids\u2019 Final Days & WW II"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"tourists\"The fall of 1939 was the hospice care of the rigid airships. After a last intelligence-gathering mission<\/a> LZ-130 had been permanently docked. Both Grafs <\/i>were then spiked\u00a0and strung up to\u00a0collect pfennigs as tourists attractions (right). Someone observed they made far more money propped up and hanging empty then they ever did when full of passengers and freight.<\/p>\n

\n

That\u00a0September, Admiral King worked with\u00a0Commander Garlon Futon to compose a detailed report which recommended a mix of small Navy rigids and blimps for the US Navy of 1940 and beyond. Passionately presented, the King-Fulton report was blown off by the senior leadership. Garlon Fulton then retired and did not return to active duty, even during WWII.\u00a0ZR-3 (LZ-126) had been\u00a0officially decommissioned 30 June 1932, but was to remain in readiness on thirty-day notice. In mid-December, 1934, inflated with helium and with fuel and ballast, she was undocked for testing of mooring equipment. Mooring tests continued until USS Los Angeles<\/em>\u00a0was finally docked on 18 November 1937. The\u00a0only surviving airship to launch and recover an airplane in flight, ZR-3 had briefly flirted with refurbishment hopes because she\u00a0was still quite capable of serving as a training rigid. Then, John Towers, who\u2019d narrowly survived an early aeroplane crash but still had little use for LTA, ascended to head both BuAer and NACA.<\/p>\n

\n

Towers supported LTA only as far as destructive testing of ZR-3. When a purposefully over-\"zr-3-cutup\"pressurized cell broke some of her girders, no one made a public connection to what happened to ZR-1 and her capped helium valves years earlier. Anton Heinien would not be quoted as saying \u201cI told you so\u201d nor would he make any other embarrassing anti-helium remarks in the newspapers ever again. Rosendahl had found a way to get the former German Zeppelin commander run\u00a0out of the Navy Reserves.<\/p>\n

\n

With the Army’s reducing its manned LTA ops to a handful of motorized observation balloons, the Navy was the majority customer for the nation’s helium supply. Its staggering cost was certainly a consideration in long range planning, but the continued prohibition on hydrogen was much more than a financial challenge. Even the most helium-rich nation on the planet could not supply the rare gas in the quantity required to support airship operations as they had been known.\u00a0As Buckley and Barkely wrote, \u201cThe development of the rigid airship would depend on hydrogen for several reasons.\u201d These two officers had witnessed first hand how even K-type blimp erections had been held up awaiting the helium shipment from Texas. They were certainly aware of the Navy had no plan or resources to replenish large quantities of helium once the airships deployed overseas.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\"\"When it was clear the Nazi government was gearing up to start a war, the record shows a military request for ten Zeppelins. Hitler himself, who had been incensed when the Hindenburg’s<\/em> fly-over of the 1936 Olympic games earned more applause than his own official entrance, would have not made such a request. The dictator was said to have ridiculed Zeppelins as very beautiful, but unusable because they were explosive. Top Nazi desire for, or indifference to, was not, however, the last action concerning\u00a0Zeppelins.<\/p>\n

\n

Meanwhile, on August 31st<\/sup>, 1939, a swastika-emblazoned Lufthansa J52 D airplane dubbed \u2018Karl Huchmuth\u2019 took off for London, but soon crashed and burst into flames, killing all aboard. The Nazi propaganda machine did not consider that accident much of a loss of face; they struck no medal commemorating the sacrifice. They made no effort to redesign everything to use some rare and expensive alternative to aviation gasoline – nor have rumors of doing so been repeated in the literature. Indeed, no one would remember those fiery deaths, and for reasons other than no motion picture footage being taken of the accident, or a description being recorded on a platter. Why is the accident forgotten? Because, a matter of hours later, Fritz-Julius Lemp ordered torpedoes fired from his U-30, sinking the 13,581-ton passenger ship Athenia.<\/i> Lemp had mistaken the liner for an armed merchant ship. 112 passengers and crew were killed in the initial explosion, or died later as a result of the sinking. The Nazi government denied any involvement and was all through saving face about anything. The horrors of unrestricted submarine warfare suddenly came rushing back to the British public \u2013 whose government could no longer launch airships<\/a> in response.<\/p>\n

\n

\"20150624_104921\"Back at Lakehurst, quite indifferent\u00a0to her possible value, disassembly of the\u00a0USS Los Angeles<\/em>\u00a0began immediately even as the Nazis over ran Poland. ZR-3\u00a0was stricken from records just weeks later on October 24, 1939.\u00a0It took until January to see\u00a0all her cut- up\u00a0duraluminum framing \u00a0sold for scrap. \u00a0(A few pieces of her were saved and are in various museum collections today.)<\/p>\n

\n

\"130-demolish\"The following April (1940), a former Zep Captain, then having been recalled to active duty, was ordered to prepare LZ-130 for a flight to Narvik.\u00a0 LZ-130 was to be loaded with supplies needed by the hard-pressed Nazi troops invading Norway. He was to be crash-landed there and cannibalized to turn the tide against the defenders. The bold mission was\u00a0to be\u00a0a replay of L-59’s WWI Africa flight, getting one last use from this unique asset in this new war. Yet the one Nazi hand was not aware of what the other Nazi hand was doing. Flying into Frankfurt, the officer found labor divisions of the Luftwaffe and the Reichsarbeitdienst \u00a0in the final stages of demolishing their last rigid. The Zeppelin men had refused to tear the up LZ-130. For the \"130-car-weeds\"most part the order that nothing be saved even for museum purposes was enforced, though a few pieces of him remain in museums today. \u00a0The advanced engineering bundled into the\u00a0unique power cars spent their final hours\u00a0cast out in the weeds, their unique powerplants re-purposed.<\/p>\n

\n

One could base an entirely different timeline of rigid airship development had the second Roosevelt administration been pro-, rather than anti\u2013 airship.\u00a0 Another spend-ourselves-into-prosperity agency could have been created with the flashy goal of making America the world leader in luxury \"wpa-usa-sign\"air transportation. The public spectacle of decisively reversing the order for helium promised to the Nazi regime\u00a0 (after the Munich crisis, obviously bent on conquest) could have been exploited for\u00a0political gain. The new agency could have been sanctified with some wiz-bang slogan about Providence\u2019s gift of helium for the arsenal of democracy, or some such.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"That position remained unchanged as American observers were startled by the German U-boat\u2019s stunning early success sinking a British battleship and several aircraft carriers. Advocates calling for a carrier that could not be torpedoed, mined or run aground were not given any press at the time. As the “battle of tonnage” targeted merchant ships tactics had to be changed, but few in authority looked to LTA ASW as much of the answer.<\/p>\n

\n

Back at Lakehurst, Detroit Aircraft’s single product\u00a0was showing its advanced age. Once considered a rigid – at least for training purposes – the metalclad ZMC-2 \u00a0was leaking helium and offered little confidence for safe flight. It too was stricken.\u00a0No still photos, only home movies<\/a><\/span> show\u00a0of the ZMC-2 being torn apart for scrap in beginning one Sunday in 1940. ZMC-2’s \u201cgondola\u201d was suspended in Hangar #4 and used as a training\u00a0 \u201cclassroom\u201d for mechanics well into WWII. (Scraps of the unique hull, some joined by its tiny rivets, are part of collections today.)<\/p>\n

\n

\"20150626_113008\"Even as the Americans were building two smaller hangars adjacent to Hangar #1 at Lakehurst, airplane ace and Luftwaffe czar Hermann G\u00f6ring sought to erase\u00a0any chance of a German airship revival. On the 3rd anniversary of the LZ-129 accident, the Frankfurt hangars<\/span><\/a> were blown up, their never-used helium purification structure still visible.<\/p>\n

\n

In Washington, to be sure Franklin Roosevelt would not immediately veto any new airship request, SecNav Swanson had capitalized the words NON RIGID on a meager request for six copies of the prototype K-2, even as Goodyear-Zeppelin submitted proposals for a modest rigid within Roosevelt’s restrictions<\/a><\/span>. It would take Goodyear a while to set up a manufacturing assembly line to make six more K-2s, the modest blimp that had been previously assumed\u00a0to have been another one-off prototype. Claude Swanson died in office before the first blimp was completed. Roosevelt\u00a0found his next appointee Charles Edison’s pleas for consideration of rigid airships<\/a><\/span> an irritation. When Edison quit, Roosevelt selected newspaperman Frank Knox for Navy Secretary. Even as Atlantic U-boats were attacking and sinking destroyer escorts specifically designed to be victorious<\/em> over submarines, calls for airships were not publicized. Undeclared or not, US sailors\u00a0were in the war as U-boats torpedoed merchantmen and escorts alike, killing hundreds of Americans in the process. That Halloween the USS Ruben James<\/em>\u00a0was blown in half by a torpedo that saw it as just another hull in the water, and did not care it was an Anti-Sub Warship. There was still no published\u00a0outcry for airship escort. Attention would shortly be switching to the Pacific.<\/p>\n

\n

Since\u00a0even Macon\u2019s <\/i>scouts could have spotted possible attackers 3000 miles away \"\"from Pearl Harbor, giving warning in plenty of time to prepare, the Japanese took the airship seriously. In fact, since Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo\u2019s orders allowed the option of canceling the plan if the element of surprise was lost early on, a single flying carrier might have averted the surprise attack completely\u2014without firing a shot. \u00a0(In ZRS the novel<\/span><\/a>, the old Macon <\/i>is caught on weekend liberty at Ewa\u2019s mast and destroyed by the Japanese \"\"attack.) In fact, the attacking Japanese on Dec. 7th 1941 did send a detachment to Ewa and what remained of the airship mooring facility was bombed. The photos show the mooring mast being converted to a control tower for the Marine Corps aircraft based there before WWII began.<\/p>\n

\n

It is strangely ironic, the US government\u2019s position that helium was so vital<\/em> it could not allow the gas to be sold abroad lest a charge of the gas be harnessed for war purposes \u00a0– but it was not vital enough<\/em> for America to build another rigid. Would the Nazis have used helium in combat when it was acknowledged in quiet background conversations that a war emergency would likely demand a return to hydrogen for American needs?\u00a0 Buckley and Barkley wrote of helium’s allure, \u201cThis desirability, so much emphasized in the United States, greatly loses its importance when other military aspects of the airship operation are considered … it is very likely that Germany would choose hydrogen over helium for military airship operations, even if both were available to her. If an airship were attacked by aircraft, it would make little difference whether it were filled with helium or hydrogen.\u201d Their perception is supported by the helium crowd carefully avoiding a side-by-side test<\/a>\u00a0 even in the early days. It is safe to assume that if the German government had paid for a shipload of helium and taken possession before invading Austria, the gas would have been at least partially supplemented by hydrogen by the time a practical military mission was conceived.<\/p>\n

\n

Buckley and Barkley \"\"continued, \u201cIt is of interest to note here that the refusal of helium to Germany in 1938, while it resulted in the abandonment of commercial airship service, did not prevent the operation of LZ-130 (Graf Zeppelin<\/i> II) for the training of new airship crews. Prior to the German attack on Russia, LZ-130 had been persistently reported in operation, carrying war materials from Russia into Germany. Even this relatively small commercial airship (same volume as Hindenburg <\/i>– 7,000,000 cubic feet) with range reduced to 2,000 miles, could carry better than 75 tons of payload.\u201d Given the might of the American war machine, it’s difficult to understand why leadership entered WWII without the capability to fly high-priority cargo to Hawaii, when that capability had existed ten years earlier(!)<\/p>\n

\n

\"h56978\"Like his boss, new SECNAV Knox had little knowledge of\u00a0LTA. Unlike his boss, Knox at least once (in 1943) did take a K-ship ride, to survey the San Francisco Bay area. Frank Knox is not recorded of offering\u00a0support for FADM King’s proposal to restart the ZRCV <\/a><\/span>when America found itself at war in the vast Pacific. Goodyear nonetheless continued to offer its\u00a0ZRCV design, and King would have preferred to have a flying carrier in the vast Pacific. However\u00a0in the face of certain Presidential veto, King could do little more than support the non-rigid program.<\/p>\n

\n

Some historians have concluded the US Navy’s modern carriers being ordered to sea and all the old battleships left in port was just what was needed\u00a0to shock the reluctant Americans into the war. Whatever else one might conclude about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, \u00a0there is one fact not in dispute. The two squadrons of barrage balloons stationed there were not ordered to erect and position their balloons to protect battleship row. Not a single barrage balloon, long proven to deter low-level bombing attacks, was inflated anywhere in Hawaii.<\/p>\n

\n

\"dsc00411-copy\"Meanwhile, if any camaraderie was left between airshipmen across the Atlantic it likely ended when the\u00a0 K-3, one of a mere\u00a0three sensor-less and mounted gun-less\u00a0blimps delivered before Pearl Harbor, stumbled upon the remains of the merchant-man\u00a0Noress. <\/i>The tanker\u00a0had been\u00a0torpedoed by the U-123 on 13 JAN 42 off Long Island. The K-3 crew\u00a0radioed rescue for the survivors and looked in vain for the sub, having nothing with which to detect it underwater had U-123 still\u00a0been in the area. Had U-123 been present on the\u00a0surface, K-3 had little with which to shoot at the sub.<\/p>\n

\n

The Navy had just then realized it could organize blimps into squadrons and groups: Airship Patrol Group One, under then-CAPT C. H. \u201cShorty\u201d Mills, was formed with one 4-blimp unit, ZP-12, with then-LCDR Raymond Tyler as CO.\u00a0 It would take a few more weeks for the only other serviceable airships in the country\u2014commandeered Goodyear advertising blimps and two former Army non-rigids\"g-exit1\"\u2014to be organized at Moffett Field. \u00a0As the Army left what had been USS Macon’s<\/em> ultramodern hangar, it was reoccupied by ZP-32, the newly formed ragtag band commanded by CAPT George Watson. One blimp was armed – with the pilot’s hunting rifle. What became Fleet Airships Pacific was later skippered\u00a0by RADM Scott Peck.\u00a0Zimmermann, Rosendahl, C.V.S.Knox and several others who\u2019d stood watch on LZ-129 went on to senior positions in the wartime non-rigid effort. (All this and more is covered in our WWII DVD. <\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n

\n

\"k6\"On 11 MAR 42 the first of the sensorless airships to be delivered after America entered the war, K-6, was aloft with George R. Lee\u00a0as command pilot; future blimp pilot Richard Widdicome\u00a0was also in the crew. The Eastern Sea Frontier War Diary records, \u201cAt 1317, while searching for a wreck in the vicinity of 38\u00b045\u2019 N 74\u00b039\u2019 W, a submarine was sighted at 38-36N 74-38W.\u201d #255: submarine \u201c\u2026surfaced directly south of the airship at a range of 2,000 to 3,000 yards. The K-6 proceeded at full power to attack\u2026\u201d \u00a0Widdicome told the producer\u00a0the wind just happened to be against them, so it took critical seconds to turn around and head for the U-boat, whose crew was scrambling back below. K-6 didn’t even have a machine gun to use when it lined up on the quickly disappearing sub; the attack\u00a0was entirely dependent on its gravity bombs. \u00a0Rosendahl\u00a0wrote, \u201cAt 1317 the U\u201194\u00a0surfaced directly south of the K\u20116… approaching astern the blimp surprised the lookouts… sub crash dived but was not fully submerged when K\u20116\u00a0dropped two depth bombs which exploded near the boat… U\u201194\u00a0went to the bottom where damage report showed its port electric motor stopped, blocked stern planes and echo depth gauge out of order.\u201d K\u20116\u00a0had lost eyeball contact having no smoke marker to deploy, and of course did not have anything to detect a submerged submarine.\u00a0The K-6’s radio calls failed to attract surface units’ attention in time. In a few hours, U\u201194\u00a0had slipped away to deeper water to\u00a0make repairs. (Though verified in German records, this first action of an aircraft of any kind against a U-boat in American waters is not acknowledged in the Navy’s histories to this day<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

\n

Little more than helium was the difference between 1918 and March 1942, though\u00a0a “friendly fire” incident just weeks\u00a0later was happily not fatal as a similar\u00a0WWI mistaken attack had been.\u00a0As Rosendahl\u00a0related, \u201cOne morning late in March 1942, the TC-13\u00a0was detailed to meet the battleships Pennsylvania<\/em>\u00a0and Tennessee<\/em>\u00a0and their three escort destroyers off the Farralone Islands at daybreak, and provide them antisubmarine coverage into San Francisco\u2026 unbeknownst to the TC-13, the destroyer Humphreys <\/em>had escorted one of our own submarines, the Gato<\/em>\u00a0(SS-212), out of San Francisco and through the main ship channel to a prescribed buoy where the Gato<\/em> was to conduct \u201ctrim dives\u201d and then join up with a westbound convoy\u2026 Soon after eight o\u2019clock, a TC-13 lookout reported sighting a periscope about 6,000 yards off the port bow of the Pennsylvania<\/em>\u2026\u00a0 It certainly was a submarine, and furthermore it was in an ideal position for an attack on the Pennsylvania<\/em>.\u00a0 As the world then knew, and as Rieker recalled in a flash, only a month before, a Jap sub had brazenly sat on the \"tc-blot\"surface and shelled oil field installations north of Santa Barbara.\u00a0 Was this underwater craft now beneath him another such brazen intruder?\u00a0 A quick check with his officers assured Rieker\u00a0they had no word that any of our own subs were to be in that area. Johnny Rieker\u00a0decided action was called for.\u00a0 Two depth charges plunged seaward from the TC-13, and then another two\u2026 in three minutes, a submarine did surface, and sure enough it was our own\u2026\u00a0 The blimp\u2019s depth charges had damaged the sub\u2019s diving planes and knocked out a number of his instruments, forcing him back to the Mare Island Navy Yard for repairs.\u201d \u00a0(This action is also<\/em> not mentioned in the Navy’s histories, go figure.)<\/p>\n

\n

\"esso-tanker-copy\"Several action reports from these early weeks of the American ASW war have blimp crews noticing suspicious activities of small boats seeming to be laden with fuel drums. Likewise, tankers with scars and scuff marks lead to rumors that the small, shorter-ranged U-boats could only have such on-station time if they were receiving fuel locally somehow. Sailors eagerly listened to rumors that Standard Oil tankers did not seem to being targeted as often as other companies; some quickly believed connections made during the rigid’s days were being played out.<\/p>\n

\n

\"k-7\"Within a few more weeks someone ordered the blimp’s numbers blotted out, a wise precaution since German logbooks show three separate U-boats reported holding\u00a0submerged or crash-diving\u00a0owning to spotting an airship in the area. Good thing they could no longer tell it was the same blimp, K-5, doubtless having no idea\u00a0the Americans\u00a0had only one<\/em> airship available there in the Cape Hatteras area at the time. \u00a0It was almost May before the first airship to be factory-equipped with a machine gun turret, K-7 (seen here after tying to erase its number), was delivered to Lakehurst.<\/p>\n

\n

With the count of lost vessels and the death toll of crews already exceeding Pearl Harbor many times over, it was clear the American ASW airship effort had been too little, too late.\u00a0The 77th Congress, appalled by shocking losses to U-boats, passed public law 612\u00a0on 16 June 42. Not only did they\u00a0authorize up to 200 airships, but they suddenly removed the restriction against these vessels having backbones, or even rigid hulls. “200 airships, of any type<\/strong>, to be delivered immediately” carried nothing like the earlier “at the discretion of the President”\u00a0 clause. The Congress seemed to dare a Presidential veto.<\/p>\n

\n

\"rigids-convoy-copy\"There could at last\u00a0be rigid airships to carry submarine detection gear, radio homing HF\/DF to locate U-boats by their transmissions, and carry fighter-bombers with serious armament to sink them. \u00a0Even small rigids would have the legs to escort the convoys through the mid-Atlantic “gap” unreachable by shore based airplanes. With nothing more than USS Patoka<\/em>-like mast-equipped tenders in the harbors of Bermuda and the Azores, just a few rigids would have been able to\u00a0catch the U-boats when they rendezvoused with their “milch cow” tankers to refuel. Hopeful plans were published, but Roosevelt did not have to veto any bill to thwart this new effort. By keeping Goodyear on the lowest priority, 4, \u00a0strategic material would be withheld. Amid tens of thousands of airplanes being\u00a0manufactured with the same model<\/em> rolling off multiple lines of different manufacturers<\/em>, after making only 134 K-ships, the nation’s one and only airship assembly line ran out of materials. The official Naval Historian, Morison, nonetheless claims Goodyear “had influence” (!) and this is not disputed to this day in official records.<\/p>\n

\n

\"56747-copy\"Even with no more than a couple dozen airships aloft at any moment during the height of operations, the K-ship squadrons were an amazingly safe and cost-effective asset against the submarine menace as they\u00a0fanned out across hemispheres. Crossing the Equator and occupying half the giant Zep hangar at Santa Cruz, Brazil, ZP-42 sailors re-purposed Zeppelin equipment to service K-ships at the renamed Camp Mellow. \u00a0The same re-worked German \"dsc00114\"fireman’s wheeled extension ladders that once were used to reach parts of their rigid airships found themselves\u00a0employed for K-ship engine changes, fin wire tightening and batten adjustments.\u00a0Hopping the Atlantic, ZP-14 would set up shop in WWI-era hangars in Cures, France. Versailles reparations, two former Zeppelin hangars had been relocated and spliced \u00a0into one, and WWII sailors employed the available equipment therein. German POWs were even tasked to help the sailors on the long lines.<\/p>\n

\n

The producer’s ten-year effort\u00a0Airships vs. Submarines<\/a><\/span> attempts to tell the complete story of the two craft’s parallel evolutionary paths to becoming rivals,\u00a0as well as both wars’ records of their many encounters and struggles. In the final analysis, WWII was the last time in the 20th century rigid airships were even halfheartedly considered for use against their undersea cousins.\u00a0 For a six minute synopsis of the K-type airship history, WWII though atomic testing and the Cold War, click on the play arrow:<\/p>\n