The student pilot spent his first half dozen hours trying only to keep the ship at constant altitude, not caring where he was going. Then he would fly a given course, follow a zigzag rail fence, or a winding road, not worrying about his altitude. Lesson three was to combine the two, fly at constant altitude over a set course. And after enough hours at this, he’d try to circle a pylon, keeping a specified distance away, while the wind pushed the ship in one direction, then another—now flying up wind, now down, now cross-wind, now quartering, making such changes in course to allow for wind and drift as to maintain a perfect circle—and trying finally to achieve the supreme art of the airshipper, which is to get the feel of the controls and the weather so that he can anticipate drift and sharp drops and rises, move his controls a split second ahead of time, stay on course and altitude.
Airship students got no exemption from Civil Aeronautics Authority by reason of the fact that blimps land more slowly than bombers, took the same physical examination, including eyesight. The training course worked out with the government followed closely that for heavier-than-air pilots, with such changes only as were made necessary by the fact that in one case a static lift was utilized chiefly, and in the other case dynamic lift. There was plenty of need for the students by the time they finished their training.
Over the 16 years during which the fleet operations were carried on ship sizes settled down to 123,000 cu. ft. as a compromise between the 51,000 cu. ft. Pilgrim and the 164,000 cu. ft. Defender. This size ship could carry six passengers with pilot and aide, was easy to handle with a small crew, had adequate cruising radius for the job at hand.
Later ships, the Enterprise, Ranger, Resolute, Reliance and Rainbow, carried on the tradition of honoring the defenders of America’s cup in international racing.
While an airplane can land anywhere on an open field, the airship needed at least a minimum of terminal facilities. Many groups co-operated at the outset. St. Petersburg, Florida built a hangar; Miami towed a war-time Navy shed up from Key West; Col. E. H. R. Green built one on his New Bedford estate for use in connection with radio studies being made by Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The company built its own at Gadsden, Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago and New York, calling them air docks rather than hangars.
Unused Army and Navy hangars were borrowed in the early years at Aberdeen, Md., and briefly at Cape May, N. J., Pensacola, Arcadia, Cal. and Chatham, Mass., with Lakehurst, Langley Field, Scott Field and Sunnyvale, Cal., handy as ports of call.
More and more, however, the fleet grew independent of ground aid, became increasingly self-reliant through the use of its masting equipment.
The Goodyear fleet wrote a remarkable safety record in the 16 years. Accidents to airship personnel could be counted on the fingers of one hand, and in the case of the public, 400,000 passengers had been carried up to 1942, for a total of 4,000,000 miles without a scratch of anyone’s finger.
CHAPTER VIII
Results of Fleet Operations
