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Did the U.S. military ever use blimps?
The Navy used blimps for antisubmarine patrol duty in world War
II, and as radar picket ships in the fifties, but it decommissioned the last of its lighter-than-air fleet in
1962.
Exactly what happened to the Hindenburg?
While the huge German Zeppelin was making a landing at
Lakehurst, New Jersey, on May 6, 1937, a fire started in the tail and within seconds the ship's six
million cubic feet of hydrogen were ablaze. The airship was totally destroyed and thirty-six passengers
and crewmen were killed. The fire might have been touched off by static electricity, or it might been
an act of anti-Nazi sabotage. The truth will probably never be known.
What is the story behind the "ghost blimp"?
Early in World War II, the Navy blimp L-8 left Moffet Field in
California on a routine anti-submarine patrol flight over the Pacific. Two Naval officers, Lieutenant
Cody and Ensign Adams, were aboard When L-8 had been out for about an hour, Cody radioed that
they had spotted an oil slick and were investigating. Then nothing. This message was the last ever
heard from the two men. Later that same day, the blimp was spotted nudged against a cliff on a beach
south of San Francisco. As rescuers approached, the ship dislodged itself and drifted inland. It floated
down in Daly City, made a perfect landing on its one wheel, and came to a stop in an intersection. No
one was aboard the L-8, and no one has even been able to account for the disappearance of Cody and
Adams. The throttles were at idle, everything was working normally, there was fuel in the tanks and
the cabin door was open. Some local volunteer firemen slashed the envelope, completely destroying it,
in the mistaken belief that the crew might be trapped inside. Only the car was saved. Goodyear donated the gondola to the National Museum of Naval Aviation at Pensacola, Florida.
It is currently being restored and will soon be on display.
How big were the Zeppelins compared to the Goodyear blimps?
The Hindenburg was the largest, and it was 804 feet long, more
than four times the length of the larger Goodyear GZ-20. Its gas volume was over six million cubic
feet, and it had 242 tons of gross lift, enough to carry itself plus seventy passengers, a crew of sixty,
diesel fuel for a transatlantic flight, luggage, some cargo and mail, and twenty tons of water ballast
that could be dropped in the event of an emergency descent. It was faster, too, cruising at about
eighty miles per hour.
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