This defect proved an advantage. The Navy was forced by the very nature of things to concentrate on a problem which had been no problem to Doctor Eckener and his associates. At the urging of Admiral Moffett, Commander Garland Fulton, Lieutenant Commander C. E. Rosendahl and others, Navy engineers built a high mast, 180 feet tall, following British practice, with a service elevator inside, then tackled the problem of keeping the ship on even keel against up and down gusts. Since the wind does not come out of the ground, a low mast was suggested, half the height of the ship, so that when anchored the ship would all but rest on the ground. The Navy was working on this when an incident happened to strengthen the argument.
The co-incidence of a wind shift, and rising temperatures one afternoon as the Los Angeles was resting comfortably at anchorage, started the tail rising, and it continued to rise till it reached almost 90 degrees. Then the ship turned gently on its swivel, and descended easily on the other side, with no more damage than some broken china in the galley. Still a 700-foot airship has no business doing head-stands, so the low mast development was rushed through. It proved successful.
The next step was to make the low mast mobile, so that it could not only hold the ship on the ground but take it in and out of the hangar. First of these was Lakehurst’s famous “iron horse,” a giant motor-driven tripod, which rolled out on the airport, hauling incoming ships into the hangar, took advantage of daylight calms to take ships out into the field ahead of time so as to be ready to leave on schedule.
On the Graf Zeppelin’s trip around the world in 1929, hangars were available for fueling stops at Lakehurst, Friedrichshafen, and curiously enough in Japan, a German shed turned over to the Nipponese after the 1918 Armistice, having been re-erected at Tokio. There was none however on the American West Coast to house the ship after its long trip across the Pacific. So the Navy, under direction of Lieutenant Commander T. G. W. Settle, hauled a mast up to Los Angeles from San Diego (it had been erected there for the Shenandoah’s flight around the rim of the country in 1923) anchored it with guy wires. It served the purpose perfectly.
The Germans, skeptical at first, became convinced of the value of the mast, themselves erected masts at Frankfort, and Seville, at Pernambuco and Rio de Janiero, used them as terminals.
Once the masting technique had been worked out, the Graf Zeppelin and the Hindenburg, in the years 1930-6, made a record of regularity which no other vehicle of transportation has approached. They took off at times over the ocean for Europe when all other aircraft in the area was grounded, when the fog hid the entire top half of the ship, and the ship disappeared into the fog within a few seconds after the “Up Ship” signal was given. What few delays appear on the record were due to waiting for connecting airplanes to arrive with the latest European mail for the Americas.
So far the use of masts had been entirely a matter for the large rigid airships. The Army did the first development work on high and low masts for its smaller ships at Scott Field, as well as a landing wheel for them to ride on. A situation at Akron started experimentation along a different line. At Goodyear’s Wingfoot Lake Field, Mr. Litchfield frowned over the expense of having a considerable crew on hand to land and launch the blimps, with little to do after the ship was in the air. To an Army or Navy post, with plenty of men in training, this surplus of men was no difficulty, but any private corporation operating passenger airship lines would find the expense burdensome.
The Navy L-2, one of the first ships under the expanded program, lands at Wingfoot Lake, Akron, is walked to the mooring mast.
