This assembly included a moving picture camera, which continuously, or at fixed intervals, or at any instant desired, by means of radio control, would photograph recording dials and show these things: wind velocity at the balloon, tension on cable, gas pressure inside the balloon, temperature of confined gas, temperature and humidity of the air surrounding the balloon, angle of attack at which the balloon faced the wind, both fore and aft and from side to side, also a clock, which showed the time the readings were recorded.
These pictures, when developed gave the engineers the data from which they could modify designs and arrive at a type of balloon which would ride most easily aloft, avoid undue tugging and surging on the cable—incidentally permitting smaller gauge and weight cable to be used for a given height with ample safety margin.
Perhaps the largest single result, however, growing out of the fleet operations was that it had created manufacturing facilities, ships and personnel on which the Navy could draw, as fully as it wanted, in emergency, and with little more delay than the time it took for a man to change his uniform.
Boettner, Sewell, Blair, Hobensack and Hill followed the others into the service. Hobensack’s ground crew in California signed up with him in a body, and men from other ground crews, expert in rigging, in motors, radio, in mooring out and maintenance joined up. In the end only Fickes and Crum were left at Akron to build the new ships, and Sheppard, Crosier and Massic to test-fly them, then ferry them to their destinations.
The student pilots at Wingfoot Lake had finished their training just in time. About half of them went immediately into the Navy, were commissioned and sent to the various bases, the others remained at Akron as replacements to the other pilots, in testing and delivery flights, or on key posts in airship construction.
The experience accumulated by the blimp pilots under varying weather conditions over the country proved useful to the Navy, particularly in the expeditionary operations which coastal patrol would demand. It was useful as well in helping train navy aviation cadets for the growing airship fleet. Five of the pilots, Sewell, Boettner, Rieker, Stacy and Smith had reached the rank of lieutenant commander by the end of 1942, and Lange, full commander, had become commanding officer of a new Navy station on the west coast. Two of the public relations men, Lieutenants Petrie and Schetter, old airship troupers, followed the fliers into uniform.
The airship service suffered its first casualty in 1942 when Lt. Trotter, gallant and resourceful pilot of balloons and ships, was killed in a collision, in which Lt. Comdr. Rounds also lost his life.
The Goodyear fleet passed out of existence with the war. The ships being the same size as the Navy training ships, it was a simple matter to change them over, paint the new name on their broad sides.
Facilities for ship construction became useful also in the new war. An airship hangar is unlike any other structure in the world. It must be broad and high and free of supporting girders. There were two large airship docks at Akron, half a dozen smaller ones over the country. At hand, too, was equipment for helium purification and storage, along with radio and weather gear, mobile mooring masts and other specialized equipment which only lighter-than-air uses. There was the balloon room, too, with a wealth of experience dating back to the first World War, and which with new jobs like building barrage balloons, rubber rafts and assault boats grew to large dimension.
Wingfoot Lake was more than doubled in size, and the large airship dock, occupied at first by heavier-than-air production, had to be changed back later for airship assembly, to meet the Navy’s mounting demands for ships. The bases at Washington and Los Angeles were converted to other aeronautic uses; the two-ship dock at Chicago and the one at New York were torn down and moved to Akron to provide additional space for ship assembly.