At the end of 108 hours and 12 minutes of sustained flight, more than four days, the British dirigible R-34 swung into Roosevelt Field, came to anchor, and finished the first flight of the Atlantic by a lighter-than-air airship. To the wondering throngs which went down Long Island to see her huge gray bulk swinging lazily in the wind, with men clinging in bunches, like centipedes, to her anchor ropes, and her red, white, and blue-tipped rudder turning idly, she was more than a great big balloon, but a forerunner of times to come. She had come to us, a pioneer over the sea lanes which are to be thronged with the swift dirigibles of the future plying their easy way from America to Europe.
The performance of the R-34, undertaken in the line of duty, has eclipsed all the previous records made by dirigibles and is, in fact, a promise of bigger things to come. There was that Zeppelin, which cruised for four days and nights down into German East Africa and out again, carrying twenty-five tons of ammunition and medicine for the Germans who were surrounded and obliged to surrender before help arrived.
The R-34 started from East Fortune, Scotland, on Wednesday, July 2, 1919, at 2.48 o'clock in the morning, British summer time, and arrived, after an adventurous voyage, at Mineola, Sunday, July 6, at 9.54 a.m., American summer time. She had clear sailing until she hit the lower part of Nova Scotia on Saturday. Electrical storms, which the dirigible rode out, and also heavy head winds, kept her from making any progress, and used up the gasolene. About noon of Saturday the gasolene situation became acute, and Major G.H. Scott, her commander, sent a wireless message to the United States Navy Department at Washington, asking for destroyers to stand by in the Bay of Fundy in case the gasolene should run short and the airship get out of control. Destroyers were immediately despatched, but in the next few hours the weather improved, and the ship was able to continue on her journey. It was feared, however, she might run out of fuel before reaching Long Island, and mechanics were sent to Chatham and to Boston to pick her up in case of trouble.
The big ship surprised everybody by appearing over Long Island about nine o'clock Sunday morning. The officer in charge of the landing party having gone to Boston, expecting her arrival there, Major John Pritchard "stepped down" in a parachute from the airship, and, landing lightly, took charge of the landing of the big machine.
An approaching cyclone, which would have made it almost impossible to handle the airship at Mineola, was responsible for a rather hurried start back at midnight of Wednesday, July 9th. She visited Broadway in the midst of the midnight glare, turned over Forty-second Street a little after one o'clock in the morning, and put out to sea and her home airdrome. The voyage back was mostly with favoring winds, and she landed at Pulham, the airship station in Norfolk, after 75 hours and 3 minutes of flight. The voyage back was practically without incident except for the failure of one engine, which in no way held back the airship. She was turned off her course to East Fortune by reports that there were storms and head winds which might hold her back in case she kept on her way.
The voyage was probably the most significant in the history of flying. It brought home to the public the possibilities of the airship for ocean commerce as nothing else could have done. The ship remained in the air longer than any previous airship, and pointed the way clear to commercial flying. It is, in fact, only considered a matter of time before companies are started to carry passengers and mails across the Atlantic at a price that would offer serious competition to the fastest steamships.
The airship has been very much neglected by popular favor. Its physical clumsiness, its lack of sporting competition in comparison with the airplane which must fight to keep itself up in the air, its lack of romance as contrasted with that of the airplane in war, have all tended to cast somewhat of a shadow over the lighter-than-air vessel and cause the public to pass it by without interest. It is a very real fact, therefore, that very few people realize either the services of the airship in the war or its possibilities for the future.
During the war the airship was invaluable in the ceaseless vigil for the submarine. England early stretched a cordon of airship guards all about her coasts and crippled the U-boats' work thereby. The airship had a greater range of vision and a better downward view than any sea-vessel; it could travel more slowly, watch more closely, stay out much longer, than any other vessel of the air. The British credit their airships with several successful attacks on submarines, but they give them a far greater place in causing a fear among the under-sea boats which drove them beneath the surface and greatly limited their efficiency.
The German Zeppelins, on the other hand, stand out in public imagination as a failure in the war, especially because the British shortly established an airplane barrage which proved to be their masters. This view is correct only in so far as it applies to interior raiding, for which, indeed, the Zeppelin was not designed. How untrue it is of the Zeppelin as the outpost for the German fleet British officers will readily admit. Indeed, they credit them with the escape of the German fleet at Jutland, one of the deepest regrets in British naval history. As eyes for the German fleet in the North Sea, the Zeppelins, with their great cruising range and power of endurance, proved almost invaluable.
Airships have, then, behind them a rich heritage and before them a bright future. Much work that the airplane can do they cannot do; while, on the other hand, much work that they can do the airplane cannot. The two services are essentially different and yet essentially complementary. Between them they offer nearly every facility and method of travel in the air which could be desired. Each must be equally developed in order to increase the efficiency and the value of the other.