“Tell you what,” said Andy. “I feel the same way about it but I’ve got to check over the final specifications on the assembly of the control room in the gondola. I’m about half through now. It will take half an hour to finish the job. As soon as I’m done I’ll meet you down on the field and we’ll take a ride in my sportster. The sunset this afternoon is going to be grand.”
“I’ll be waiting,” promised Bert and he left Andy alone to study over the intricate set of blueprints. Final assembly of the main control room was to start the next day and Andy wanted to be sure that he had every detail in mind. In the absence of Captain Harkins this task would require his closest personal supervision and the son of the vice president in charge of operations for the National Airways concentrated on his task before him.
Andy was a natural airman. He had first flown a plane at fifteen and at eighteen had qualified for a transport license, which he had never had time to use for from that time on he had devoted his attention to dirigibles. A year at Friedrichshafen under Doctor Hugo Eckener had given him a firm foundation for his later experiments in his father’s own laboratory and he had watched the building of the Akron at the Goodyear-Zeppelin plant in Ohio. When the National Airways had decided to go into the dirigible field and construct the Goliath, suitable for passenger service in peace time or as a battleship of the skies in time of war, Andy had been given an important role in the construction program. His technical advice was sound, based on his thorough schooling at Friedrichshafen and Akron, and his more advanced ideas were supported by the experiments he had made in his father’s laboratory.
Plans for the Goliath had been worked out by Charles High, Andy’s father, Captain Harkins, the chief engineer and pilot, and a special board of army experts designated by the war department. If the Goliath lived up to the expectations of its builders, more ships of the same type would be constructed in the Kentucky hills while the aircraft plant at Akron was enlarged to handle the construction of other ships the size of the Goliath. Secret plans of the National Airways and the war department called for the eventual construction of ten of the giant sky liners, five of them at the Bellevue plant of the National Airways and the rest at the Goodyear-Zeppelin factory at Akron.
Andy completed his minute study of the blueprints and straightened up. He was six feet one tall, with broad shoulders and a well-developed body that revealed his love for sports in his hours away from his work. His eyes were a clear, bright blue and his light hair had just a tinge of red, an indication of his temper when he was aroused to a fighting pitch.
The sun had dropped behind the arched roof of the main hangar when Andy left his office and started for the meadow beyond the huge structure. He had been inside it at least a dozen times that day to watch the progress of the work on the Goliath but now, with the crews through for the day, he couldn’t resist the urge to step in and gaze in silent admiration at the great hulk that was soon to rule the skies.
The hangar was silent except for a few birds, which made their home there. They wheeled high over the framework of the Goliath, chirping their defiance.
Structural work on the Goliath had been completed several months before and crews of riggers had been busy since then testing and placing the great gas bags which would contain the precious helium, the life-blood of the great craft.
Specifications for the Goliath called for 12 of the large gas bags, which in reality were balloons held captive by the duralumin framework with its covering of sturdy metal cloth. Ten of the large bags had been tested and were in place while the last two would be in place before the end of the week. There would be six in the forward half of the Goliath and six in the after section. In the space between them was the especially designed hold which in peace time would be used for cargo-carrying and in war as the hold in which the Goliath would carry its swarm of fighting planes.
The framework of the Goliath was 850 feet long, sixty-five feet longer than that of the Akron. It’s diameter was 135 feet, only three feet more than the Akron but a new manufacturing process had increased the tensile strength of the duralumin used in the Goliath so that it could stand double the strain of the metal used in any previously constructed airship. This process, which had been worked out by Captain Harkins with the assistance of Andy, was one of the great features of the Akron. It was expected that the ship would be able to withstand any storm of less than cyclonic intensity and such an accident as befell the Shenandoah was practically impossible.